The Serbian General who thwarted NATO plans
Translation of the interview with General Jovan Milanovic, Vecernje Novosti
A decade has passed since General Jovan Milanovic, who worked with Serbian EU mission in Brussels collecting intelligence for the Yugoslav Army (Vojska Jugoslavije, VJ) under a diplomatic cover of a minister-adviser, followed NATO activities after learning “from dozens of people in 1998 about the preparations for destruction of our country”.
General Milanovic spoke with Vecernje Novosti about the ways in which he was able to put together the mosaic of the preparations of the North Atlantic Alliance for the first military aggression in its history, and about a meeting with the French army officer Major Pierre-Henri Bunel, who was later charged with treason by a French court, after revealing the confidential NATO documents to the Serbian general.
General Milanovic considers his last meeting with Bunel an event “of historical significance for the intelligence service and the security of our state”.”I told Bunel: ‘I only need the original NATO document where all this is written down.’ He said: ‘You’ll get it’. Both of us were aware that this was extremely dangerous”.
Q: But also very important?
JM: Thanks to this and other documents, the Yugoslav Army made plans for state defense. NATO intended to launch an aggression based on a blitzkrieg model: to defeat the army in a short timespan, in several stages, through powerful rocket and aerial attacks against military and civilian infrastructure and thus create conditions for capitulation. Then, they would deploy the ground troops to seize Kosovo and Metohija sector in order to impose and keep the peace. The next goal was for NATO to break the bounds of the defensive Alliance, transforming itself into an aggressive force that would intervene militarily everywhere the US and its allies’ interests are at stake.
The exposure of the plans has prevented the strategic surprise, both in October 1998 and in March 1999. Based on the knowledge about NATO plans, Serbian Army Headquarters devised a strategy of a permanent dispersion of the units, military technique and material means. This meant the permanent movement and changing of the combat posts. In the military-historical research of NATO aggression against FR Yugoslavia, the model of the applied NATO strategy will not receive passing marks. And in NATO’s own analysis, the Yugoslav Army Intelligence Department is ranked among the top ten in the world.
Q: When did you learn that NATO is making plans for bombardment?
JM: In the spring of 1998 KLA was already armed and organized in the entire territory of Kosovo and Metohija. Their weapons came from Albania and the West, where the training camps were established. All of these facts were ignored in the West. In May and June 1998, the things started to complicate and NATO began preparations and planing to intervene. Their military committee received a political directive from the NATO Council to work out the combat plans, and the command in Monse [Washington was developing an operational part of the concrete aggression plans. On June 23, 1998 I submitted a document titled NATO Preparations for Aggression against FR Yugoslavia.
Q: Did NATO officials know who you really are?
JM: They didn’t. I presented myself as a diplomat on the post of minister-adviser. I was openly saying that, given that FR Yugoslavia does not have a military attaché, I was assigned with a task to observe the EU and military-political organizations and alliances. After all, everybody was doing that. Of course, I was also a subject of investigations. Brussels, by the way, is the largest intelligence kitchen in the world.
When Bunel was arrested, the media published an article titled Who is Jovan Milanovic? There were all sorts of speculations, until the French sources concluded I was the lieutenant colonel of the KOS (Counterintelligence Service) in Yugoslav Army—which I have never been—who served in Algeria, helping to form the secret intelligence services there.
Q: Did anyone suggest they knew who you are?
JM: Only the Greeks became suspicious, because they were my target group for the initial observations. Despite Bunel’s claims, the Greeks never gave me any plans. Two of the top Greek diplomats whom I contacted more frequently, during one meeting when I insisted on precise responses and information, became suspicious of my diplomatic identity. Being professional soldiers and intelligence agents, they asked me: Who are you, really? Since I had great trust in them, I told them that I was a Yugoslav Army colonel. They said: ‘Fine, we can talk openly now!’
No one else blew my cover. In the middle of 1998, when the preparations for aggression were already in full swing and when I stepped up the frequency of entering NATO, to my request to get in contact with one diplomat, the British NATO delegation sent a request for me to submit my biography.
Q: Didn’t they already have your biography?
JM: The political branch of NATO was dealing with policy, strategy and doctrine. The intelligence services were engaged in protection of the documents and, according to my assessment, they were not capable of controlling either men, or their contacts, and this is the reason why I was one of hundreds of those who freely roamed NATO offices. What they did not want to say, I would find out in other ways, but I was always leaving NATO with lots of information.
Q: Which methods were you using?
JM: All of them. The legal and illegal ones, known and unknown in theory and practice, and my own original methods. The human factor was crucial and it will remain crucial as long as the intelligence operations exist. All of the people I talked to were mostly against NATO and USA, conflicted with their own conscience due to the jobs they are performing.
Q: Even though they were a part of NATO?
JM: Even though they were a part of NATO. Some would give me the informations at the stage when those were only a ‘work in progress’, enabling me to follow the developments down to the final verification.
Q: You have also received the documents?
JM: I had in my possession each document that was significant for the security and defense of state, including the scenario of the botched command-headquarters exercise ‘Crisis South’, which worked out the plan of aggression against our country in May 1998.
Q: How were your informations received in FR Yugoslavia?
JM: The state leadership at the time did not believe the aggression would take place, they did not trust the Yugoslav Army, nor its intelligence service. They trusted Holbrooke more than our intelligence service.
Q: Why?
JM: They believed that solution would be reached through diplomacy, that KLA will be defeated, that USA will not resort to force and that the threat of aggression was only used to realize political goals. The culmination of distrust was incredible at the time when the attack on our state was certain. I’m referring to the period of September and October 1998, when October 13 was already set as a date of start of aggression. During that period, I sent a series of messages, moving each morning, like on a chessboard, one by one NATO member to the left or to the right, depending on whether it has changed its position from the day before regarding the aggression.
Q: When have you learned about the bombing targets?
JM: Already at the end of July and in September [1998 I knew the coordinates.
Q: There were also talks about the ground operations?
JM: In July [1998, Germany was assigned a task to make plans for the ground invasion. They believed this would be necessary to establish peace. According to the first plan of the ground operations, which involved several entry routes, some 15,000-17,000 troops were needed. During the further analysis, the scenarios were getting more complex as they were considering the probability of resistance, so they enlarged the troops contingent to 25,000, and then 35-40,000, to finally reach the number of 70,000 troops.
The German chief of NATO committee [General Klaus Nauman was constantly raising the number of troops needed for ground invasion, warning the others about the probable NATO losses and pointing that no one can send so many troops. He wanted to prevent Germany from getting embroiled in a combat situation in Serbia yet again, due to historical reasons. Every time the planned contingent for ground troops was enlarged, they would say: Freeze the operation!
Q: What was the level of agreement among NATO member states regarding the military intervention against FR Yugoslavia?
JM: The conflict within NATO lasted during the entire summer and fall of 1998 and in 1999. There were member states which refused to accept the act of aggression without the UN Security Council resolution. Greece was guaranteed that Turkish planes will not be allowed to fly over the Greek territory in order to bomb Yugoslavia. France was resisting until the very moment the plan was adopted. Spain, Belgium, and Italy were also resisting, and so was Germany, which accomplished all of it goals with destruction of Yugoslavia and now, along with historical, it also had the internal problem with their constitution and a newly elected parliament. Practically, there were two or three days of total vacuum, due to refusal of certain states to accept the aggression plan.
Q: How was the consensus achieved in the end?
JM: By [Madeleine Albright launching a diplomatic offensive, where she directly ‘persuaded’ one country after the other, their leadership. Thus, through the pressures and blackmails, every NATO member state was forced to take part.
Q: Why was Bunel made to pay the price?
JM: He ventured into something I believe he wasn’t quite aware of at first. Even though he didn’t have a high rank—he was a major, he had a lot of clout as a chief of cabinet of the head of French delegation in NATO, and an access to confidential informations. He requested the document I needed.
Q: Which document was that?
JM: It was a document with defined targets, stages and the length of aggression. He was charged for handing over two documents, one with 16 and the other with 9 pages. One of those was the plan of the aggression and the other, for which Bunel was sentenced, contained the frequencies of the French bomber planes which were expected to take part in the assaults. He was charged for national treason under the French laws. I did not ask for this document. I told him that I’m not interested in France, because ‘I don’t want to turn you into a traitor’. He told me: ‘I want you to know that France will also take part’.
Q: Was Bunel acting under orders?
JM: I don’t believe he was instructed to keep contact with me. At the time I asked for the plans I knew more than he did. But, after all, the rule number one in the intelligence work is to check each important information from at least three sources.
Q: When Bunel was discovered, so were you — were you forced to leave Brussels?
JM: Bunel was in prison, and I was in house arrest, in my apartment or in the embassy, for the total of 59 days. I had no freedom of movement. In mid-November [1998, I was on the discussion agenda of the Belgian parliament. The MPs blamed the ministers of defense and internal affairs for incompetence, because they were not able to discover the fake diplomat in four years. They couldn’t even find the legal way to expel me, but they did come up with a dirty plan. I left Brussels 25 days before it was to be realized.
Q: Were you later in contact with Bunel?
JM: Bunel wrote the book NATO War Crimes in prison, which was translated to Serbian. The entire first edition of his book was confiscated in France. At the Belgrade promotion of his book there was a lot of interest for the two men who took part in the operation Le Figaro marked as ‘the third most significant after the WWII’. Bunel never regretted his actions. He expressed pleasure that we have met again. In the Literary Club [in Belgrade, he publicly thanked me for enabling him, through those events, to become a writer. He wrote several other books too.
Q: Will you also become a writer?
JM: I will testify in some way about the times when one of the greatest tragedies befell Serbian people.
Q: Why is Serbia today important to Russia?
JM: The situation surrounding Kosovo and Metohija coincided with what is currently happening in Russia. Russia has stood up, it is respected both inside and abroad, it has nearly finalized the process of its consolidation… it has turned around itself and saw an empty space. In order to be sure of its policies, it had to have them verified. Russia has done so in the United Nations, through the issue of Kosovo and Metohija. Russia has a significant position in both G8 and the Shanghai Group. It has immense resources, the need to invest the capital, to import and export and it needs partners. Those who fail to understand the Russian position today will suffer immeasurable losses in the near future.
Q: NATO is today talked about as a gas pipeline keeper…
JM: NATO has discarded its primary defense concept. According to the Washington charter, NATO is a defensive alliance, but that is no longer the case. It represents the aggressive military organization that is a danger to the world peace and security. It can now have two reasons for [continued existence. First, the wars for resources—gas, and very soon, water—rather than their defense. The second is terrorism. Already in 1998 NATO decided on the zones of its future engagement: the Balkans (Kosovo-Metohija province), Middle East—North Africa, Iraq—Iran—Caucasus (reaching to the Russian borders), China, and the war against terrorism anywhere on the globe. In all five zones of its operations, including China (Tibet), it is creating the conditions for military interventions, or the state of ‘controlled crises’.
Q: How do you view the way NATO relates to Serbia today, when the alliance is preparing to expand to three more Balkan states?
JM: The more it expands, the weaker NATO becomes due to numerousness and the impossibility of control. The states that entered NATO are neither democratic, nor economically and politically stable. Will Albania or Macedonia be given to veto NATO decisions? Today, from the 10 years distance, I can say that all the issues have remained open and that the aggression has practically only morphed into a different form, the final stage.
Q: Could you elaborate?
JM: During the preparatory stage of aggression there were two concepts, one developed by United States under the NATO umbrella, and the other constructed by Germany. Both of them have been established as a permanent presence not only in Kosovo and Metohija province, but in the entire territory of Serbia. The armed phase is completed, but the consequences and the aims it was meant to accomplish remain unresolved.
Q: What are these aims?
JM: United Nations have failed to fulfill their purpose in the formal and legal sense both then, during the aggression, and today. Serbia continues to be a subject of the aggression through the intelligence services, multinational corporations, destruction of the economic system, tying to the various structures which are opposed to the constitutional and legal status of the state.
Major Pierre-Henri Bunel: I Would Do Exactly the Same Today
Vecernje Novosti also interviewed Major Pierre-Henri Bunel, a French officer who was accused of aiding Serbia by revealing the potential targets ahead of NATO aggression on FR Yugoslavia, which started on March 24 and lasted until June 10, 1999.
Former Major Pierre Henry Bunel graduated from a famous French Army Academy Saint Cyr and was very highly regarded during his service. He belonged to a group of specialized cadres and took part in the Persian Gulf war, served in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in the Rapid Intervention Forces Headquarters. The military court in Paris stripped him of his rank on December 15, 2001, and sentenced him to five years imprisonment, three of which were conditional. Prior to sentencing, Mr. Bunel had already been in prison for almost a year. He was released in the spring of 2002.
Mr. Bunel has said he would do the same if he were in that situation again. He does not regret his actions in the least, despite being sentenced to a long prison term. He hopes his actions contributed to saving lives.
Bunel left army due to moral reasons, even though he was not forced to do so. Today, he lives and works in Toulouse, as a geologist.
“I could have stayed in the army until the beginning of the process against me [end of 2001, but I didn’t want to,” said former Major Bunel in the exclusive interview for Novosti.
Q: It’s been ten years since the “spy affair” in which you were accused for handing over the confidential documents to the Serbian General Jovan Milanovic, while serving as a cabinet chief of the French representative to NATO in Brussels. What really happened?
PHB: I met General Milanovic for the first time in July, and second time in October 1998, both times in Brussels. And that was it. I saw him again afterwards, when I went to Belgrade privately, in 2003, to the promotion of the Serbian edition of my book NATO War Crimes.
Q: You have always claimed what you are confirming now, that you were only following the “cyphered telephone orders from the intelligence service department in Lille” and that the same telephone from your office in Brussels was removed as soon as the affair was discovered…
PHB: The truth is that General Milanovic called my superior, General [Pierre Wiroth and requested a meeting. Wiroth at first accepted, but then, two days ahead of the meeting, suddenly changed his mind. He assigned me to call Milanovic and cancel the meeting. That’s what I did, but I also decided to meet with him anyway.
At the start of September, I received the cyphered telephone call which requested, in case “colonel” Milanovic contacts me again, to inform him that the situation is serious and, in case President Milosevic does not withdraw the special forces from Kosovo, there will be bombardment in which France will also take part. French thought that Milanovic is still a colonel, even though since June of the same year he was already a general. I did what was required from me. Soon, the telephone to which I was called in my office started to have static. The officer in charge of connections requested that the phone be replaced, which was done. The court procedure has already begun. I couldn’t understand why have I been sent to court when I have done what was requested of me.
Q: Even though, as you say, you were only following orders, it is obvious that there was a humanitarian aspect to your actions…
PHB: Absolutely! Here’s what happened: we saw that the operation against Yugoslavia is in the making, the one Americans wanted at any cost. The French, even President Chirac, were against it. For a number of reasons. Certain number of French soldiers, especially those who served in former Yugoslavia, have realized that the Serbs are not the problem. I served under NATO in Bosnia and I never had any problems with the Serbs. We had problems with Muslims and Croats. After all, during the process against me, the French General Rudaux, who commanded the international forces in Sarajevo, said the same thing.
Q: What did you really give General Milanovic? The official version was that it was a 25-page document, marked “NATO Secret”, handed out to the members of the NATO Military Committee under a title “Strategy of operations for limited areal-reaction”, which contained theoretical and practical confirmations of intent to attack…
PHB: That is incorrect. The truth is that there was a working document under that title marked NATO Secret, which was circulated all over the place. There were 400 copies. Russians also had it, through the Partnership for Peace Programme, especially since it was planned for them to deploy their own forces later on too. It was most probably the Greeks who handed over the copy of that document to the Yugoslav embassy in Brussels.
Q: And what have you done?
PHB: I took a piece of paper and wrote down certain part of the elements that were contained in the working document. There was also a chart with the types of the important military targets and a number of targets that could be bombed if Belgrade failed to obey the NATO diktat.
Q: Apparently, there were 25 targets?
PHB: There were more. There were some twenty types of targets… For example, the ammunition depots were one target type, but four or five of those could be bombed. I gave precise targets to Milanovic.
Kosovo Province is Not Albanian Property, It Belongs to the Serbs
Q: Do you believe you have saved lives with your actions?
PHB: I believe I have. If I would have to go through it again, I would do exactly the same thing. And especially now, when we see how the things developed. For me, the 1999 bombardment was a war crime, and I said that in writing. Kosovo is not Albanian property, Kosovo is the Serbian province. True, there are many Albanians there, but they are not the only ones. Following that logic, should the Saint-Denis department be carved out of France?
Serbian nation is very important in the Balkans. It is the nation of resistance, because it defends its culture and heritage, turned to the East and Russia. I consider that natural. This explains the Serbian-French friendship, because numerous Frenchmen consider the natural continuity of Europe leads more toward Russia, than toward America or Turkey.
Q: You are not very pro-American, would you say?
PHB: I’m not pro- the American administration. That’s the difference. I have nothing against American people.
Q: Perhaps that leaves room to those who think this was the basis for the way you acted in 1998…
PHB: It was not up to me to make a stand. What happened has nothing to do with my opinion.
Q: And what is your opinion?
PHB: I believe, as do many Americans, that since December 1942, when the WWII was taken over by the American financial groups, American policy is no longer dictated by the White House, but by the international financial groups which are conducting the wars between themselves, using the power of industrially developed states to make profits without any scruples. In order to achieve that, they had to impose a new type of the world culture, the consumer society, i.e. the splurging, the society which spends, and if there’s spending, then there will be production, which makes corporations richer.
To make this happen, it was necessary to kill the critical spirit, and for that, the unique national cultures had to be destroyed. This is why they are so fiercely targeting the unique Serbian culture, which is entirely original. It is the same with us, in France. The French youth speaks worse and worse French, turning it ever more to some kind of “Anglo-French”, which is a total catastrophe. This phenomenon plagues the whole world.
Q: Americans are now in Kosovo province, they are arming the Albanians who declared independence unilaterally…
PHB: This is the continuation of the process that started long time ago. Americans have been trying to advance toward Russia, and they have succeeded. Poland is already a part of NATO. I believe they orchestrated the revolutions in Ukraine and Belarus. They established a major military base in Kosovo, which enables them to control the strategic crossroads, with one direction going from the Surt bay in Libya to Alps, and the other from the Black Sea to Spain and Portugal.
The situation in Kosovo is now very difficult, because the foreign troops on the ground are not doing their job. Their job is to prevent the crimes. And defending oneself is not the crime, the crime is to attack.