BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Washington, London, and other NATO powers flew dozens of warplanes over Albania and Macedonia June 15, in a show of force aimed at preparing the groundwork for launching air strikes inside Serbia. The imperialist governments are using the Serbian regime's war on Albanians, who are fighting for self-determination, as a pretext for military intervention in the Yugoslav and Albanian workers states.

Following a meeting in Moscow with Russian president Boris Yeltsin the next day, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic declared his regime would resume talks with representatives of Albanians in Kosova on "forms of autonomy" and promised to allow refugees who had fled Kosova to return home. The announcement was intended to undercut some of the momentum of the U.S.-led war moves.

The meeting highlighted the growing conflict between Washington and the regime in Moscow, which has voiced its opposition to the imperialist moves toward military intervention in Yugoslavia and Albania.

These moves in the Balkans are closely tied to NATO's expansion into Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic - part of the growing imperialist encirclement of Russia. This course toward confrontation is driven by the U.S. rulers' goal of reestablishing capitalist property relations in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the republics of the former Soviet Union, an aim they have been unable to achieve in any of the workers states.

NATO's "Operation Determined Falcon" deployed 85 warplanes from 13 countries. "This is a vivid demonstration of the ability of NATO to rapidly project power into the region," Lt. Gen. Michael Short, commander of the U.S. Air Force in NATO's Southern Command told reporters. U.S. defense secretary William Cohen said the U.S. forces, including three amphibious assault carriers in the Adriatic Sea, will remain in the region for military action if necessary.

Tension between Washington, Moscow
As friction between Washington and Moscow flared, the Russian defense minister, Gen. Igor Sergeyev, objected that NATO officials had failed to inform him about the military maneuvers during his visit a week earlier to NATO headquarters in Brussels.

During a June 15 visit to Moscow by U.S. general Henry Shelton, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sergeyev said he had been misled. "We agreed first of all, it was necessary to resolve it with political measures. And all of a sudden, on arrival in Moscow, I learn about the start of an exercise. That was a surprise," he said angrily.

Shelton dismissed Sergeyev's complaints that he was not notified. "At the NATO meeting in Brussels last week, there was discussion of an exercise," Shelton replied. "I do not know if he was informed of the exact time."

At the June 11 meeting in Brussels, NATO defense ministers had ordered commanders to draw up military options, from air strikes to intervention by ground forces against Serbia.

The Chinese government has also expressed its objections to military intervention. In a June 16 news briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhu Bangzao said Beijing "supports relevant Yugoslavian parties to solve this issue through political dialogue." He called on NATO forces to "refrain from interfering in internal affairs of a country."

Nonetheless, Clinton administration officials repeated a warning made the previous week by Cohen and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that Washington would launch a military assault unilaterally "if necessary," even if the Kremlin and the United Nations objected.

The day after the air maneuvers over Albania and Macedonia, the UN Security Council approved a one-year extension of the NATO occupation force in Bosnia. The imperialist operation there includes some 150 warplanes and 34,000 troops, dominated by Washington's 8,500 GIs.

Serbian assault on Kosova Albanians
On the eve of NATO's military show of force, Belgrade launched an early morning attack on the Kosovar villages of Kramovik and Rakovine. The next day two Yugoslav army helicopters opened fire with machine guns and dropped hand grenades on refugee camps near Kosova's border with Albania.

About 10,000 Albanians have fled from Kosova into northern Albania since June 10, and more than 300 have been killed since March.

Belgrade's war on the Albanians in Kosova aims to crush their struggle for self-determination, one in which increasing numbers of Albanians favor independence. Serb military forces have razed entire villages near the border with Albania. They have planted land mines in that area to impede the movement of combatants from the Kosova Liberation Army (UCK) and make it difficult for them to use Albania as a staging area. The UCK, a guerrilla group founded in 1992 with the aim of fighting for independence, has been rapidly recruiting members.

While posing as defenders of the Albanians against Belgrade's assault, Washington and the other imperialist powers are opposed to independence for Kosova. They have condemned the attacks by the UCK as "terrorists" acts. In fact, U.S. big-business commentators complain that the Milosevic regime's indiscriminate attack on Albanians in Kosova "has radicalized the local population behind the separatists," as William Safire noted in an opinion piece in the June 18 New York Times.

Ibrahim Rugova, president of the Republic of Kosova and leader of the pro-imperialist Democratic League of Kosova (LDK), has more openly called for U.S. intervention into Kosova as a solution to the crisis.

Albanian prime minister Fatos Nano too has welcomed imperialist intervention into Kosova, saying his government was prepared to make all logistics facilities available to the NATO exercises. Nano speaks for the ruling middle-class layers in Albania, which have unsuccessfully tried to integrate that workers state into the world capitalist market.

Meanwhile, the Kosova Liberation Army continues to gain volunteers among Albanians in Kosova and abroad who have joined in response to the Serbian military assaults. This includes members of Rugova's LDK who have broken away to join the guerrilla forces.

"We are very determined about the war," said Aziz Mazreku, a high school teacher in the Kosovar town of Malisevo near the border with Albania, where rebel fighters patrol the streets. "We are fighting for our rights. We want independence."  
 
 
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