Press Release 161 6 Dec.

Statement by the Secretary General of NATO, Lord Robertson, on the OSCE Report on Kosovo The latest OSCE Report on Kosovo provides convincing evidence of a pre-planned and systematic campaign of persecution carried out by the Serb security forces against the ethnic Albanian population earlier this year. The OSCE Report makes clear that this was done as a matter of organized policy. It lists many individual instances of murder, cruelty and suffering, deliberately inflicted by the Serb forces against innocent civilians, many of them women and children. It is because of these crimes against humanity which Milosevic refused to curtail that NATO launched its operation Allied Force against Yugoslavia last March. The success of this action put a stop to this systematic persecution and allowed over 800,000 deportees to return to their homes. I remain preoccupied by the individual acts of hatred and vengeance in Kosovo today. The United Nations and NATO are working closely together to reduce the level of violence and to create a stable and secure situation in Kosovo. I will be discussing this cooperation and future arrangements when I meet UN Secretary General Kofi Annan later today.

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