LONDON – Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was advised from London to collaborate with the KLA, some of whose members are being tried for war crimes, writes The Guardian.
The newspaper states that Blair, who was the Prime Minister during the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was concerned about being too close to members of the so-called KLA but was advised that the “British starting point of the conflict” should be treated as “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
In the papers prepared for him by John Soers, Blair’s then foreign affairs advisor and later head of the secret intelligence service, it is stated that Britain was at risk of being “too one-sided,” but, as mentioned, “KLA became more popular after everything that happened in the wars in Yugoslavia,” and they are “the only party that has an army.”
Soers told Blair’s closest associates that it would be impossible to disarm the so-called KLA when the war ends and that it would be better, as stated, to work with “that organization to organize elections.”
At the bottom of the paper, which was released today by the National Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office, it says “I agree,” but there is no signature of the person who wrote it, The Guardian reports.
The newspaper reminds that under Blair’s leadership, the United Kingdom was a significant supporter of the so-called KLA, led by Hashim Thaci at the time.
Blair’s spokesperson declined to comment on these documents, The Guardian adds.
In The Hague, the trial of former leaders of the so-called KLA, Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi, and Jakup Krasniqi, is ongoing, which began on April 3, and they are in detention in The Hague.
Thaci, Veseli, Selimi, and Krasniqi are charged with persecution on political and ethnic grounds, imprisonment, unlawful arrests and detention, other inhumane acts, cruel treatment, forced disappearances, torture, and murder.
These criminal acts are qualified as crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The so-called KLA committed numerous crimes, murders, and abductions against members of the army and police of the former Yugoslavia, Serbs, and other non-Albanians, as well as Albanians who did not accept to be their collaborators or members.
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