Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin has testified that he stayed for several days in Kosovo in June 1999, where every morning he was taken into the mountains to meet with Hashim Tha\u00e7i. During his testimony at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, he said that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had told him to go to Kosovo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
James Rubin, who served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State during the Kosovo war, is the first defense witness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His testimony is in defense of the former President of Kosovo, Hashim Tha\u00e7i. In court, he was accompanied by two representatives of the United States of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The American diplomat stated that he returned to Kosovo in June 1999 to take part in \u201cnegotiations concerning the demilitarization of the KLA.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before the panel of judges, he explained that it was Secretary Albright who told him to go to Kosovo, instructing him: \u201cStop everything you are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was Ms. Albright\u2019s spokesman. I was working on issues related to China and Russia, and she told me, \u2018Stop everything you\u2019re doing and you must go to Kosovo, you need to go there in order to help Mike Jackson carry out his commitments and also make sure Hashim Tha\u00e7i signs the agreement. That\u2019s why I went to the region,\u2019\u201d<\/em>\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The former senior U.S. official testified that during that period he stayed in a hotel in Skopje and every morning he was transported into the mountains to meet with Hashim Tha\u00e7i.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t remember exactly, but perhaps three or four days. I didn\u2019t actually stay in Kosovo, I stayed in a hotel in Skopje, Macedonia, and every morning I was taken by special means into the mountains to meet with Hashim Tha\u00e7i and the actual commanders of the KLA. So, every day they would take me there and bring me back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Miseti\u0107:<\/strong>\u00a0Do you remember the dates?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rubin:<\/strong> It was sometime toward the end of June 1999,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the judges, Rubin said that Tha\u00e7i was younger in age compared to other commanders, adding: \u201cIt was clear to me that Tha\u00e7i did not have the ability or authority to make decisions for the KLA.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI personally met with the commanders and saw with my own eyes the relationship between them and Hashim. These commanders were the ones telling him what to do; the relationship was such that Hashim was not telling the commanders what to do, but rather the commanders were the ones instructing him,\u201d Rubin emphasized further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first defense witness, whose testimony began today, also said that he had met with Agim \u00c7eku to celebrate the transformation of the Kosovo Liberation Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His testimony has been allocated four hours by the defense, four hours by the Office of the Specialized Prosecutor, and three and a half hours by others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During his testimony today, James Rubin told the court that between 1997\u20132000 he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and as the chief spokesman reporting directly to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his involvement with the Rambouillet Conference, Rubin said that he met several times with Tha\u00e7i, about whom he stated: \u201cHe was worried that he would not have the full authority or permission to sign the Rambouillet agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin has testified that he stayed for several days in Kosovo in June 1999, where every morning he was taken into the mountains to meet with Hashim Tha\u00e7i. During his testimony at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, he said that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":76841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[301,296],"tags":[408,6658,1170],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76840,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76838\/revisions\/76840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}