former amb. william montgomery, a paid serbian propagandist

Congress of North American Bosniaks www.bosniak.org Canadian Division P.O. Box 651 [email protected] P.O. BOX 56073 Skokie, IL 60076 Stoney Creek, ON, L8G 5C9 March 2, 2011 William Montgomery, former American ambassador to Serbia, revealed to be a paid Serbian lobbyist According to an article published online by the Belgrade based newspaper Blic, William Montgomery the outspoken former United States ambassador to Serbia, is in fact a paid Serbian lobbyist: “The SNS leader [and former leader of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party] Tomislav Nikolic engaged last year former USA ambassador to Serbia William Montgomery to help him improve his party’s image in the USA and the EU, but also help him win power in Serbia. The monthly advisory fee is EUR 7,500 monthly plus costs…” Full text of the article can be found here. In the past few years there had been intense speculation that Mr. Montgomery was an outspoken lobbyist who was working on behalf of Serbian ultranationalist parties and politicians to advance their political interests and aspirations by using the heft of his former position and the connections he had made throughout his career to write and speak out publicly on their behalf. These speculations and rumors have now been reported to be true. Mr. Montgomery’s main efforts seem to be directed at changing the United States foreign policy in a direction that would please the Serbian ultranationalist politicians, parties, and intellectuals. These are the same group of people that had brought Slobodan Milosevic to power in the late 1980s and had actively taken part in the wars of aggression perpetrated by Serb forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo. Mr. Montgomery is allegedly a well paid and effective mouthpiece for the same ultra-nationalist ideology and policies of expansion for a “Greater Serbia” that have in the recent past brought about genocide, ethnic cleansing, the creation of concentration and rape camps, and had ultimately resulted in the worst atrocities committed on European soil since the horrors of the Holocaust. On June 4, 2009 Mr. Montgomery wrote an Op-Ed article published in the New York Times titled “The Balkan Mess Redux” where he argued that the United States should fundamentally change its longstanding foreign policy objectives in the Western Balkans by supporting Serbian ultranationalist political principles. He stated that the peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo could never peacefully live together and that they would have to be forcefully separated from each other (practically paraphrasing what Radovan Karadzic had been telling the world as he was orchestrating the Bosnian Genocide). He also stated that Kosovo and Bosnia- Herzegovina should be territorially divided so that large parts of the countries would be annexed into a Greater Serbian state (articulately laying out Milosevic’s core political ideology). Finally, he stated that the key to achieving these Serbian ultranationalist and expansionist political objectives would be a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy so that it was aligned with the same policies that Milosevic, Karadzic, and Mladic had pursued in the Board of Directors Haris Alibašić President Ferid Sefer Vice President Sanel Babić Secretary Uzeir Ramić Treasurer Hamdija Čustović Spokesperson Aldina Muslija Amir Makarević Dževad Burić Haris Šuko Kemal Hamulić Mirsad Smajić Rusmin Topalović Semir Đulić

former amb. william montgomery, a paid serbian propagandist

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