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Date: | Sun, 11 Apr 1999 15:06:19 -0400 |
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From CNN Interactive:
Missing Australian aid worker
confesses on Serb TV
April 11, 1999
Web posted at: 2:28 PM EDT (1828 GMT)
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) -- One of two
Australian aid
workers who disappeared around 10 days ago in Serbia
was
shown on state television on Sunday confessing to
intelligence
activities and apologizing for harming Yugoslavia.
Steve Pratt, head of CARE Australia's operation in
Yugoslavia,
went missing with a colleague, Peter Wallace, on his
way out of
Serbia on March 31. Wallace was neither seen nor
mentioned in
the broadcast.
Serb television news showed Pratt in profile slumped
at a high
table with a caption describing him as "Major Steve
Pratt." He bore
no obvious signs of physical mistreatment and spoke
calmly and
clearly, beginning by stating his name, citizenship
and listing the
countries he had previously worked in.
"When I came to Yugoslavia I performed some
intelligence tasks in
this country by using the cover of CARE Australia. My
concentration was on Kosovo and some effects of the
bombing,"
he said in clearly audible English.
"I misused my Yugoslavian citizen staff in the
acquisition of
information. I realize that damage was done to this
country by these
actions for which I am greatly sorry. I also did and I
still do condemn
the bombing of this country."
With these closing words and no elaboration the news
bulletin
moved on to another story.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said
earlier on
Sunday that Yugoslav officials were holding back
information about
the two, who were last heard from at a checkpoint on
the
Yugoslav-Croatian border.
He said the authorities had not confirmed they were
holding them
but that informally the Australian government was
aware they were
being detained and were in reasonable health.
CARE Australia urged the Yugoslavs to release the two
men as a
humanitarian gesture for the Orthodox Easter festival
being
celebrated on Sunday.
Serb television is a crucial arm of President Slobodan
Milosevic's
propaganda machine. NATO and its leaders are
frequently
compared to Nazis and no opinions or pictures which
could cast
the Yugoslav regime in a bad light are ever shown.
Three U.S. soldiers, who disappeared around the
Macedonian
border on March 31, appeared a day later on Serb
television
bearing marks of violent struggle on their faces.
Several television appearances by moderate Kosovo
Albanian
leader Ibrahim Rugova, in which he appeared to call
for an end to
NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia, remain shrouded in
mystery.
NATO has said that some of the footage may have been
two years
old and that Rugova's words could have been distorted.
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