The attack on Racak that led to the deaths of 45 ethnic Albanian civilians came at the orders of senior Serbian officials in Belgrade, who then orchestrated a cover-up, according to telephone intercepts by Western governments.
Angered by the killing of three Serbian troops, senior officials in Belgrade ordered government forces to "go in heavy" in an assault on Racak on January 15th to find ethnic Albanian guerrillas believed responsible for the slayings, according to the intercepts.
In the face of international condemnation, Yugoslavia's deputy prime minister and the general in command of Interior Ministry forces in Kosovo systematically sought to cover up what had taken place, according to telephone conversations between the two men. The calls show that the assault on Racak was monitored closely by the Yugoslav government. The bodies of 45 ethnic Albanian civilians were discovered outside the village by residents and international diplomatic observers shortly after the government forces withdrew.
In a series of telephone conversations, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Nikola Sainovic, and Gen Sreten Lukic of the Interior Ministry expressed concern about international reaction to the assault and discussed how to make the killings look as if they had resulted from a battle between government troops and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas.
One source said they showed that "the intent was to go in heavy" to find three guerrillas whom government security officials blamed for the ambush of an Interior Ministry convoy on January 8th. Three men were killed in the attack. As fighting continued on the hills surrounding Racak, Mr Sainovic called Gen Lukic from Belgrade, according to Western sources.
Mr Sainovic wanted the general to tell him how many people had been killed. Gen Lukic replied that the tally stood at 22. In calls over the following days, Mr Sainovic and Gen Lukic expressed concern about the international outcry and discussed how to make the killings look like the result of a pitched battle. One measure Mr Sainovic urged was to seal Kosovo's southern border with Macedonia to prevent Ms Louise Arbour, a top UN war crimes investigator, from entering the country. Ms Arbour was turned back.
Another was to demand that Interior Ministry troops fight to regain control of the killing site and reclaim the bodies. Serbian forces launched a second assault on the village on January 17th, and the following day they seized the bodies from a mosque and transferred them to a morgue in Pristina. Shortly after the attack, a Yugoslav government spokesman said the bodies found were armed and uniformed members of the KLA. The account was challenged by international inspectors and journalists who had arrived on January 16th and found dozens of corpses, all in civilian clothes.
The government later alleged that some of the victims were accidentally caught in crossfire or deliberately slain by the guerrillas to provoke international outrage. But survivors, inspectors and rebels say that little shooting occurred in the town and that no battle was under way when most of the victims are said to have died.
These sources say the KLA was not deployed near the gully where the bodies of more than 23 people were found. A team of forensic pathologists that arrived from Finland last Friday has found nothing to contradict these accounts, according to a Western official.