Walker: Albright promised me other diplomatic missions after Racak, but it didn’t happen

RKS NEWS
RKS NEWS 4 Min Read
4 Min Read

On Saturday, a public discussion took place at “Reporting House” with the former OSCE Ambassador, William Walker.

He shared his experiences from his verification mission in Kosovo, highlighting key moments of his work and the reactions of international institutions after the completion of his mandate.

Walker said the mission of the OSCE had been clearly defined: to work with integrity and sincerity.

He recalled a conversation with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who had highly praised his work.

According to Walker, after the completion of his mission, he was never asked for a report or opinion about what had happened in Kosovo.

“As for the task of the verification mission in Kosovo, it was clearly stated that we were to do our work with integrity and sincerity. She (Madeleine Albright) told me, ‘Mr. Walker, we think you did great work in Croatia, personally I think you did an excellent job in Kosovo, and don’t worry, you will have other tasks, not in Central America, not in Southern Africa, but you will have other missions.’ But this didn’t happen. Six months later, it was time for my retirement, and I retired.”

“When I finished my mission in Kosovo, I went to Vienna, I went to the OSCE offices, I went to Washington, and not once, not a single member of the OSCE headquarters, not a single person in the U.S. State Department, at any level, ever asked me anything about my mission in Kosovo. Whether I felt I had done good work or not. It was very strange,” he explained.

Speaking about the Racak massacre, Walker said he arrived at the crime scene just hours after the event and saw the situation with his own eyes.

“The incident had just happened, only a few hours earlier, and there was no time for either side to alter the crime scene. What I saw at the crime scene looked like a massacre. My verifiers were collecting bullet casings, looking at the bodies, and it was clear that the shots had come from above the valley. It was clear what had happened, and the reason I declared what I did is because I came from the U.S. Foreign Service with 35 years of experience in Latin America. In Europe, diplomacy is managed differently than in Latin America,” he said, adding that his extensive experience in U.S. diplomacy helped him understand the situation and declare what he had seen.

Walker also spoke about how American diplomacy differs from European diplomacy.

“In my diplomatic service, there are differences from those diplomats who have served in places like London, Paris, or Tokyo. Diplomacy is much more formal, with protocols that cannot be broken. In Latin America, I was involved in many situations with more chaos, where the American embassy was often under attack. The events I described in my book were often in a way more open and sincere in their statements to the media. Because if we saw and heard something, it was said to the media,” he concluded.

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