US President Bill Clinton attempted to prod Hungary into invading its Yugoslav neighbors during the alliance’s 1999 aerial campaign of aggression against Belgrade, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has revealed.
“In 1999, Hungary was supposed to attack Serbia with ground forces. [Hungarian Prime Minister] Viktor Orban confirmed this to me and allowed me to inform the public about it. US President Bill Clinton and the British demanded from Orban that the Hungarians attack Serbia from the north to stretch our forces to Vojvodina, something Orban refused to do, putting him under great pressure,” Vucic said in an address to the nation on Saturday.
According to the Serbian president, then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder helped Budapest withstand the pressure from Washington.
Orban received further criticism for rejecting a ground invasion from the British during his trip to the UK, Vucic said, with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher telling the Hungarian leader that she was greatly “bothered” by Budapest’s refusal to attack its neighbor, because it would mean that “more British soldiers will die.”
Vucic said the episode demonstrates the disconnect between the Western military alliance’s efforts to build “trust” with Belgrade, and the reality that the bloc plotted to invade his country.
Viktor Orban served his first tenure as Hungary’s prime minister between 1998 and 2002, and presided over the country’s entry into NATO, which was approved by the previous government. He served as leader of the opposition between 2002 and 2010, before his conservative nationalist Fidesz party returned to power.
The US and its NATO allies spent 78 days bombing the now-dissolved Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the spring and summer of 1999, launching over 2,300 missiles and dropping more than 14,000 bombs, including cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions which contaminated the Balkans with at least 15 tons of radioactive material. As many as 5,700 people were killed in the bombings, with tens of thousands more diagnosed with cancer thought to be associated with the aggression in the years and decades since. In 2017, Serbian scientist Ljubisa Rakic calculated that the amount of DU dropped on Yugoslavia was equivalent to about 170 Hiroshima bombs. The bombing was also estimated to have caused up to $100 billion in economic damage.
President Joe Biden played a key role in stoking US aggression in Yugoslavia, serving in his capacity as a senator from Delaware as one of the top hawks in Washington pushing for the conflict to be expanded into a full-on ground invasion.