UNFPA Claims to have run secret wartime operations in Kosovo

By Austin Ruse | 1999

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM) A UNFPA spokesman claimed this week that UNFPA personnel were not invited into Kosovo by the Yugoslav government, but went in secretly and on their own authority. UNFPA spokesman Alex Marshall told the Conservative News Service (CNS) yesterday that "In late winter, we went in rather quietly into Kosovo and did a quick survey. We didn't ask anybody's permission, though we normally do."

     This new comment flatly contradicts an e-mail statement Marshall made on August 25 to Scott Weinberg of Population Research Institute (PRI) in which he wrote, "I specifically did not say there had been an invitation, because there was none.  I said we were there with the permission of the authorities, which at that point were the Yugoslavian Government."

     Marshall's contradictory statements come amid the growing international controversy regarding UNFPA's intervention into Albania and war-torn Kosovo. Virginia-based PRI has accused UNFPA of complicity in the efforts of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic to reduce the population of the ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo.

     This current controversy began in early July when Stirling Scruggs, head of external communications for UNFPA, left a recorded message with PRI that the agency was invited into Kosovo by the Milosevic-headed Yugoslav government to run a "needs assessment survey" prior to running regular population control programs. Political dynamite, UNFPA has run from Scruggs' statement. UNFPA's position has now changed several times.

     The story has received wide play in Kosovo, and PRI reports that some Kosovars now refer to the UNFPA campaign as the "white plague." Just this week, this issue entered into domestic American politics as pro-life members of the US House have held up the Foreign Operations bill because it contains money for UNFPA.

     "UNFPA's latest spin is laughable," said Kathryn Balmforth of the World Family Policy Center. "They want us to believe that bureaucrats dodged bullets to promote prophylactics. If I had to choose which version of the UNFPA story to believe, I would choose to believe Stirling Scruggs, that they were invited in by the Milosevic government, and many US Congressmen believe him, too."

     PRI also charges that UNFPA has supplied Kosovar refugees with "manual vacuum aspirators" that are only used for abortion purposes. This would be a violation of UN policy. Marshall told CNS that "any respectable medical authority will tell you that aspirators are not used in abortions." These comments are also contradicted by UNFPA's Albanian partner, Gilberto Bano of the Albanian Family Planning Association, who said in June that her organization was training medical personnel to use the aspirators "only for abortion."

     As of today, $25 million for UNFPA remains in jeopardy as the Foreign Operations bill has stalled. The American contribution would represent only a small part of UNFPA's nearly $300 million budget, but is viewed as strongly symbolic of American approval for UNFPA.

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