Cunha: Western reporting on Kosovo-Metohija was based on propaganda

BELGRADE - Portuguese general Raul Cunha, who served as an UNMIK officer in Kosovo-Metohija between 2005 and 2008, said on Friday reports by Western media on the situation in the Serbian autonomous province had been based on "a great deal of propaganda" and had not reflected the actual state of affairs he had witnessed there.

Cunha was speaking to Tanjug in Belgrade after the promotion of his book "Kosovo: Unprecedented Snatching of Independence".

"What inspired me to write this book was the fact that I was in 'Kosovo' for four years, working for NATO as well as the UN. I saw at the time that there was a lot of missing information, and a lot of hidden information. I saw that the truth was being hidden and different to what the official media were saying. And then, when I finished my career, I decided to go to Portugal and write a book to inform the public about what was really going on and to uncover the truth," Cunha said.

He said the fact the blame was always being pinned on one side, with the other side portrayed as completely blameless, had been the biggest surprise to him.

"The reporting in the Western world is based on a great deal of propaganda, a lot of untruths. I, too, saw for myself that what was being presented and the way the Western world saw things was not the truth," Cunha said.

Asked about the position of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija during his tenure there, Cunha said they had faced impossible living conditions and that the Serb population had practically been "reduced to a ghetto".

"I also saw that the preservation of (Serbian) monasteries, monuments and the Serb population also depended on the international community, but that it was not happening in real life because it was as if there was no desire for that. The Serb population lived in really impossible conditions," Cunha concluded.