Kadijevic - Advisor to Americans in Iraq

Veljko Kadijevic, became an advisor to the military coalition in Iraq, for which he allegedly gained immunity from the Hague

Kadijevic does not have a permanent function in Pentagon, Blitz's source close to BIA (Military Security Agency) said.

- The information that he offers is not of a crucial importance. But still, such kind of service can bring profit of up to million and half euro – Blitz writes.

The daily claims that Kadijevic has since 2003 been living on Florida and that he was supposed to help the coalition forces to find secret, military bunkers of the former Iraqi head of state Sadam Hussein, and in return, he would get an immunity, that is, protection from possible proceedings before the Hague Tribunal, German Agency DPA wrote some time ago.

Kadijevic remains reticent

'Blitz's source, however, claims that The Hague was not interested in Kadijevic.

- He did not need that kind of protection, and neither did he need political asylum of any country – Blitz said.

The paper reports that Kadijevic has never given a statement as a follow up of headlines that referred to his co-operation with Pentagon. Since he moved to Florida, he almost never came to Serbia; neither did he explain why he had left the state.

- I have not seen him or heard of him since the 1990s. No one in my the circle of acquaintances knows where he is and why he left – Branko Krga, former head of General Staff of Serbia and Montenegro said.

He was on the West Point

He also said that Kadijevic was never rumoured as being 'an American man', although in the 1960s he was one of the chosen six from Tito's army to be sent to the West Point.

Blitz says that Kadijevic as Federal defence minister , did not show qualities of a great military strategist, at the time of the outbreak of war in SFRY, quite the contrary, he adds, it is not clear to many persons why he was not held responsible for military actions in Vukovar or Dubrovnik.  

The Hague indictee Veselin Sljivancanin used to be Kadijevic's bodyguard, and in the war years immediately subordinate at the Vukovar front. Immediately after the three month siege of Vukovar, Kadijevic promoted Sljivancanin into a lieutenant-colonel, Blitz writes.

One month later, Kadijevic withdrew from his duty, allegedly on account of an illness.

Meeting with Americans in 1991

Blitz goes on to say that the print wrote about Kadijevic's meeting with a US delegation. At the end of December 1991, in Federal Secretariat for people's defence, he was privately visited by the congressman Jimy Moody and military attaché Richard Herring. Moody was an influential member of the US Congress, he spoke Serbian and in 1980s he worked in the US Embassy in Belgrade.  

The retired general Ninoslav Krstic said for Blitz, that it is possible that Kadijevic was in 'some way  recruited', and that it was used at some moment before and in the beginning of the war in Iraq.