Rudolf Scharping, German Minister of Defense, was accused last night in a broadcast by the German First channel ARD television, dealing with Kosovo 1999 war, of having deliberately twisted the facts and crude data falsification concerning the situation in Kosovo, before and during the NATO intervention.

     The authors of the broadcast "Story: In the beginning there was a lie", based their position on statements gathered from witnesses, ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo, and German representatives in the OSCE Mission in Kosovo. ARD claims that Scharping spoke of a massacre committed by the Serb forces "in an horrible manner" in Rugovo village, at the press conference in April 1999. On that occasion, photographs of some two dozen male corpses on the ground of a village yard were presented. One of the German police officers who was, as a member of the OEBS Mission in Kosovo in January 1999 present in Rugovo, at the time that the crimes presented in the photographs supposedly happened, contacted the Minister as soon as the photos were presented, and told him that they were forged. He stated that, as a witness to the mentioned event, knew that those were the victims of fights between the members of the Serb and Kosovo Liberation Army forces, and not victims of any massacre.

     The authors of the ARD broadcast also reminded the auditory of Scharping's last year's statement that Pristina stadium was the location where the Serb forces interned ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. One of the ethnic Albanians living next to the stadium stated that there was no prisoners at that location, even though the stadium was used for helicopter landing.

     German Minister of Defense has already been accused, on number of occasions during the past two years, of having manipulated information during the NATO intervention.