Informazione
TUTTA LA SVENDITA DELLA SERBIA IN UN CD-ROM
L'intero database delle imprese finora privatizzate in Serbia dal
governo fantoccio-coloniale di Djindjic - circa 800 - e' contenuto in un
CD edito dalla Euro-Balkan Enterprise in collaborazione con la
multinazionale Price Waterhouse Coopers, specializzata in investimenti
all'estero. Il CD, che e' stato presentato in una conferenza stampa a
Belgrado il 27 febbraio, costa la modica cifra di 950 euro.
DATABASE ON SERBIA'S PRIVATIZED ENTERPRISES PUBLISHED ON ONE CD
BELGRADE, Feb 27 (Tanjug) - Data on nearly 800 privatized enterprises in
Serbia have been collected on a single CD, issued by the Euro-Balkan
Enterprise and presented at a news conference in Belgrade on Wednesday.
The CD, to be used by foreign bankers and investors who wish to invest
in the Serbian economy, contains details on the privatized enterprises
in Serbian and English.
The CD will be available for purchase on Monday at the price of 950
euros.
The Euro-Balkan Enterprise compiled the CD in cooperation with the
international investment company Price Waterhouse Coopers, which has its
office in Belgrade.
L'intero database delle imprese finora privatizzate in Serbia dal
governo fantoccio-coloniale di Djindjic - circa 800 - e' contenuto in un
CD edito dalla Euro-Balkan Enterprise in collaborazione con la
multinazionale Price Waterhouse Coopers, specializzata in investimenti
all'estero. Il CD, che e' stato presentato in una conferenza stampa a
Belgrado il 27 febbraio, costa la modica cifra di 950 euro.
DATABASE ON SERBIA'S PRIVATIZED ENTERPRISES PUBLISHED ON ONE CD
BELGRADE, Feb 27 (Tanjug) - Data on nearly 800 privatized enterprises in
Serbia have been collected on a single CD, issued by the Euro-Balkan
Enterprise and presented at a news conference in Belgrade on Wednesday.
The CD, to be used by foreign bankers and investors who wish to invest
in the Serbian economy, contains details on the privatized enterprises
in Serbian and English.
The CD will be available for purchase on Monday at the price of 950
euros.
The Euro-Balkan Enterprise compiled the CD in cooperation with the
international investment company Price Waterhouse Coopers, which has its
office in Belgrade.
"Il Manifesto", 24 Febbraio 2002
Nuove idee a Belgrado
Il premier serbo Zoran Djindjic, il massimo artefice a Belgrado
dell'arresto e della consegna di Slobodan Milosevic al Tribunale
dell'Aja, sotto pressioni euro-americane, si è pentito. Ieri in
una intervista a der Spiegel ha dichiarato di essere allarmato
per la quantità di soldi che il tribunale ha speso e sta spendendo
per "raccogliere testimoni inefficaci e prove debolissime",
lasciando in compenso a Milosevic "una tribuna straordinaria per
la sua demagogia". Djindjic ha detto di essere preoccupato perché
sa che un gran numero di cittadini jugoslavi "sta guardando
affascinato le esibizioni" dell'ex presidente. Non basta: per
il premier serbo, la cattura dell'ex capo militare dei serbo-
bosniaci, generale Ratko Mladic, insistentemente chiesta dal
procuratore del Tribunale dell'Aja Carla Del Ponte, è fuori
discussione. "Devo rischiare la vita dei miei poliziotti per
prendere Mladic e i 100 uomini della sua scorta e servirli su
un piatto all'Aja, quando per anni gli americani e la Nato non
sono riusciti a prenderli? Da noi ci sono 200mila rifugiati
bosniaci, molti dei quali armati: devo rischiare una guerra
civile? Il prezzo è troppo alto". Un'ultima stoccata di Djindjic
è per l'Unione europea: "Un altro scandalo. I due terzi dei fondi
che ci sono stati promessi sono stati poi trattenuti per ripagare
i debiti del tempo di Milosevic... Questi sono trucchi volgari".
===*===
LA POLIZIA NON ARRESTERA' I GENERALI DELLA RS,
HA DETTO DJINDJIC ALLO "SPIEGEL"
Amburgo (Beta, AFP) - Il primo ministro serbo Z. Djindjic:
"Il Tpi permette a Milosevic di far ricorso alla propria
demagogia e di condurre lui stesso il processo. Resto senza
parole davanti ai dati sulle somme spese dal TPI in cinque
anni per procurarsi questi testimoni senza valore. Tutto
questo circo per me e per il mio governo rappresenta un
grave problema."
"In Serbia tanta gente è convinta che Milosevic abbia
dimostrato la originaria colpevolezza della Nato. Dunque,
quali argomenti potrei io ora trovare per decidere
l'estradizione delle altre persone e la collaborazione
con il TPI?"
Secondo Djindjic, la polizia serba non puo' arrestare il
generale serbo Mladic nella Republika Srpska e consegnarlo
ai procuratori del TPI. E se il suo arresto provocasse la
guerra civile? Noi in Serbia abbiamo 200 mila rifugiati
bosniaci, dei quali moltissimi armati. Il prezzo della
cattura è troppo alto, ha dichiarato Djindjic.
Policija neæe da hapsi generala VRS, rekao Ðinðiæ za "Spigl"
Hapsenje Mladiæa izazvalo bi rat!
HAMBURG (Beta-AFP) - Srpski premijer Zoran Ðinðiæ ocenio je
suðenje bivsem predsedniku SRJ pred Haskim tribunalom kao
skupi "cirkus".
- Tribunal dozvoljava Miloseviæu da koristi svoju demagogiju
i vodi suðenje. Zanemim kada vidim koliko je novca baèeno,
da bi Tribunalu bilo omoguæeno da tokom pet godina tra?i
tako beznaèajne svedoke. Mene i moju vladu taj cirkus
stavlja pred tesku dilemu - izjavio je Ðinðiæ u intervjuu
nemaèkom nedeljniku "Spigl" koji izlazi u ponedeljak.
- Mnogi ljudi (u Srbiji) su ubeðeni da je (Miloseviæ)
uspeo da predstavi NATO kao glavnog krivca. S kakvim
argumentima ja sada mogu da odluèim o ekstradiciji nekih
drugih ljudi i da tra?im jaèu saradnju s Tribunalom -
upitao je Ðinðiæ.
Ðinðiæ je odbacio moguænost da srpska policija uhapsi
bivseg srpskog generala u Republici Srpskoj Ratka Mladiæa
i da ga izruèi istra?iteljima Haskog tribunala.
- Sta bi se desilo da njegovo hapsenje izazove graðanski
rat? Mi imamo u Srbiji vise od 200.000 izbeglica iz Bosne
od kojih su mnogi naoru?ani. Cena (hapsenja) bila bi suvise
velika - rekao je Ðinðiæ.
(IZ: GLAS JAVNOSTI, Nedelja, 24. februar 2002.)
===*===
DJINDJIC SURPRISED BY START OF MILOSEVIC'S TRIAL
BELGRADE, Feb. 24 (Beta) - Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic said on Feb.
24, following cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), that "10 million people in Serbia should
not be the hostages of five or six individuals. We believe that they
should prove their innocence in a legal process before the eyes of the
entire world public," the Serbian premier said, adding that it will
"become clear during the trial "whether the indictees are not guilty and
whether there is no evidence of their guilt."
He also said that he was "slightly surprised" by the beginning of
Milosevic's trial.
"We expect a legal process in which evidence for individual
responsibility is presented and not a historic-political seminar on how
the autonomy of Kosovo was changed, when it was introduced, who played
what role in the central committee (of the Alliance of Communists),"
Djindjic said.
"I think that it is a bit unusual and we see it as a small political
difficulty to explain to our people that we should cooperate with the
ICTY, if the trials resemble Milosevic's," Djindjic concluded.
DJINDJIC UNWILLING TO ARREST MLADIC
BERLIN, Feb. 24 (B92) An attempt to arrest former Bosnian Serb military
commander Ratko Mladic could result in civil war, Serbia's prime
minister said today.
Zoran Djindjic, noting that 50,000 NATO troops in Bosnia had failed to
capture Mladic, said he was unwilling to risk the lives of Serb police
in order to serve Mladic up at the table in The Hague.
"We have more than 200,000 Bosnian refugees, many of them armed. The
price is too high," Djindjic told German weekly Der Spiegel.
COUNCIL OF EUROPE PROTESTS OVER DJINDJIC STATEMENT ON THE HAGUE
TRIBUNAL
STRASBOURG, Feb 25 (Tanjug) - The President of the Council of Europe
Parliamentary Assembly, Peter Schieder, on Monday protested over the
recent statements by Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic regarding the trial
before the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, saying that, regardless of
what the Serbian premier or anyone else thinks, it is Yugoslavia's
obligation to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal and a
condition for its Council of Europe membership.
"I object to the recent statements by the Serbian Premier with regard to
the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The
Hague," Schieder said in a statement sent to Tanjug from Strasbourg.
The statement said that "it is Yugoslavia's obligation to cooperate with
the Tribunal which, first foremost, includes the handing over of any
indicted persons who are currently in its territory, and does not depend
on what the Premier or anybody else thinks about the way the trial has
been proceeding so far."
In an interview to German weekly Der Spiegel, parts of which were
published on Saturday, Djindjic described the start of the trial of
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague as an
expensive circus and that the testimonies of insignificant
witnesses place him and his government in a serious dilemma about the
continuation of cooperation with the Tribunal and the extradition of the
remaining indictees.
Schieder said that Yugoslavia's obligation to "fully and unequivocally"
cooperate with the Tribunal is based on its membership in the United
Nations and the honoring of this obligation, "up to now and in the
future, will be closely scrutinized by the reporters examining
Yugoslavia's request for Council of Europe membership."
Schieder believes that "full cooperation with The Hague Tribunal is in
the interest of the Yugoslav people, because it rejects the notion of
collective responsibility for the crimes that have been committed."
He concluded that "those indicted will receive a fair trial" and "if the
case against them is proved according to the required standard of
evidence, they will be found guilty, if not, they will be acquitted."
PRIME MINISTER BACKS DOWN ON HAGUE CRITICISM
BELGRADE, Feb. 25 (B92) Serbia's prime minister has today defended the
transparency of the Hague Tribunal, little more than hours after
condemning the international court as an expensive circus.
Zoran Djindjic told media in the central Serbian city of Uzice that,
although he had a number of objections to the conduct of the trial, it
was certain that the Hague proceedings were not staged.
"If they are, then the entire world is staged," he said.
The prime minister added that although there were many criticisms to be
made of the prosecution in the Milosevic trial, it was not within the
jurisdiction of Serbia to assess whether the Hague Tribunal was good or
not.
Djindjic, whose government defied Yugoslavia's federal authorities to
extradite the former Yugoslav president to The Hague last year, told
German weekly Der Spiegel yesterday that the court was allowing full
rein to Milosevic's demagoguery and allowing him to control the trial.
"I am speechless when I see how much money has gone up in smoke to allow
the court to take five years to unearth such insignificant witnesses,"
he said, adding that the trial made it difficult to justify further
extradition.
This circus has left both myself and my government facing an awkward
dilemma," said Djindjic, claiming that he had been left without any
arguments to convince others in Belgrade that greater cooperation with
the court was needed.He took advantage of this morning's press
conference in Uzice to call on indicted suspects in Serbia to surrender
to the Tribunal.
"I think these individuals face far less risk than that faced by the
nation if they stay in the country and we risk the future of ten million
people by protecting and defending them," said Djindjic.
SERBIAN PREMIER SAYS EU DECISION TO REDUCE AID TO YUGOSLAVIA UNJUSTIFIED
BELGRADE, Feb 25 (Tanjug) - Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic described
Tuesday as unjustified the idea of the European Commission to reduce
financial aid to Yugoslavia by 15 million euros a year in the coming
three years, since the situation in this country is no longer as
critical as before and reforms are underway.
This is unjustified, Djindjic told the press, underlining his conviction
that a country which is successfully implementing reforms should be
rewarded, not be told it now needs less as it is managing to resolve its
budget problems.
This is not a good approach, Djindjic said, adding he intends to appeal
to the public opinion in Europe and the world to urge their politicians
to look into the work of the EC.
===*===
Subject: Djindjic Blasts Hague - For Putting Him In Hot Seat
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 15:06:05 -0800 (PST)
From: Rick Rozoff
[Hereafter the name Djindjic will supplant the
derogatory epithet quisling; as in "Vidkun Quisling,
the Norwegian djindjic, was executed in 1945."
This bought-and-paid-for US/NATO traitor, as a careful
reading of the BBC report reveals, is only concerned
about one thing: Preserving his own precious hide at
the expense of his country, his people and their
well-being.
May he have more and more reason to worry.]
BBC News
February 23, 2002
Serb PM attacks Milosevic trial
The Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, has
condemned the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic as an expensive "circus".
Mr Djindjic's government decided last June to hand Mr
Milosevic over to the international tribunal in The
Hague. His trial began on 12 February.
Speaking in an interview with the Germany weekly Der
Spiegel, Mr Djindjic also ruled out any Serbian police
operation to capture Ratko Mladic, a top Bosnian Serb
war crimes suspect.
Mr Djindjic said the court in The Hague was "allowing
Milosevic to behave like a demagogue and to control
the trial".
'Insignificant witnesses'
"I am speechless when I see how much money has gone up
in smoke to allow the court to take five years to
unearth such insignificant witnesses.
"This circus has left both myself and my government
facing an awkward dilemma," he said, arguing that the
trial made it hard to justify further extraditions.
Many Serbs believe that in court Mr Milosevic has
exposed Nato as the guilty party in the 1999 Kosovo
conflict, Mr Djindjic said.
"What arguments can I now use to convince other people
to push for greater co-operation with the court?" he
said.
Mr Milosevic is accused of crimes against humanity,
war crimes and genocide in connection with atrocities
committed by Serb forces in Kosovo in 1999, Croatia
between 1991 and 1992 and Bosnia-Hercegovina between
1992 and 1995.
No hunt for Mladic
Mr Djindjic said the price of trying to arrest the
Bosnian Serb wartime military commander, Ratko Mladic,
would be "too high".
"What would happen if his arrest unleashed a civil
war? We have 200,000 Bosnian refugees in Serbia, many
of whom possess weapons," he said.
The chief prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal,
Carla del Ponte, says Mr Mladic is living in
Yugoslavia protected by the Yugoslav army - a charge
denied by the military.
The Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, has also
criticised the Milosevic trial and has accused the
tribunal of an anti-Serb bias.
===*===
DJINDJIC ED I SERVIZI SEGRETI FILO-NATO ISOLANO
I COLLABORATORI DI MILOSEVIC
SLOBO DEFENDERS UNDER ATTACK
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 22:05:20 -0000
Source Beta
Beograd - Vladimir Krsljanin (SPS) reports that the
authorities have cut the phone
lines of all Milosevic associates in order to make his
defence at the Hague
more difficult.
TAGLIATE LE COMUNICAZIONI TELEFONICHE AI PROFESSORI
Belgrado, 27 febbraio 2002 - Il servizio segreto jugoslavo
ha tagliato le linee telefoniche a cinque professori della
Facolta' di Legge di Belgrado. Questa informazione e' stata
confermata anche dal Professor Branko Rakic. Al gruppo di
professori, che procuravano informazioni a Milosevic aiutandolo
a difendersi all'Aia, il servizio di sicurezza jugoslavo ha
interrotto le comunicazioni per impedire i contatti con
Milosevic.
Si tratta tra l'altro dei professori Kosta Cavoski, Branko
Rakic, e Stefanovski.
Paradossalmente, i tre professori suddetti erano grandi
oppositori di Milosevic. Essi si sono decisi ad aiutarlo
in quanto intendono l'accusa contro Milosevic come una
accusa contro tutta la Serbia, mirata a gravare ulteriormente
su tutto il paese.
In una intervista recentemente rilasciata allo "Spiegel"
dal premier serbo Zoran Djindjic, costui ha affermato:
"Non mi piace vedere come Milosevic abbia trasformato il
processo contro di lui in un processo contro la NATO!"
+++ Professoren werden die Telefonleitungen gekappt +++
BELGRAD, 27. Februar 2002. Der jugoslawische Geheimdienst
hat fünf Professoren der Rechtsuniversität in Belgrad die
Telefonleitungen gekappt. Diese Information bestätigte
auch Professor Branko Rakic. Der Gruppe von Professoren
die Slobodan Milosevic Informationen zukommen ließen, wie
er sich in Den Haag verteidigen soll, hat der jugoslawische
Sicherheitsdienst die Leitungen unterbrochen um den
Professoren es unmöglich zu machen mit Slobodan Milosevic
in Kontakt zu bleiben. Hierbei handelt es sich um die
Professoren, Kosta Cavoski, Branko Rakic und Prof. Stefanovski.
Um die Ironie an der ganzen Sache zu verdeutlichen, die
drei oben genannten Professoren, waren große Gegner
von Milosevic. Sie haben sich entschieden Slobodan
Milosevic zu helfen, weil sie mit der Anklage gegen ihn,
eine Anklage gegen ganz Serbien sehen, die das Land noch mehr
belastet.
In einem vor kurzem, dem Spiegel, gegebenen Interview vom
MinisterPräsidenten von Serbien, Zoran Djindic, sagte der
"Mir gefällt es nicht, das Milosevic einen Prozess gegen
ihn, in einen Prozess gegen die NATO gedreht hat!"
STIMME KOSOVOS / AMSELFELD.COM
ATTI MIRATI A RENDERE IMPOSSIBILE LA AUTODIFESA DI MILOSEVIC
Belgrado, 27 febbraio 2002. Vladimir Krsljanin, esponente dell'SPS, ha
comunicato che il governo serbo ha ordinato la interruzione di tutte le
linee telefoniche dei collaboratori di Milosevic, impegnati ad aiutarlo
nella difesa. Questo mira a rendergli sensibilmente piu' difficile la
difesa stessa.
+++ Um Milosevic Verteidigung unmöglich zu machen +++
BELGRAD, 27. Februar 2002. Vladimir Krsljanin, ein Mitglied der SPS,
berichtete das die Regierung Serbiens angeordnet hat, alle
Telefonleitungen zu Milosevics Verbündeten zu unterbrechen, die ihm bei
seiner Verteidigung helfen. Das erschwert ihm seine Verteidigung
bedeutend.
BETA / AMSELFELD.COM
Nuove idee a Belgrado
Il premier serbo Zoran Djindjic, il massimo artefice a Belgrado
dell'arresto e della consegna di Slobodan Milosevic al Tribunale
dell'Aja, sotto pressioni euro-americane, si è pentito. Ieri in
una intervista a der Spiegel ha dichiarato di essere allarmato
per la quantità di soldi che il tribunale ha speso e sta spendendo
per "raccogliere testimoni inefficaci e prove debolissime",
lasciando in compenso a Milosevic "una tribuna straordinaria per
la sua demagogia". Djindjic ha detto di essere preoccupato perché
sa che un gran numero di cittadini jugoslavi "sta guardando
affascinato le esibizioni" dell'ex presidente. Non basta: per
il premier serbo, la cattura dell'ex capo militare dei serbo-
bosniaci, generale Ratko Mladic, insistentemente chiesta dal
procuratore del Tribunale dell'Aja Carla Del Ponte, è fuori
discussione. "Devo rischiare la vita dei miei poliziotti per
prendere Mladic e i 100 uomini della sua scorta e servirli su
un piatto all'Aja, quando per anni gli americani e la Nato non
sono riusciti a prenderli? Da noi ci sono 200mila rifugiati
bosniaci, molti dei quali armati: devo rischiare una guerra
civile? Il prezzo è troppo alto". Un'ultima stoccata di Djindjic
è per l'Unione europea: "Un altro scandalo. I due terzi dei fondi
che ci sono stati promessi sono stati poi trattenuti per ripagare
i debiti del tempo di Milosevic... Questi sono trucchi volgari".
===*===
LA POLIZIA NON ARRESTERA' I GENERALI DELLA RS,
HA DETTO DJINDJIC ALLO "SPIEGEL"
Amburgo (Beta, AFP) - Il primo ministro serbo Z. Djindjic:
"Il Tpi permette a Milosevic di far ricorso alla propria
demagogia e di condurre lui stesso il processo. Resto senza
parole davanti ai dati sulle somme spese dal TPI in cinque
anni per procurarsi questi testimoni senza valore. Tutto
questo circo per me e per il mio governo rappresenta un
grave problema."
"In Serbia tanta gente è convinta che Milosevic abbia
dimostrato la originaria colpevolezza della Nato. Dunque,
quali argomenti potrei io ora trovare per decidere
l'estradizione delle altre persone e la collaborazione
con il TPI?"
Secondo Djindjic, la polizia serba non puo' arrestare il
generale serbo Mladic nella Republika Srpska e consegnarlo
ai procuratori del TPI. E se il suo arresto provocasse la
guerra civile? Noi in Serbia abbiamo 200 mila rifugiati
bosniaci, dei quali moltissimi armati. Il prezzo della
cattura è troppo alto, ha dichiarato Djindjic.
Policija neæe da hapsi generala VRS, rekao Ðinðiæ za "Spigl"
Hapsenje Mladiæa izazvalo bi rat!
HAMBURG (Beta-AFP) - Srpski premijer Zoran Ðinðiæ ocenio je
suðenje bivsem predsedniku SRJ pred Haskim tribunalom kao
skupi "cirkus".
- Tribunal dozvoljava Miloseviæu da koristi svoju demagogiju
i vodi suðenje. Zanemim kada vidim koliko je novca baèeno,
da bi Tribunalu bilo omoguæeno da tokom pet godina tra?i
tako beznaèajne svedoke. Mene i moju vladu taj cirkus
stavlja pred tesku dilemu - izjavio je Ðinðiæ u intervjuu
nemaèkom nedeljniku "Spigl" koji izlazi u ponedeljak.
- Mnogi ljudi (u Srbiji) su ubeðeni da je (Miloseviæ)
uspeo da predstavi NATO kao glavnog krivca. S kakvim
argumentima ja sada mogu da odluèim o ekstradiciji nekih
drugih ljudi i da tra?im jaèu saradnju s Tribunalom -
upitao je Ðinðiæ.
Ðinðiæ je odbacio moguænost da srpska policija uhapsi
bivseg srpskog generala u Republici Srpskoj Ratka Mladiæa
i da ga izruèi istra?iteljima Haskog tribunala.
- Sta bi se desilo da njegovo hapsenje izazove graðanski
rat? Mi imamo u Srbiji vise od 200.000 izbeglica iz Bosne
od kojih su mnogi naoru?ani. Cena (hapsenja) bila bi suvise
velika - rekao je Ðinðiæ.
(IZ: GLAS JAVNOSTI, Nedelja, 24. februar 2002.)
===*===
DJINDJIC SURPRISED BY START OF MILOSEVIC'S TRIAL
BELGRADE, Feb. 24 (Beta) - Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic said on Feb.
24, following cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), that "10 million people in Serbia should
not be the hostages of five or six individuals. We believe that they
should prove their innocence in a legal process before the eyes of the
entire world public," the Serbian premier said, adding that it will
"become clear during the trial "whether the indictees are not guilty and
whether there is no evidence of their guilt."
He also said that he was "slightly surprised" by the beginning of
Milosevic's trial.
"We expect a legal process in which evidence for individual
responsibility is presented and not a historic-political seminar on how
the autonomy of Kosovo was changed, when it was introduced, who played
what role in the central committee (of the Alliance of Communists),"
Djindjic said.
"I think that it is a bit unusual and we see it as a small political
difficulty to explain to our people that we should cooperate with the
ICTY, if the trials resemble Milosevic's," Djindjic concluded.
DJINDJIC UNWILLING TO ARREST MLADIC
BERLIN, Feb. 24 (B92) An attempt to arrest former Bosnian Serb military
commander Ratko Mladic could result in civil war, Serbia's prime
minister said today.
Zoran Djindjic, noting that 50,000 NATO troops in Bosnia had failed to
capture Mladic, said he was unwilling to risk the lives of Serb police
in order to serve Mladic up at the table in The Hague.
"We have more than 200,000 Bosnian refugees, many of them armed. The
price is too high," Djindjic told German weekly Der Spiegel.
COUNCIL OF EUROPE PROTESTS OVER DJINDJIC STATEMENT ON THE HAGUE
TRIBUNAL
STRASBOURG, Feb 25 (Tanjug) - The President of the Council of Europe
Parliamentary Assembly, Peter Schieder, on Monday protested over the
recent statements by Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic regarding the trial
before the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, saying that, regardless of
what the Serbian premier or anyone else thinks, it is Yugoslavia's
obligation to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal and a
condition for its Council of Europe membership.
"I object to the recent statements by the Serbian Premier with regard to
the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The
Hague," Schieder said in a statement sent to Tanjug from Strasbourg.
The statement said that "it is Yugoslavia's obligation to cooperate with
the Tribunal which, first foremost, includes the handing over of any
indicted persons who are currently in its territory, and does not depend
on what the Premier or anybody else thinks about the way the trial has
been proceeding so far."
In an interview to German weekly Der Spiegel, parts of which were
published on Saturday, Djindjic described the start of the trial of
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague as an
expensive circus and that the testimonies of insignificant
witnesses place him and his government in a serious dilemma about the
continuation of cooperation with the Tribunal and the extradition of the
remaining indictees.
Schieder said that Yugoslavia's obligation to "fully and unequivocally"
cooperate with the Tribunal is based on its membership in the United
Nations and the honoring of this obligation, "up to now and in the
future, will be closely scrutinized by the reporters examining
Yugoslavia's request for Council of Europe membership."
Schieder believes that "full cooperation with The Hague Tribunal is in
the interest of the Yugoslav people, because it rejects the notion of
collective responsibility for the crimes that have been committed."
He concluded that "those indicted will receive a fair trial" and "if the
case against them is proved according to the required standard of
evidence, they will be found guilty, if not, they will be acquitted."
PRIME MINISTER BACKS DOWN ON HAGUE CRITICISM
BELGRADE, Feb. 25 (B92) Serbia's prime minister has today defended the
transparency of the Hague Tribunal, little more than hours after
condemning the international court as an expensive circus.
Zoran Djindjic told media in the central Serbian city of Uzice that,
although he had a number of objections to the conduct of the trial, it
was certain that the Hague proceedings were not staged.
"If they are, then the entire world is staged," he said.
The prime minister added that although there were many criticisms to be
made of the prosecution in the Milosevic trial, it was not within the
jurisdiction of Serbia to assess whether the Hague Tribunal was good or
not.
Djindjic, whose government defied Yugoslavia's federal authorities to
extradite the former Yugoslav president to The Hague last year, told
German weekly Der Spiegel yesterday that the court was allowing full
rein to Milosevic's demagoguery and allowing him to control the trial.
"I am speechless when I see how much money has gone up in smoke to allow
the court to take five years to unearth such insignificant witnesses,"
he said, adding that the trial made it difficult to justify further
extradition.
This circus has left both myself and my government facing an awkward
dilemma," said Djindjic, claiming that he had been left without any
arguments to convince others in Belgrade that greater cooperation with
the court was needed.He took advantage of this morning's press
conference in Uzice to call on indicted suspects in Serbia to surrender
to the Tribunal.
"I think these individuals face far less risk than that faced by the
nation if they stay in the country and we risk the future of ten million
people by protecting and defending them," said Djindjic.
SERBIAN PREMIER SAYS EU DECISION TO REDUCE AID TO YUGOSLAVIA UNJUSTIFIED
BELGRADE, Feb 25 (Tanjug) - Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic described
Tuesday as unjustified the idea of the European Commission to reduce
financial aid to Yugoslavia by 15 million euros a year in the coming
three years, since the situation in this country is no longer as
critical as before and reforms are underway.
This is unjustified, Djindjic told the press, underlining his conviction
that a country which is successfully implementing reforms should be
rewarded, not be told it now needs less as it is managing to resolve its
budget problems.
This is not a good approach, Djindjic said, adding he intends to appeal
to the public opinion in Europe and the world to urge their politicians
to look into the work of the EC.
===*===
Subject: Djindjic Blasts Hague - For Putting Him In Hot Seat
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 15:06:05 -0800 (PST)
From: Rick Rozoff
[Hereafter the name Djindjic will supplant the
derogatory epithet quisling; as in "Vidkun Quisling,
the Norwegian djindjic, was executed in 1945."
This bought-and-paid-for US/NATO traitor, as a careful
reading of the BBC report reveals, is only concerned
about one thing: Preserving his own precious hide at
the expense of his country, his people and their
well-being.
May he have more and more reason to worry.]
BBC News
February 23, 2002
Serb PM attacks Milosevic trial
The Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, has
condemned the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic as an expensive "circus".
Mr Djindjic's government decided last June to hand Mr
Milosevic over to the international tribunal in The
Hague. His trial began on 12 February.
Speaking in an interview with the Germany weekly Der
Spiegel, Mr Djindjic also ruled out any Serbian police
operation to capture Ratko Mladic, a top Bosnian Serb
war crimes suspect.
Mr Djindjic said the court in The Hague was "allowing
Milosevic to behave like a demagogue and to control
the trial".
'Insignificant witnesses'
"I am speechless when I see how much money has gone up
in smoke to allow the court to take five years to
unearth such insignificant witnesses.
"This circus has left both myself and my government
facing an awkward dilemma," he said, arguing that the
trial made it hard to justify further extraditions.
Many Serbs believe that in court Mr Milosevic has
exposed Nato as the guilty party in the 1999 Kosovo
conflict, Mr Djindjic said.
"What arguments can I now use to convince other people
to push for greater co-operation with the court?" he
said.
Mr Milosevic is accused of crimes against humanity,
war crimes and genocide in connection with atrocities
committed by Serb forces in Kosovo in 1999, Croatia
between 1991 and 1992 and Bosnia-Hercegovina between
1992 and 1995.
No hunt for Mladic
Mr Djindjic said the price of trying to arrest the
Bosnian Serb wartime military commander, Ratko Mladic,
would be "too high".
"What would happen if his arrest unleashed a civil
war? We have 200,000 Bosnian refugees in Serbia, many
of whom possess weapons," he said.
The chief prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal,
Carla del Ponte, says Mr Mladic is living in
Yugoslavia protected by the Yugoslav army - a charge
denied by the military.
The Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, has also
criticised the Milosevic trial and has accused the
tribunal of an anti-Serb bias.
===*===
DJINDJIC ED I SERVIZI SEGRETI FILO-NATO ISOLANO
I COLLABORATORI DI MILOSEVIC
SLOBO DEFENDERS UNDER ATTACK
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 22:05:20 -0000
Source Beta
Beograd - Vladimir Krsljanin (SPS) reports that the
authorities have cut the phone
lines of all Milosevic associates in order to make his
defence at the Hague
more difficult.
TAGLIATE LE COMUNICAZIONI TELEFONICHE AI PROFESSORI
Belgrado, 27 febbraio 2002 - Il servizio segreto jugoslavo
ha tagliato le linee telefoniche a cinque professori della
Facolta' di Legge di Belgrado. Questa informazione e' stata
confermata anche dal Professor Branko Rakic. Al gruppo di
professori, che procuravano informazioni a Milosevic aiutandolo
a difendersi all'Aia, il servizio di sicurezza jugoslavo ha
interrotto le comunicazioni per impedire i contatti con
Milosevic.
Si tratta tra l'altro dei professori Kosta Cavoski, Branko
Rakic, e Stefanovski.
Paradossalmente, i tre professori suddetti erano grandi
oppositori di Milosevic. Essi si sono decisi ad aiutarlo
in quanto intendono l'accusa contro Milosevic come una
accusa contro tutta la Serbia, mirata a gravare ulteriormente
su tutto il paese.
In una intervista recentemente rilasciata allo "Spiegel"
dal premier serbo Zoran Djindjic, costui ha affermato:
"Non mi piace vedere come Milosevic abbia trasformato il
processo contro di lui in un processo contro la NATO!"
+++ Professoren werden die Telefonleitungen gekappt +++
BELGRAD, 27. Februar 2002. Der jugoslawische Geheimdienst
hat fünf Professoren der Rechtsuniversität in Belgrad die
Telefonleitungen gekappt. Diese Information bestätigte
auch Professor Branko Rakic. Der Gruppe von Professoren
die Slobodan Milosevic Informationen zukommen ließen, wie
er sich in Den Haag verteidigen soll, hat der jugoslawische
Sicherheitsdienst die Leitungen unterbrochen um den
Professoren es unmöglich zu machen mit Slobodan Milosevic
in Kontakt zu bleiben. Hierbei handelt es sich um die
Professoren, Kosta Cavoski, Branko Rakic und Prof. Stefanovski.
Um die Ironie an der ganzen Sache zu verdeutlichen, die
drei oben genannten Professoren, waren große Gegner
von Milosevic. Sie haben sich entschieden Slobodan
Milosevic zu helfen, weil sie mit der Anklage gegen ihn,
eine Anklage gegen ganz Serbien sehen, die das Land noch mehr
belastet.
In einem vor kurzem, dem Spiegel, gegebenen Interview vom
MinisterPräsidenten von Serbien, Zoran Djindic, sagte der
"Mir gefällt es nicht, das Milosevic einen Prozess gegen
ihn, in einen Prozess gegen die NATO gedreht hat!"
STIMME KOSOVOS / AMSELFELD.COM
ATTI MIRATI A RENDERE IMPOSSIBILE LA AUTODIFESA DI MILOSEVIC
Belgrado, 27 febbraio 2002. Vladimir Krsljanin, esponente dell'SPS, ha
comunicato che il governo serbo ha ordinato la interruzione di tutte le
linee telefoniche dei collaboratori di Milosevic, impegnati ad aiutarlo
nella difesa. Questo mira a rendergli sensibilmente piu' difficile la
difesa stessa.
+++ Um Milosevic Verteidigung unmöglich zu machen +++
BELGRAD, 27. Februar 2002. Vladimir Krsljanin, ein Mitglied der SPS,
berichtete das die Regierung Serbiens angeordnet hat, alle
Telefonleitungen zu Milosevics Verbündeten zu unterbrechen, die ihm bei
seiner Verteidigung helfen. Das erschwert ihm seine Verteidigung
bedeutend.
BETA / AMSELFELD.COM
BERLINO 2 MARZO 2002
Rathaus Schöneberg, stanza 195, ore 10-17
"IL CASO MILOSEVIC"
Discussione pubblica
su iniziativa di:
Partito del Socialismo Democratico (PDS) e
Comitato Internazionale per la Difesa di Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM)
con l'appoggio del
Forum Europeo per la Pace
Comitato Internazionale per la Difesa di Slobodan Milosevic -
Sezione tedesca: http://www.free-slobo.de
---
L'iniziativa ha scatenato polemiche prevedibili, anche all'interno
della PDS, e sono state persino annunciate contromanifestazioni da
parte dei Verdi e settori affini.
Riportiamo in fondo una intervista in proposito a Ruediger Goebel
(in tedesco)
===*===
ANNOUNCEMENT :
THE "MILOSEVIC CASE" - INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL
JURISDICTION AND THE NEW WARS OF THE GREAT POWERS
A public colloquium on the "Milosevic Case" and its
meaning for current trends in international criminal
jurisdiction will be held in Berlin (Rathaus
Schöneberg, Room 195) on Saturday, March 2nd, 2002,
from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The colloquium, including
lectures und discussions, is organized on the
invitation of the Berlin-Schöneberg/Tempelhof Branch
of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) by the
German Section of the International Committee to
Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM).
The key note speech will be given by Norman Paech, a
professor of international public law at the
University of Hamburg, who will address the issue of
international criminal jurisdiction in the context of
international law, defining legal criteria for its
proper use as well as exposing current abuses.
The improper use of international criminal
jurisdiction under the auspices of "humanitarian"
military action and the "war against terrorism" will
be the subject of a contribution by Peter Koch, a
lawyer from Heidelberg.
Another lawyer, Eberhard Schultz (Bremen/Berlin), will
cover the main features of Milosevic's struggle
against the Hague "Tribunal"
Excerpts from his latest book on "The Milosevic Case"
will be read by Ralph Hartmann (Berlin), a former
GDR-Ambassador to Yugoslavia and the author of two
previous books on the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Rolf Becker (Hamburg), a well known actor, who is also
a trade union activist having organized several
solidarity missions to Yugoslavia, will speak about
"Yugoslavia after Milosevic".
The meeting will be co-chaired by Gert Julius,
spokesman of the Berlin-Schöneberg/Tempelhof Branch of
the Party of Democratic Socialism and by Klaus
Hartmann, vice-chairman of the International Committee
to Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM) and spokesman of
its German Section.
With the partcipation of Luc MICHEL, chairman of the
Frenchspeaking Section (Belgium, France, Switzerland,
Quebec) of ICDSM.
The colloquium is supported by the European Peace
Forum
ANNONCE :
LE "CAS MILOSEVIC" - LA JURIDICTION PÉNALE
INTERNATIONALE ET LES NOUVELLES GUERRES DES GRANDES
PUISSANCES
Un colloque public sur le "Cas Milosevic" et son
influence sur les tendances actuelles dans le domaine
de la juridiction pénale internationale sera organisé
à Berlin (Rathaus Schöneberg, Salle 195) le samedi 2
mars 2002, de 10 à 17 heures. Le colloque qui
comprendra des conférences et des discussions
publiques sera organisé à l'invitation de la Branche
Berlin-Schöneberg/Tempelhof du «Parti du Socialisme
Démocratique» (PDS) par la Section allemande du
«Comité International pour la Défense de Slobodan
Milosevic» (ICDSM).
La conférence principale sera donnée par Norman Paech,
professeur de Droit international public à
l'université de Hambourg, qui parlera de la
juridiction pénale internationale dans le contexte du
Droit international, en définissant les critères
juridiques de son application normale et en exposant
les abus courants.
L'application abusive de la juridiction pénale
internationale sous les auspices d'actions militaires
soi-disant "humanitaires" et de "la guerre contre le
terrorisme" sera le sujet de l'intervention de Me.
Peter Koch, avocat à Heidelberg.
Un autre avocat, Me. Eberhard Schultz (Bremen/Berlin),
présentera les charactéristiques principales de la
lutte du président Milosevic contre le "Tribunal" de
La Haye
Une lecture d'extraits de son dernier livre "Le Cas
Milosevic" sera donnée par Ralph Hartmann (Berlin),
ancien ambassadeur de la RDA en Yougoslavie, et auteur
de deux autres livres sur la destruction de la
Yougoslavie.
Rolf Becker (Hamburg), un acteur très connu, et qui
s'est manifesté comme activiste syndicaliste en
organisant plusieurs missions de solidarité en
Yougoslavie, parlera de "La Yougoslavie après
Milosevic".
La séance sera co-présidée par Gert Julius,
porte-parole de la Branche Berlin-Schöneberg/Tempelhof
du «Parti du Socialisme Démocratique» et Klaus
Hartmann, vice-président du «Comité International pour
la Défence de Slobodan Milosevic» (ICDSM).
Avec la participation de Luc MICHEL, président de la
Section francophone (Belgique, France, Suisse, Québec)
de l?ICDSM.
Le colloque est soutenu par le «Forum Européen de la
Paix».
DER "FALL MILOSEVIC" - DAS INTERNATIONALE STRAFRECHT
UND
DIE NEUEN KRIEGE DER GROSSMÄCHTE
Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus - Bezirksverband
Tempelhof & Schöneberg
Schöneberger Gespräche - Einladung
für Samstag, den 2. März 2002 von 10.00 bis 17.00 Uhr
ins
Rathaus Schöneberg, 10820 Berlin, Raum 195
(ab 09.30 Uhr Anmeldung der Teilnehmer)
zu Vorträgen und Diskussionen, organisiert vom
Internationalen Komitee für die Verteidigung von
Slobodan Milosevic - Deutsche Sektion - zum Thema:
DER "FALL MILOSEVIC" - DAS INTERNATIONALE STRAFRECHT
UND
DIE NEUEN KRIEGE DER GROSSMÄCHTE
Das Programm:
Gert Julius, Bezirksverordneter der PDS Tempelhof &
Schöneberg:
Begrüßung
Klaus Hartmann, Sprecher der Deutschen Sektion des
Internationalen Komitees
für die Verteidigung von Slobodan Milosevic:
Einleitung
Prof. Dr. Norman Paech, Professor für Völkerrecht an
der Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Politik, Hamburg:
Sinn und Missbrauch internationaler
Strafgerichtsbarkeit
Peter Koch, Rechtsanwalt, Heidelberg:
Internationale Strafjustiz vor dem Hintergrund
"humanitärer" Aktionen und des "Kampfes gegen den
Terrorismus"
Ralph Hartmann, Berlin, Autor der "Ehrlichen Makler"
und der "Glorreichen Sieger", liest Auszüge aus seinem
am 24. März, dem 3. Jahrestag des NATO-Überfalls auf
Jugoslawien, im Berliner Dietz-Verlag erscheinenden
Buch "Der Fall Milosevic".
Eberhard Schultz, Rechtsanwalt, Bremen:
Der Kampf des "Angeklagten" Slobodan Milosevic gegen
das Haager "Tribunal"
Rolf Becker, Schauspieler, Hamburg, ver.di (Medien):
Jugoslawien nach Milosevic
Statements und Diskussion
Die Veranstaltung wird unterstützt vom Europäischen
Friedensforum
===*===
"Junge Welt", 27.02.2002
Interview: Rüdiger Göbel
Das Ende der Unschuld: Solidarität mit Milosevic?
jW sprach mit Gert Julius, PDS-Abgeordneter in
der Bezirksversammlung in Berlin-Tempelhof/Schöneberg
F: Am Wochenende laden Sie ins Rathaus nach Berlin-
Schöneberg zum Kolloquium »Der Fall Milosevic -
Das internationale Strafrecht und die neuen
Kriege der Großmächte« ein. Wie solidarisch muß
man als Linker mit Slobodan Milosevic sein?
Für mich als Linker und meine politischen Freunde des
PDS-Bezirkverbandes Berlin-Tempelhof/Schöneberg gibt
es keinen Grund zur Solidarität mit Herrn
Milosevic. Jeder weiß jedoch, daß es von
den Medien und leider auch von Politikern
und Politikerinnen öffentliche Vorverurteilungen
gibt, die sich aus Anpassungszwängen an den
»Mainstream« um die auch im deutschen
Rechtswesen übliche grundsätzliche
Unschuldsvermutung wenig kümmern. Der
Bezirksverband nimmt mit diesem
Kolloquium sein Recht gemäß Artikel 21,
Absatz 1, Grundgesetz wahr, an der
politischen Willensbildung der
Bevölkerung mitzuwirken. Unser
Bezirksverband will dazu beitragen,
daß in der Öffentlichkeit ein objektives
Bild über die Rolle der USA, der NATO, der
deutschen Bundesregierung und des
ehemaligen Präsidenten Jugoslawiens
gezeichnet wird.
F: Halten Sie das UN-Tribunal in Den Haag für legitim?
Das ist eine schwierige Frage, die
letztlich Völkerrechtler entscheiden
müssen. Für mich ist jedoch schon
merkwürdig, daß es in einem angeblichen
Rechtsstaat wie Serbien möglich ist,
einen Beschuldigten gegen den Beschluß
des obersten Gerichtshofes auszuliefern.
Ich würde es begrüßen, wenn auch
die USA der Bildung eines Internationalen
Gerichts zustimmen würden.
F: Von den Grünen wurden bereits
Gegenproteste für Sonnabend angekündigt.
Was erregt die Gemüter so?
Meiner Ansicht nach ist die Ankündigung
von Protesten der Grünen insofern
scheinheilig, als es gerade diese
Partei ist, die in der Bundesregierung
durch ihre Beteiligung am NATO-Krieg
gegen Jugoslawien und Afghanistan dafür
verantwortlich ist, daß Tausende
schuldlose Menschen verletzt, verstümmelt
oder getötet wurden. Gerade in Jugoslawien
konnte ich mich im August 1999
selbst von der sinnlosen und
zielgerichteten Zerstörung von Krankenhäusern,
Chemiefabriken, Elektrizitätswerken,
Wohnhäusern, Kindergärten und Brücken
durch die NATO überzeugen.
F: Auch beim PDS-Landesverband stieß
die Veranstaltung auf Kritik. Gab es
nach Beginn des Verfahrens gegen
Slobodan Milosevic in Den Haag Druck von
der Berliner Parteiführung, die Konferenz
abzusagen?
Druck von der Parteiführung gab es nicht.
In der pluralistisch ausgerichteten PDS
hat der stellvertretende Vorsitzende eines
Landesverbandes, in diesem Falle Udo Wolf,
das Recht, Vermutungen über die
Auffassung des Landesvorstandes zu
äußern. Jeder Bezirksverband ist jedoch
autonom, seine Veranstaltungen selbst
zu planen und durchzuführen.
F: Kann jeder zu dem Kolloquium kommen
oder ist es nur für Juristen oder
andere Fachleute von Interesse?
Geplant ist, das internationale
Strafrecht und die neuen Kriege der
Großmächte am Fall Milosevic zu
diskutieren. Die Veranstaltung ist mit
Sicherheit von großem allgemeinen
Interesse, weil sich unter anderem der
bekannte Völkerrechtler Prof. Dr. Norman
Paech, der Schauspieler Rolf Becker
und der ehemalige Botschafter der DDR
in Jugoslawien, Ralph Hartmann, sowie
der Präsident des Deutschen Freidenkerverbandes,
Klaus Hartmann, und die
Rechtsanwälte Peter Koch und Eberhard
Schultz äußern. Die bisherige
Medienkampagne der Grünen in Berlin
hat zu vielen Anfragen und Anmeldungen
interessierter Bürgerinnen und Bürger
geführt, worüber wir uns sehr freuen.
Jeder ist eingeladen und hat die
Möglichkeit, an der Diskussion
teilzunehmen.
* Kolloquium »Der Fall Milosevic -
Das internationale Strafrecht und die
neuen Kriege der Großmächte«. 2. März,
10 bis 17 Uhr im Rathaus
Berlin-Schöneberg, Raum 195
Rathaus Schöneberg, stanza 195, ore 10-17
"IL CASO MILOSEVIC"
Discussione pubblica
su iniziativa di:
Partito del Socialismo Democratico (PDS) e
Comitato Internazionale per la Difesa di Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM)
con l'appoggio del
Forum Europeo per la Pace
Comitato Internazionale per la Difesa di Slobodan Milosevic -
Sezione tedesca: http://www.free-slobo.de
---
L'iniziativa ha scatenato polemiche prevedibili, anche all'interno
della PDS, e sono state persino annunciate contromanifestazioni da
parte dei Verdi e settori affini.
Riportiamo in fondo una intervista in proposito a Ruediger Goebel
(in tedesco)
===*===
ANNOUNCEMENT :
THE "MILOSEVIC CASE" - INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL
JURISDICTION AND THE NEW WARS OF THE GREAT POWERS
A public colloquium on the "Milosevic Case" and its
meaning for current trends in international criminal
jurisdiction will be held in Berlin (Rathaus
Schöneberg, Room 195) on Saturday, March 2nd, 2002,
from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The colloquium, including
lectures und discussions, is organized on the
invitation of the Berlin-Schöneberg/Tempelhof Branch
of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) by the
German Section of the International Committee to
Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM).
The key note speech will be given by Norman Paech, a
professor of international public law at the
University of Hamburg, who will address the issue of
international criminal jurisdiction in the context of
international law, defining legal criteria for its
proper use as well as exposing current abuses.
The improper use of international criminal
jurisdiction under the auspices of "humanitarian"
military action and the "war against terrorism" will
be the subject of a contribution by Peter Koch, a
lawyer from Heidelberg.
Another lawyer, Eberhard Schultz (Bremen/Berlin), will
cover the main features of Milosevic's struggle
against the Hague "Tribunal"
Excerpts from his latest book on "The Milosevic Case"
will be read by Ralph Hartmann (Berlin), a former
GDR-Ambassador to Yugoslavia and the author of two
previous books on the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Rolf Becker (Hamburg), a well known actor, who is also
a trade union activist having organized several
solidarity missions to Yugoslavia, will speak about
"Yugoslavia after Milosevic".
The meeting will be co-chaired by Gert Julius,
spokesman of the Berlin-Schöneberg/Tempelhof Branch of
the Party of Democratic Socialism and by Klaus
Hartmann, vice-chairman of the International Committee
to Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM) and spokesman of
its German Section.
With the partcipation of Luc MICHEL, chairman of the
Frenchspeaking Section (Belgium, France, Switzerland,
Quebec) of ICDSM.
The colloquium is supported by the European Peace
Forum
ANNONCE :
LE "CAS MILOSEVIC" - LA JURIDICTION PÉNALE
INTERNATIONALE ET LES NOUVELLES GUERRES DES GRANDES
PUISSANCES
Un colloque public sur le "Cas Milosevic" et son
influence sur les tendances actuelles dans le domaine
de la juridiction pénale internationale sera organisé
à Berlin (Rathaus Schöneberg, Salle 195) le samedi 2
mars 2002, de 10 à 17 heures. Le colloque qui
comprendra des conférences et des discussions
publiques sera organisé à l'invitation de la Branche
Berlin-Schöneberg/Tempelhof du «Parti du Socialisme
Démocratique» (PDS) par la Section allemande du
«Comité International pour la Défense de Slobodan
Milosevic» (ICDSM).
La conférence principale sera donnée par Norman Paech,
professeur de Droit international public à
l'université de Hambourg, qui parlera de la
juridiction pénale internationale dans le contexte du
Droit international, en définissant les critères
juridiques de son application normale et en exposant
les abus courants.
L'application abusive de la juridiction pénale
internationale sous les auspices d'actions militaires
soi-disant "humanitaires" et de "la guerre contre le
terrorisme" sera le sujet de l'intervention de Me.
Peter Koch, avocat à Heidelberg.
Un autre avocat, Me. Eberhard Schultz (Bremen/Berlin),
présentera les charactéristiques principales de la
lutte du président Milosevic contre le "Tribunal" de
La Haye
Une lecture d'extraits de son dernier livre "Le Cas
Milosevic" sera donnée par Ralph Hartmann (Berlin),
ancien ambassadeur de la RDA en Yougoslavie, et auteur
de deux autres livres sur la destruction de la
Yougoslavie.
Rolf Becker (Hamburg), un acteur très connu, et qui
s'est manifesté comme activiste syndicaliste en
organisant plusieurs missions de solidarité en
Yougoslavie, parlera de "La Yougoslavie après
Milosevic".
La séance sera co-présidée par Gert Julius,
porte-parole de la Branche Berlin-Schöneberg/Tempelhof
du «Parti du Socialisme Démocratique» et Klaus
Hartmann, vice-président du «Comité International pour
la Défence de Slobodan Milosevic» (ICDSM).
Avec la participation de Luc MICHEL, président de la
Section francophone (Belgique, France, Suisse, Québec)
de l?ICDSM.
Le colloque est soutenu par le «Forum Européen de la
Paix».
DER "FALL MILOSEVIC" - DAS INTERNATIONALE STRAFRECHT
UND
DIE NEUEN KRIEGE DER GROSSMÄCHTE
Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus - Bezirksverband
Tempelhof & Schöneberg
Schöneberger Gespräche - Einladung
für Samstag, den 2. März 2002 von 10.00 bis 17.00 Uhr
ins
Rathaus Schöneberg, 10820 Berlin, Raum 195
(ab 09.30 Uhr Anmeldung der Teilnehmer)
zu Vorträgen und Diskussionen, organisiert vom
Internationalen Komitee für die Verteidigung von
Slobodan Milosevic - Deutsche Sektion - zum Thema:
DER "FALL MILOSEVIC" - DAS INTERNATIONALE STRAFRECHT
UND
DIE NEUEN KRIEGE DER GROSSMÄCHTE
Das Programm:
Gert Julius, Bezirksverordneter der PDS Tempelhof &
Schöneberg:
Begrüßung
Klaus Hartmann, Sprecher der Deutschen Sektion des
Internationalen Komitees
für die Verteidigung von Slobodan Milosevic:
Einleitung
Prof. Dr. Norman Paech, Professor für Völkerrecht an
der Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Politik, Hamburg:
Sinn und Missbrauch internationaler
Strafgerichtsbarkeit
Peter Koch, Rechtsanwalt, Heidelberg:
Internationale Strafjustiz vor dem Hintergrund
"humanitärer" Aktionen und des "Kampfes gegen den
Terrorismus"
Ralph Hartmann, Berlin, Autor der "Ehrlichen Makler"
und der "Glorreichen Sieger", liest Auszüge aus seinem
am 24. März, dem 3. Jahrestag des NATO-Überfalls auf
Jugoslawien, im Berliner Dietz-Verlag erscheinenden
Buch "Der Fall Milosevic".
Eberhard Schultz, Rechtsanwalt, Bremen:
Der Kampf des "Angeklagten" Slobodan Milosevic gegen
das Haager "Tribunal"
Rolf Becker, Schauspieler, Hamburg, ver.di (Medien):
Jugoslawien nach Milosevic
Statements und Diskussion
Die Veranstaltung wird unterstützt vom Europäischen
Friedensforum
===*===
"Junge Welt", 27.02.2002
Interview: Rüdiger Göbel
Das Ende der Unschuld: Solidarität mit Milosevic?
jW sprach mit Gert Julius, PDS-Abgeordneter in
der Bezirksversammlung in Berlin-Tempelhof/Schöneberg
F: Am Wochenende laden Sie ins Rathaus nach Berlin-
Schöneberg zum Kolloquium »Der Fall Milosevic -
Das internationale Strafrecht und die neuen
Kriege der Großmächte« ein. Wie solidarisch muß
man als Linker mit Slobodan Milosevic sein?
Für mich als Linker und meine politischen Freunde des
PDS-Bezirkverbandes Berlin-Tempelhof/Schöneberg gibt
es keinen Grund zur Solidarität mit Herrn
Milosevic. Jeder weiß jedoch, daß es von
den Medien und leider auch von Politikern
und Politikerinnen öffentliche Vorverurteilungen
gibt, die sich aus Anpassungszwängen an den
»Mainstream« um die auch im deutschen
Rechtswesen übliche grundsätzliche
Unschuldsvermutung wenig kümmern. Der
Bezirksverband nimmt mit diesem
Kolloquium sein Recht gemäß Artikel 21,
Absatz 1, Grundgesetz wahr, an der
politischen Willensbildung der
Bevölkerung mitzuwirken. Unser
Bezirksverband will dazu beitragen,
daß in der Öffentlichkeit ein objektives
Bild über die Rolle der USA, der NATO, der
deutschen Bundesregierung und des
ehemaligen Präsidenten Jugoslawiens
gezeichnet wird.
F: Halten Sie das UN-Tribunal in Den Haag für legitim?
Das ist eine schwierige Frage, die
letztlich Völkerrechtler entscheiden
müssen. Für mich ist jedoch schon
merkwürdig, daß es in einem angeblichen
Rechtsstaat wie Serbien möglich ist,
einen Beschuldigten gegen den Beschluß
des obersten Gerichtshofes auszuliefern.
Ich würde es begrüßen, wenn auch
die USA der Bildung eines Internationalen
Gerichts zustimmen würden.
F: Von den Grünen wurden bereits
Gegenproteste für Sonnabend angekündigt.
Was erregt die Gemüter so?
Meiner Ansicht nach ist die Ankündigung
von Protesten der Grünen insofern
scheinheilig, als es gerade diese
Partei ist, die in der Bundesregierung
durch ihre Beteiligung am NATO-Krieg
gegen Jugoslawien und Afghanistan dafür
verantwortlich ist, daß Tausende
schuldlose Menschen verletzt, verstümmelt
oder getötet wurden. Gerade in Jugoslawien
konnte ich mich im August 1999
selbst von der sinnlosen und
zielgerichteten Zerstörung von Krankenhäusern,
Chemiefabriken, Elektrizitätswerken,
Wohnhäusern, Kindergärten und Brücken
durch die NATO überzeugen.
F: Auch beim PDS-Landesverband stieß
die Veranstaltung auf Kritik. Gab es
nach Beginn des Verfahrens gegen
Slobodan Milosevic in Den Haag Druck von
der Berliner Parteiführung, die Konferenz
abzusagen?
Druck von der Parteiführung gab es nicht.
In der pluralistisch ausgerichteten PDS
hat der stellvertretende Vorsitzende eines
Landesverbandes, in diesem Falle Udo Wolf,
das Recht, Vermutungen über die
Auffassung des Landesvorstandes zu
äußern. Jeder Bezirksverband ist jedoch
autonom, seine Veranstaltungen selbst
zu planen und durchzuführen.
F: Kann jeder zu dem Kolloquium kommen
oder ist es nur für Juristen oder
andere Fachleute von Interesse?
Geplant ist, das internationale
Strafrecht und die neuen Kriege der
Großmächte am Fall Milosevic zu
diskutieren. Die Veranstaltung ist mit
Sicherheit von großem allgemeinen
Interesse, weil sich unter anderem der
bekannte Völkerrechtler Prof. Dr. Norman
Paech, der Schauspieler Rolf Becker
und der ehemalige Botschafter der DDR
in Jugoslawien, Ralph Hartmann, sowie
der Präsident des Deutschen Freidenkerverbandes,
Klaus Hartmann, und die
Rechtsanwälte Peter Koch und Eberhard
Schultz äußern. Die bisherige
Medienkampagne der Grünen in Berlin
hat zu vielen Anfragen und Anmeldungen
interessierter Bürgerinnen und Bürger
geführt, worüber wir uns sehr freuen.
Jeder ist eingeladen und hat die
Möglichkeit, an der Diskussion
teilzunehmen.
* Kolloquium »Der Fall Milosevic -
Das internationale Strafrecht und die
neuen Kriege der Großmächte«. 2. März,
10 bis 17 Uhr im Rathaus
Berlin-Schöneberg, Raum 195
> http://www.swans.com/library/art8/gowans22.html
Munchausens At The Hague, Cowards At Woods Hole
by Stephen Gowans
February 25, 2002
Mun.chau.sen
After Baron K. F. H. von Münchhausen,
a proverbial teller of exaggerated
tales. A liar.
Cow.ard
One who shows or yields to ignoble fear.
If Carla del Ponte, The Hague's chief
prosecutor, were a piece of chocolate,
she wouldn't so much resemble the
chocolate of her native Switzerland as
she would a bar of Ex-Lax, the faux
chocolate laxative made in America, whose
sole purpose is to draw forth copious
quantities of shit. For what else is
The Hague Tribunal but shit? And
American?
Said del Ponte, "every individual
irrespective of his position, his rank
or the power he holds can be brought to
justice for war crimes, crimes against
humanity and genocide." (1) This, to
mark the opening of the trial of former
Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic,
who, illegally abducted and
transported to The Hague, (sparking
paeans in the Western press to how the
rule of law had been vindicated) faces
charges of war crimes, crimes against
humanity and genocide.
The fashion on the American Left, or
large parts of what's called the
American Left, is to say, "Were it
true that every leader could be brought
to justice, then Clinton, Blair,
Schroeder, Albright, Fischer, and a
long list of NATO supremos, would be
sitting in the dock with Milosevic."
That NATO leaders should be sitting in
the dock is true enough. As John
Laughland, writing in the February 16
Guardian put it, "It has always been
obvious that the NATO attacks on
Yugoslavia were illegal under the post-war
United Nations-based system. Not only
were the attacks not approved by the
security council, that body was not
even consulted."
Of course, NATO leaders aren't going
to be answering for their crimes
against peace. Who's going to make
them? For one, they created the tribunal,
appointed the prosecutors, provided
the staff, and furnished part of the
tribunal's budget. It's their creation.
The tribunal also gets help from
financier George Soros's Open Society
Institute. (2) That's "open" society,
as is in open markets, as in not
communist, as in not socialist, as in
not resembling the social ownership
model of the Yugoslav economy under
the communists and Milosevic's Socialist
Party. Milosevic's socialism is rarely
mentioned in the media, lest two and
two are put together, and four, rather
than five, is the answer, and the
name Allende suddenly springs to mind.
But there's another reason NATO
leaders won't ever have to answer for
violating the UN Charter, refusing to
consult the Security Council, and
elevating themselves above
international law. The Hague Tribunal
hasn't the jurisdiction to prosecute crimes
against peace. Indeed, there is no
longer any such thing as a crime against
peace, the basis of Nuremberg and the
UN Charter. That was tossed out by Blair
and Clinton, who declared a new world
order, one in which NATO, or more to
the point, the US, could intervene at
will in the internal affairs of
sovereign states.
John Laughland says this was
adumbrated by the Nazis. "Like today's
globalists," he points out, "the Nazis
argued that economic realities had
changed and that, therefore, the great
powers should have the legal right to
interfere in the internal affairs of
smaller nations in their sphere of
influence."
"According to Nazi theory of 'great
space'," continues Laughland, "state
sovereignty was a bogus invention of
materialistic liberalism." Or in
today's language, it's a bogus
invention of leaders who want a shelter
behind which to violate human rights,
build weapons of mass destruction, or
harbour Osama bin Laden.
The preferred view of the Chomsky Left
is that Milosevic is a little thug,
an unlikeable man who did some bad
things, but not as bad as what NATO
leaders did. The big thugs live in
Washington and London, we're told.
Is Milosevic a thug, even a little
one, as this view holds? I'll be
honest.
I don't know. But I do know it is
generally considered appropriate to
have a sound basis for alleging someone is a
thug, which means something more than
someone else's unsubstantiated
accusations. But all too often newspaper
reports are taken at face value, even
by those who've spent some
considerable time writing books on
media bias. And what I've seen so far
from del Ponte, resembles what Tony
Blair splattered across the public
record as "incontrovertible" evidence
of Osama bin Laden's masterminding
9/11 -- old newspaper stories based on
innuendo, hearsay, and illegitimate
inference. In other words,
accusations, without a lot of meat on
them.
Let's take the allegation that
Milosevic used his 1989 speech as
Kosovo Field to whip Serbs into an
ultra-nationalist frenzy. The tribunal's
prosecution made sure to trot this out
in its opening remarks. It's a good
story. But that's all it is. A story,
repeated by the press, and now picked
up by the tribunal. But it's fiction. (3)
Funny thing. The press originally
reported the story correctly, only later
to turn it on its head at a time NATO
was pounding Yugoslav hospitals,
factories, power stations, homes,
embassies, apartment buildings and
refugee columns with bombs, showing a few
thousand Serb civilians an early exit
from this life. That NATO might want to
create a myth about a horrible
ultra-nationalist to deflect criticism
of its bombing campaign is hardly a
possibility to be dismissed.
On June 29, 1989, the day following
the infamous speech the Tribunal says
shows Milosevic as an
ultra-nationalist demagogue, The
Independent reported:
"There is no more appropriate place
than this field of Kosovo to say that
accord and harmony in Serbia are vital
to the prosperity of the Serbs and of
all other citizens living in Serbia,
regardless of their nationality or
religion,' [Milosevic] said. Mutual
tolerance and co-operation were also
sine qua non for Yugoslavia: 'Harmony
and relations on the basis of equality
among Yugoslavia's people are a
precondition for its existence, for
overcoming the crisis.'"
Milosevic "talked of mutual
tolerance," The Independent added,
"'building a rich and democratic society' and
ending the discord which had, he said,
led to Serbia's defeat here by the Turks
six centuries ago."
The same day, the BBC reported,
"Addressing the crowd, Milosevic said
that whenever they were able to the Serbs
had helped others to liberate
themselves, and they had never used
the advantage of their being a large
nation against others or for
themselves."
"He added that Yugoslavia was a
multi-national community," the BBC
continued, "which could survive
providing there was full equality for
all the nations living in it."
Twelve years later, on April 1, 2001,
the BBC would change its story,
claiming Milosevic had "gathered a
million Serbs at the site of the
battle to tell them to prepare for a new
struggle."
The BBC was not alone. Newspapers that
had originally reported Milosevic's
speech as conciliatory, now claimed he
delivered an ultra-nationalist
diatribe.
On June 3rd, 1999, with large parts of
Serbia laying in ruins after being
targeted by NATO warplanes, The
Economist said,
"But it is primitive nationalism,
egged on by the self-deluding myth of
Serbs as perennial victims, that has
become both Mr. Milosevic's rescuer
(when communism collapsed with the
Soviet Union) and his nemesis. It was
a stirringly virulent nationalist speech
he made in Kosovo, in 1989, harking
back to the Serb Prince Lazar's
suicidally brave battle against the
Turks a mere six centuries ago, that saved his
leadership when the Serbian old guard
looked in danger of ejection. Now he
may have become a victim of his own
propaganda."
On July 9th, the international edition
of Time reported,
"It was St. Vitus' Day, a date steeped
in Serbian history, myth and eerie
coincidence: on June 28, 1389, Ottoman
invaders defeated the Serbs at the
battle of Kosovo; 525 years later, a
young Serbian nationalist assassinated
Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, lighting the fuse for World
War I. And it was on St. Vitus' Day, 1989,
that Milosevic whipped a million
Serbs into a nationalist frenzy in the
speech that capped his ascent to power."
And on July 28th, as questions were
being asked about NATO's 78-day
bombardment, The New York Times
weighed in with this:
"In 1989 the Serbian strongman,
Slobodan Milosevic, swooped down in a
helicopter onto the field where 600
years earlier the Turks had defeated
the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo. In a
fervent speech before a million Serbs,
he galvanized the nationalist passions
that two years later fuelled the
Balkan conflict."
Gregory Elich, a researcher and
writer, decided to check the media's
depiction against a transcript of
Milosevic's speech. (4) Tracking down
a US government translation of the address,
Elich discovered the media (and now
the Tribunal) had the story all wrong.
Not only had Milosevic not whipped up
nationalist fervor, he'd tried to do
the very opposite, as the press reports
the day after the speech had shown.
"Serbia," said Milosevic at Kosovo
Field, "has never had only Serbs living
in it. Today, more than in the past,
members of other peoples and
nationalities also live in it. This is
not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am
truly convinced that it is its
advantage. National composition of
almost all countries in the world today,
particularly developed ones, has also
been changing in this direction. Citizens
of different nationalities, religions,
and races have been living together
more and more frequently and more and
more successfully." (5)
Hardly an appeal to hate-filled nationalism.
Milosevic continued:
"Equal and harmonious relations among
Yugoslav peoples are a necessary
condition for the existence of
Yugoslavia and for it to find its way
out of the crisis and, in particular, they
are a necessary condition for its
economic and social prosperity. In
this respect Yugoslavia does not stand
out from the social milieu of the
contemporary, particularly the developed,
world. This world is more and more
marked by national tolerance, national
co-operation, and even national
equality. The modern economic and
technological, as well as political
and cultural development, has guided
various peoples toward each other, has
made them interdependent and
increasingly has made them equal as
well [medjusobno ravnopravni]. Equal and
united people can above all become a
part of the civilization toward which
mankind is moving." (6)
So, where did the Tribunal come up
with the idea that Milosevic used his
Kosovo Field speech to transform
himself from communist party apparatchik,
to virulent Serb nationalist, intent
on building a "Greater Serbia"? Did it
rely on the wildly inaccurate later
press reports for its research? Did
its researchers ever actually read
Milosevic's Kosovo Field address? Or have
they simply spun the story to justify
NATO's intervention?
Look no further than NATO spokesman
Jamie Shea for the answer.
"It's not Milosevic that has allowed
Justice Arbour her visa to go to Kosovo
to carry out her investigation. If her
court, as we want, is to be allowed
access, it will be because of NATO so
NATO is the friend of the Tribunal.
NATO countries are those that have
provided finance to set up the
Tribunal, we are amongst the majority
financiers." (7)
NATO funds the tribunal, furnishes it
with its staff, appoints the
prosecutors, and provides the
evidence. Its obvious partiality, its
motive for lying (to justify NATO
intervention), and its demonstrated
willingness to lie (del Ponte's obvious mendacity
about any leader being in the position
to be dragged before a court to answer
for crimes against humanity), should
at the very least send a signal that
maybe, just maybe, the charges against
Milosevic are fabricated. Strangely,
that signal has been unheeded by much
of what's called the Chomsky Left.
Instead, Chomsky and his disciples
have accepted at face value most of
the charges made by the press and the
Tribunal without bothering to examine
them, or at least, without bothering
to challenge them. Take for example,
Edward Herman, who writes brilliantly
on Washington's hypocrisy. Herman's
shtick, if you want to call it that,
is to say: "Yes, yes, Milosevic
(insert any leader here demonized by
Washington) is a thug, but Clinton (insert
whichever American leader you like) is
a bigger thug."
Herman recently wrote that "the murder
of between 800 and 3,000 unarmed
Palestinians, mainly women and
children, at Sabra and Shatila in
1982..[is]...20 to 50 times the deaths
in the Racak massacre that
precipitated NATO's bombing of
Yugoslavia," carrying on in his, "American
leaders and their allies (in this case
Sharon) are worse than America's
official enemies" (in this case,
Milosevic, who is apparently held
responsible for the Racak massacre)
tradition. (8)
But there are three problems with this:
1. It's doubtful that the incident at
Racak "precipitated NATO's bombing of
Yugoslavia," as Herman puts it, any
more than the Gulf of Tonkin affair
precipitated America's bombing of
North Vietnam. Racak was a pretext, not a
precipitating event, a point Herman,
on other occasions, has made.
2. While Milosevic is held responsible
for the deaths at Racak, the media
have been quick to point out that the
ethnic cleansing and murders carried
out by ethnic Albanians in Kosovo
against the Serb minority is not, by
itself, evidence that NATO forces are
complicit in the crimes. Yes, the
atrocities have been carried out under
NATO's nose, the media observes, but
that doesn't mean NATO is allowing
them to happen, or approves them, or
facilitates them. On the other hand,
Milosevic is held directly responsible
for the incident at Racak. If it
happened, it must be because Milosevic
either ordered it, or allowed it to
happen, the reasoning goes -- an example
of stunning hypocrisy you'd think
Herman would seize upon. Milosevic is
being judged by a different standard.
3. There are substantial reasons to
doubt that a massacre ever occurred at
Racak, and good reasons to suspect the
incident was contrived to offer a
pretext for NATO bombing.
The official story went like this: on
January 15, 1999, Serb policemen
entered the Kosovo village of Racak, a
KLA stronghold, and killed men, women
and children at close range, after
torturing and mutilating them.
Chillingly, the Serb police were said
to have whistled merrily as they went
about their work of slaughtering the
villagers. (9)
It was a horrible tableau, sure to
whip up the indignation of the world
-- and it did.
US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, as eager to scratch her ever
itchy trigger finger as her boss was to
scratch his illimitable sexual itches,
demanded that Yugoslavia be bombed
immediately. Albright, like a kid
agonizingly counting down the hours to
Christmas, would have to wait until
after Milosevic's rejection of NATO's
ultimata at Rambouillet to get her wish.
Bill Clinton, not to be surpassed in
expressing indignation, said, "We
should remember what happened in the
village of Racak...Innocent men, women,
and children were taken from their
homes to a gully, forced to kneel in
the dirt, sprayed with gunfire -- not
because of anything they had done, but
because of who they were." (10)
But the French newspaper Le Monde
doubted the authenticity of the
massacre.
It reported on Jan. 21, 1999, a few
days after the incident, that an
Associated Press TV crew had filmed a
gun battle at Racak between Serb
police and KLA guerillas. The crew was
present because the Serbs had tipped
them off that they were going to enter
the village to arrest a man accused
of shooting a police officer. Also
present were two teams of
international monitors.
It seems unlikely that if you're about
to carry out a massacre you would
invite the press -- and international
observers -- to watch.
The film showed that as the Serbs
entered Racak they came under heavy fire
from KLA guerillas positioned in the
surrounding hills. The idea that the
police could dig a trench and then
kill villagers at close range while being
fired upon troubled Le Monde. So too
did the fact that, entering the village
after the firefight to assess the
damage and interview the villagers, the
observers saw no sign of a massacre.
What's more, the villagers said nothing
about a massacre either.
It was only a day later, when
Washington's man in Kosovo, William Walker,
returned with the press in tow -- at
the KLA's invitation -- that a trench
was found filled with bodies.
Could the police have returned after
their firefight with the KLA, when the
observers and TV crew had gone, and
carried out the massacre under cover
of darkness?
That seems unlikely. Racak is a KLA
stronghold. Serb police had already
discovered that if they were going to
enter the village they would have to
deal with guerillas, or what,
Washington, would call terrorists, if
the tables were turned. How could they
torture, mutilate and cold-bloodedly
kill villagers at close range while
harassed by KLA gunfire?
And why, wondered Le Monde, were there
few signs of spent cartridges and
blood at the trench?
Adding to the implausibility of the
claim, a report last February by the
Finnish forensic team that
investigated the incident on behalf of
the European Union said none of the bodies
were mutilated, there was no evidence
of torture, and only one was shot at
close range -- all at variance with
the official story. (11)
Thirty-seven of the corpses had
gunpowder residue on their hands, suggesting
that they had been using firearms, and
only one of the corpses was a woman,
and only one was under 15 years of
age.
The pathologists say Walker was quick
to come to the conclusion a massacre
had happened, even though the evidence
was weak.
And they point out that there is no
evidence the deceased were from Racak.
If there aren't good reasons to
dismiss the incident entirely, there
at least very good reasons to doubt it.
But Herman, as disciple, is no
different from Chomsky, the Messiah.
In his The New Military Humanism,
Lessons From Kosovo, (12) Chomsky
neither accepts Racak as genuine or a
fake. Instead, he compares
Washington's concern over the events
at Racak to the lack of concern over events of
similar or greater enormity perpetrated
by US clients. If US foreign policy is
really driven by humanitarian intent,
Chomsky asks, why the inconsistency?
This is a clever way to expose the
institutional patterns of American
foreign policy -- a kind of reductio
ad absurdum approach. If what you say is
true, then x, y, and z, must follow,
and since they don't, what you say
must be false. In this case, however,
Chomsky broaches Racak not to
challenge the claim that a massacre
occurred, but to challenge the claim the
decision to bomb Kosovo was precipitated by
humanitarian concern over events such
as the alleged massacre at Racak. It
is still possible, however, to believe
that a massacre did occur, while
accepting Chomsky's analysis that
NATO's humanitarian concern was a
stalking horse behind which the alliance
pursued other goals. The truth or falsity of
the claimed massacre is neither here
nor there in Chomsky's analysis,
another reason the analysis is clever:
it avoids altogether the difficult
problem of assessing whether the
accusations NATO, and now the Tribunal,
made against Milosevic are true or
false. While useful in laying bare
Washington's hypocrisy -- a Herman
speciality -- it has the unfortunate,
and doubtless unintended consequence, of
encouraging others to take a
pusillanimous position. Since what
NATO says about Milosevic could be
true, and since I could look like an
apologist for horrible atrocities, I'll take
the easy path and declare everyone a
thug -- Milosevic, Blair, Clinton. If
I'm wrong about Milosevic, so what? It
will never be said I was an apologist
for a monster, and my moral hymen
remains intact -- or so it seems. But
thinking like that suffuses lynch
mobs. Is it moral to allow the innocent to
be railroaded into a jail cell on
false charges?
So, as the high priests of the Chomsky
Left think they're making headway
with their "Milosevic is bad, but
Clinton was worse" line, their
co-religionists work themselves up
into high dudgeon over Milosevic, not
Clinton. An ardent Z-Netter (Z-Net
being the church of Noam Chomskyism,
presided over by its Pope, Michael
Albert, at Woods Hole, Mass.) wrote me
that it was all right that NATO bombed
Serb Radio-TV, an obvious war crime,
because Milosevic is a thug who
deserves what he gets and the radio-TV
building was Milosevic's Ministry of
Propaganda. So irredeemably evil is
Milosevic, that destroying anything he
touched, must, by definition, be
good. He hoped Milosevic would meet
the same fate as Mussolini -- strung
upside down from a bridge. This was
followed by a paean to Otpor, the
"grassroots" movement funded and
trained by Washington, to bring down
Milosevic "peacefully," but not, as
the Z-Netters seemed to have missed,
to establish a libertarian socialist
society, or "parecon," the Pope's
participatory economics model, but to
turn the economy over to the IMF and
WTO so that Yugoslavia's assets can be
sold off to the highest bidder, while
millions of Serbs are thrown out of
work.
There's something disquieting about
the Church of Chomskyism. Willing to
allow the press to have its head where
official US enemies are concerned,
the faithful channel their
considerable enmity into the media-led
two minute hate against the latest Emanuel
Goldstein. But while Church doctrine holds
that Western leaders are bigger thugs,
the hate-filled, almost hysterical
denunciations reserved for the world's
Milosevics, Mugabes and Lukashenkos,
are accompanied by a measured,
reasonable, tone where Bush, Blair and
other NATO war-mongerers are concerned.
Milosevic can be called a murderer,
dictator and thug; his ouster, by
force, can be applauded, but it would
be considered over the top to call Bush
Jr. anything as incendiary, and calling
for an insurrection to pressure the
president to step down would be
denounced as the height of
irresponsibility. It's all right to
hope Milosevic is strung up, but
Chomskyites would never wish the same
fate on Bush or Clinton, though Church
doctrine holds these leaders to be
bigger thugs, and therefore, presumably
deserving of an equal or worse fate.
On another front, Chomsky remarked in
a recent interview that "If there is a
serious proposal as to how to
overthrow Saddam, we should surely
want to consider it. He remains as much a
monster as he was when the US and
Britain supported him." (13)
Yes he does. But there's something
pusillanimous in this, as in Chomsky's
accepting Milosevic as a thug: First,
a succession of US presidents, their
minions, and their eminence grise,
have been every bit as much monsters
as Saddam, not least of which were those
who supported Saddam, yet I have no
doubt Chomsky would decry as
recklessly irresponsible any "serious
proposal as to how to overthrow" any U.S.
president, past or present.
Second, in this, as in other cases,
Chomsky remains silent on who the
successor to the overthrown monster
will be. Which isn't to suggest that
Saddam Hussein is a great choice, but
it doesn't follow that getting rid of
one bad egg means the next egg won't
also be unremittingly rotten, if not
more so. That the new government is
installed by Washington and is
constrained, if not inclined, to
pursue policies to benefit US foreign
policy goals and economic interests,
is simply ignored. Hence, in the case
of Yugoslavia, Chomsky lauds the
overthrow of Milosevic but says nothing of
who follows, and on whose behalf they
work, cautioning others not to make
too much of US backing of the
opposition. Likewise, we're to consider any
serious proposal to oust Saddam, while
turning a blind eye to the fact that
any "serious proposal," by definition,
is one intended to aggrandize US
interests at the expense of ordinary
Iraqis. Any serious proposal would not
involve installing the Iraqi communist
party in power, for example, or
anyone for that matter who has even a
passing interest in Albert's parecon.
As Chomsky's critics of the Left put
it, the State Department must be pleased.
The problem here is that with attacks
on foreign leaders coming from all
parts of the American political
spectrum, that peculiarly American
conceit is strengthened -- that "we" have a
right, if not a moral obligation, to
intervene in the affairs of sovereign
nations to oust unpleasant leaders and
impose our own. Were that not
offensive enough, it's all done
without a tittle of an effort made to
substantiate whether the charges against
foreign leaders are anything other than pure
wind and self-serving
pro-interventionist propaganda, or if
there's substance to the charges,
whether American leaders would be
excused for doing exactly the same
under similar circumstances. So it is that
NATO's Munchausens have almost free
rein to propagate pro-interventionist
nonsense virtually unopposed. There's
no opposition from Western media and
no opposition from the Chomsky Left.
Worse, the press and the Messiah talk
as one, both in favour of tribunals.
The Hague Tribunal isn't, despite what
newspaper editors tell you, a step
forward for justice. It's simply a way
of obscuring the motives NATO had for
lying about why it intervened
militarily in Yugoslavia. Not justice,
but its antithesis.
Here's how it works: NATO fires from
the hip, accusing Milosevic of all
manner of atrocities and crimes. Spin,
it's called. The problem is war-time
spin is often recognized for what it
is -- mendacity, the truth getting
lost in the fog of war, pressure to put
things in the worst possible light. So
NATO hits upon the idea of
establishing a tribunal to indict Serb
leaders on war crimes charges, ignoring the fact
that the UN Security Council hasn't
the jurisdiction to establish a
criminal court. Jurisdiction or not, a
tribunal is established. The same "fog
of war" charges are made, but now,
the charges seem to have more
substance because they're made by a
tribunal, said to be backed by "the
international community," and because
legal language is pressed into service:
indictment, prosecution, conviction,
trial. It's one thing to have Jamie
Shea, in the midst of a NATO bombing
campaign say that Milosevic committed
genocide, since Jamie Shea has a
motive to lie under those
circumstances, but it's quite another
-- or so it seems -- to say Milosevic was
convicted by an International
Tribunal. It seems so much less like the
self-serving propaganda of NATO, and
so much more impartial. But is it? It's not
Jamie Shea making the charges, or Blair,
but it is people NATO hired and
appointed, whose salaries they pay,
making exactly the same charges with as
little evidence as Blair and Shea ever
had, repeating the same whoppers from the
same press reports that were used the
first time NATO sought to put a moral
gloss on its immoral acts.
But does the tribunal change anything?
Is del Ponte really any different
from Shea? If NATO lied about there
being 100,000 Kosovar Albanians murdered
to justify a bombing campaign that
under Nuremberg and the UN Charter is
a crime against peace; if it lied about
a passenger train that was travelling
too fast for a NATO pilot's missile to
avoid; if it lied about Serbs
attacking a refugee column that had
really been attacked by NATO; if it
lied about Albanian Kosovars imprisoned in
a Pristina stadium; if it lied about
organized rapes; if it lied about
dozens of other things, (14) why
shouldn't we expect the same from a tribunal
that was set up and is controlled by
the very same governments that lied so
freely in the first place?
Look at it this way. If someone who
has lied to you over and over again
sets up a tribunal, hires the prosecutors,
provides the evidence, and selects the
judges, is it not criminally stupid to
accept the tribunal as anything other
than a continuation of the same
pattern of lying? Is it not criminally
irresponsible to accept the charges
made against those who are indicted as
beyond dispute, or even as probably
true?
Ewan MacColl, who Washington never
liked (he was denied a visa in 1962 to
enter the US because of his political
leanings), died before The Hague
Tribunal was established, but he seems
to have anticipated its hypocrisy.
It's illegal to carve up your missus,
wrote MacColl,
Or put poison in your old man's tea
But poison the rivers, the sea, and
the skies
And poison the mind of a nation with
lies
If it's done in the interest of free
enterprise
Then it's proper and perfectly legal.
(15)
MacColl would have known it's not
Swiss chocolate del Ponte is serving.
Moreover, he would have said so.
Notes
1. Deutshce Press-Agentur, February
11, 2002 (back)
2. See Jared Israel, Official
Statements Prove Hague 'Tribunal'
Belongs to NATO,
http://www.tenc.net/docs/h-list.htm
(back)
3. Francisco Gil-White, Assistant
Professor of Psychology at the University
of Pennsylvania and a Fellow at the
Solomon Asch Center for Study of
Ethnopolitical Conflict, examined the
media's depiction of Milosevic's
Kosovo Field speech, comparing press
reports against a BBC transcript of
the address. See Expert in Psychology of
Ethnic Conflict Changes his Mind about
Yugoslavia,
http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/gw.htm
. The press reports on
the Kosovo Field speech are taken from
Gil-White's work. Gil-White's article
is highly recommended.
See also Stephen Gowans, When it comes
to Milosevic stories, more than a
little scepticism is in order, Media
Monitors Network,
http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans43.html
(back)
4. Milosevic's Speech, Kosovo Field,
June 28, 1989,
http://www.swans.com/libray/art8/smilos01.html
(back)
5. Ibid. (back)
6. Ibid. (back)
7. May 17, 1999 Transcript of NATO
press conference by Jamie Shea & Major
General W. Jertz in Brussels
Transcribed by M2 PRESSWIRE (c) 1999
cited in
Jared Israel, Official Statements
Prove Hague 'Tribunal' Belongs to
NATO,
http://www.icdsm.org/more/belongs.htm
(back)
8. Edward Herman, Final Solution in
the Occupied Territories,
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-02/11herman.cfm
(back)
9. See also Stephen Gowans, Sorting
Through the Lies of the Racak Massacre
and other Myths of Kosovo, Media
Monitors Network,
http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans1.html
(back)
10. March 19, 1999 address to the
nation, cited in FAIR: Media Advisory,
An Update on Racak, July 18, 2001,
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/racak-update.html
(back)
11. FAIR: Media Advisory, An Update
on Racak, July 18, 2001,
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/racak-update.html
See also Racak 'massacre' exposed as
fraud, Workers World, Feb. 15, 2001,
http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/yugo0215.html
(back)
12. Noam Chomsky, The New Military
Humanism, Lessons From Kosovo, New
Star Books, Vancouver, 1999, p. 40 - 48.
(back)
13. Stephen R. Shalom Interviews Noam
Chomsky, January 2002
http://www.zmag.org/shalom0122.htm
(back)
14. See Stephen Gowans, Genocide or
Veracicide Will NATO's Lying Ever Stop?
http://www.swans.com/library/art7/gowans02.html
(back)
15. Legal-Illegal, Words and music by
Ewan MacColl, From Hot Blast,
Folkways. Published in Broadside #154,
1984 (back)
Stephen Gowans is a writer and
political activist who lives in
Ottawa, Canada. He writes a regular
column for Canadian Content and is
also a frequent contributor to the Media
Monitors Network. In addition, Gowans
maintains his own Web site, What's
Left in Suburbia?, that is filled with
relevant information.
Munchausens At The Hague, Cowards At Woods Hole
by Stephen Gowans
February 25, 2002
Mun.chau.sen
After Baron K. F. H. von Münchhausen,
a proverbial teller of exaggerated
tales. A liar.
Cow.ard
One who shows or yields to ignoble fear.
If Carla del Ponte, The Hague's chief
prosecutor, were a piece of chocolate,
she wouldn't so much resemble the
chocolate of her native Switzerland as
she would a bar of Ex-Lax, the faux
chocolate laxative made in America, whose
sole purpose is to draw forth copious
quantities of shit. For what else is
The Hague Tribunal but shit? And
American?
Said del Ponte, "every individual
irrespective of his position, his rank
or the power he holds can be brought to
justice for war crimes, crimes against
humanity and genocide." (1) This, to
mark the opening of the trial of former
Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic,
who, illegally abducted and
transported to The Hague, (sparking
paeans in the Western press to how the
rule of law had been vindicated) faces
charges of war crimes, crimes against
humanity and genocide.
The fashion on the American Left, or
large parts of what's called the
American Left, is to say, "Were it
true that every leader could be brought
to justice, then Clinton, Blair,
Schroeder, Albright, Fischer, and a
long list of NATO supremos, would be
sitting in the dock with Milosevic."
That NATO leaders should be sitting in
the dock is true enough. As John
Laughland, writing in the February 16
Guardian put it, "It has always been
obvious that the NATO attacks on
Yugoslavia were illegal under the post-war
United Nations-based system. Not only
were the attacks not approved by the
security council, that body was not
even consulted."
Of course, NATO leaders aren't going
to be answering for their crimes
against peace. Who's going to make
them? For one, they created the tribunal,
appointed the prosecutors, provided
the staff, and furnished part of the
tribunal's budget. It's their creation.
The tribunal also gets help from
financier George Soros's Open Society
Institute. (2) That's "open" society,
as is in open markets, as in not
communist, as in not socialist, as in
not resembling the social ownership
model of the Yugoslav economy under
the communists and Milosevic's Socialist
Party. Milosevic's socialism is rarely
mentioned in the media, lest two and
two are put together, and four, rather
than five, is the answer, and the
name Allende suddenly springs to mind.
But there's another reason NATO
leaders won't ever have to answer for
violating the UN Charter, refusing to
consult the Security Council, and
elevating themselves above
international law. The Hague Tribunal
hasn't the jurisdiction to prosecute crimes
against peace. Indeed, there is no
longer any such thing as a crime against
peace, the basis of Nuremberg and the
UN Charter. That was tossed out by Blair
and Clinton, who declared a new world
order, one in which NATO, or more to
the point, the US, could intervene at
will in the internal affairs of
sovereign states.
John Laughland says this was
adumbrated by the Nazis. "Like today's
globalists," he points out, "the Nazis
argued that economic realities had
changed and that, therefore, the great
powers should have the legal right to
interfere in the internal affairs of
smaller nations in their sphere of
influence."
"According to Nazi theory of 'great
space'," continues Laughland, "state
sovereignty was a bogus invention of
materialistic liberalism." Or in
today's language, it's a bogus
invention of leaders who want a shelter
behind which to violate human rights,
build weapons of mass destruction, or
harbour Osama bin Laden.
The preferred view of the Chomsky Left
is that Milosevic is a little thug,
an unlikeable man who did some bad
things, but not as bad as what NATO
leaders did. The big thugs live in
Washington and London, we're told.
Is Milosevic a thug, even a little
one, as this view holds? I'll be
honest.
I don't know. But I do know it is
generally considered appropriate to
have a sound basis for alleging someone is a
thug, which means something more than
someone else's unsubstantiated
accusations. But all too often newspaper
reports are taken at face value, even
by those who've spent some
considerable time writing books on
media bias. And what I've seen so far
from del Ponte, resembles what Tony
Blair splattered across the public
record as "incontrovertible" evidence
of Osama bin Laden's masterminding
9/11 -- old newspaper stories based on
innuendo, hearsay, and illegitimate
inference. In other words,
accusations, without a lot of meat on
them.
Let's take the allegation that
Milosevic used his 1989 speech as
Kosovo Field to whip Serbs into an
ultra-nationalist frenzy. The tribunal's
prosecution made sure to trot this out
in its opening remarks. It's a good
story. But that's all it is. A story,
repeated by the press, and now picked
up by the tribunal. But it's fiction. (3)
Funny thing. The press originally
reported the story correctly, only later
to turn it on its head at a time NATO
was pounding Yugoslav hospitals,
factories, power stations, homes,
embassies, apartment buildings and
refugee columns with bombs, showing a few
thousand Serb civilians an early exit
from this life. That NATO might want to
create a myth about a horrible
ultra-nationalist to deflect criticism
of its bombing campaign is hardly a
possibility to be dismissed.
On June 29, 1989, the day following
the infamous speech the Tribunal says
shows Milosevic as an
ultra-nationalist demagogue, The
Independent reported:
"There is no more appropriate place
than this field of Kosovo to say that
accord and harmony in Serbia are vital
to the prosperity of the Serbs and of
all other citizens living in Serbia,
regardless of their nationality or
religion,' [Milosevic] said. Mutual
tolerance and co-operation were also
sine qua non for Yugoslavia: 'Harmony
and relations on the basis of equality
among Yugoslavia's people are a
precondition for its existence, for
overcoming the crisis.'"
Milosevic "talked of mutual
tolerance," The Independent added,
"'building a rich and democratic society' and
ending the discord which had, he said,
led to Serbia's defeat here by the Turks
six centuries ago."
The same day, the BBC reported,
"Addressing the crowd, Milosevic said
that whenever they were able to the Serbs
had helped others to liberate
themselves, and they had never used
the advantage of their being a large
nation against others or for
themselves."
"He added that Yugoslavia was a
multi-national community," the BBC
continued, "which could survive
providing there was full equality for
all the nations living in it."
Twelve years later, on April 1, 2001,
the BBC would change its story,
claiming Milosevic had "gathered a
million Serbs at the site of the
battle to tell them to prepare for a new
struggle."
The BBC was not alone. Newspapers that
had originally reported Milosevic's
speech as conciliatory, now claimed he
delivered an ultra-nationalist
diatribe.
On June 3rd, 1999, with large parts of
Serbia laying in ruins after being
targeted by NATO warplanes, The
Economist said,
"But it is primitive nationalism,
egged on by the self-deluding myth of
Serbs as perennial victims, that has
become both Mr. Milosevic's rescuer
(when communism collapsed with the
Soviet Union) and his nemesis. It was
a stirringly virulent nationalist speech
he made in Kosovo, in 1989, harking
back to the Serb Prince Lazar's
suicidally brave battle against the
Turks a mere six centuries ago, that saved his
leadership when the Serbian old guard
looked in danger of ejection. Now he
may have become a victim of his own
propaganda."
On July 9th, the international edition
of Time reported,
"It was St. Vitus' Day, a date steeped
in Serbian history, myth and eerie
coincidence: on June 28, 1389, Ottoman
invaders defeated the Serbs at the
battle of Kosovo; 525 years later, a
young Serbian nationalist assassinated
Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, lighting the fuse for World
War I. And it was on St. Vitus' Day, 1989,
that Milosevic whipped a million
Serbs into a nationalist frenzy in the
speech that capped his ascent to power."
And on July 28th, as questions were
being asked about NATO's 78-day
bombardment, The New York Times
weighed in with this:
"In 1989 the Serbian strongman,
Slobodan Milosevic, swooped down in a
helicopter onto the field where 600
years earlier the Turks had defeated
the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo. In a
fervent speech before a million Serbs,
he galvanized the nationalist passions
that two years later fuelled the
Balkan conflict."
Gregory Elich, a researcher and
writer, decided to check the media's
depiction against a transcript of
Milosevic's speech. (4) Tracking down
a US government translation of the address,
Elich discovered the media (and now
the Tribunal) had the story all wrong.
Not only had Milosevic not whipped up
nationalist fervor, he'd tried to do
the very opposite, as the press reports
the day after the speech had shown.
"Serbia," said Milosevic at Kosovo
Field, "has never had only Serbs living
in it. Today, more than in the past,
members of other peoples and
nationalities also live in it. This is
not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am
truly convinced that it is its
advantage. National composition of
almost all countries in the world today,
particularly developed ones, has also
been changing in this direction. Citizens
of different nationalities, religions,
and races have been living together
more and more frequently and more and
more successfully." (5)
Hardly an appeal to hate-filled nationalism.
Milosevic continued:
"Equal and harmonious relations among
Yugoslav peoples are a necessary
condition for the existence of
Yugoslavia and for it to find its way
out of the crisis and, in particular, they
are a necessary condition for its
economic and social prosperity. In
this respect Yugoslavia does not stand
out from the social milieu of the
contemporary, particularly the developed,
world. This world is more and more
marked by national tolerance, national
co-operation, and even national
equality. The modern economic and
technological, as well as political
and cultural development, has guided
various peoples toward each other, has
made them interdependent and
increasingly has made them equal as
well [medjusobno ravnopravni]. Equal and
united people can above all become a
part of the civilization toward which
mankind is moving." (6)
So, where did the Tribunal come up
with the idea that Milosevic used his
Kosovo Field speech to transform
himself from communist party apparatchik,
to virulent Serb nationalist, intent
on building a "Greater Serbia"? Did it
rely on the wildly inaccurate later
press reports for its research? Did
its researchers ever actually read
Milosevic's Kosovo Field address? Or have
they simply spun the story to justify
NATO's intervention?
Look no further than NATO spokesman
Jamie Shea for the answer.
"It's not Milosevic that has allowed
Justice Arbour her visa to go to Kosovo
to carry out her investigation. If her
court, as we want, is to be allowed
access, it will be because of NATO so
NATO is the friend of the Tribunal.
NATO countries are those that have
provided finance to set up the
Tribunal, we are amongst the majority
financiers." (7)
NATO funds the tribunal, furnishes it
with its staff, appoints the
prosecutors, and provides the
evidence. Its obvious partiality, its
motive for lying (to justify NATO
intervention), and its demonstrated
willingness to lie (del Ponte's obvious mendacity
about any leader being in the position
to be dragged before a court to answer
for crimes against humanity), should
at the very least send a signal that
maybe, just maybe, the charges against
Milosevic are fabricated. Strangely,
that signal has been unheeded by much
of what's called the Chomsky Left.
Instead, Chomsky and his disciples
have accepted at face value most of
the charges made by the press and the
Tribunal without bothering to examine
them, or at least, without bothering
to challenge them. Take for example,
Edward Herman, who writes brilliantly
on Washington's hypocrisy. Herman's
shtick, if you want to call it that,
is to say: "Yes, yes, Milosevic
(insert any leader here demonized by
Washington) is a thug, but Clinton (insert
whichever American leader you like) is
a bigger thug."
Herman recently wrote that "the murder
of between 800 and 3,000 unarmed
Palestinians, mainly women and
children, at Sabra and Shatila in
1982..[is]...20 to 50 times the deaths
in the Racak massacre that
precipitated NATO's bombing of
Yugoslavia," carrying on in his, "American
leaders and their allies (in this case
Sharon) are worse than America's
official enemies" (in this case,
Milosevic, who is apparently held
responsible for the Racak massacre)
tradition. (8)
But there are three problems with this:
1. It's doubtful that the incident at
Racak "precipitated NATO's bombing of
Yugoslavia," as Herman puts it, any
more than the Gulf of Tonkin affair
precipitated America's bombing of
North Vietnam. Racak was a pretext, not a
precipitating event, a point Herman,
on other occasions, has made.
2. While Milosevic is held responsible
for the deaths at Racak, the media
have been quick to point out that the
ethnic cleansing and murders carried
out by ethnic Albanians in Kosovo
against the Serb minority is not, by
itself, evidence that NATO forces are
complicit in the crimes. Yes, the
atrocities have been carried out under
NATO's nose, the media observes, but
that doesn't mean NATO is allowing
them to happen, or approves them, or
facilitates them. On the other hand,
Milosevic is held directly responsible
for the incident at Racak. If it
happened, it must be because Milosevic
either ordered it, or allowed it to
happen, the reasoning goes -- an example
of stunning hypocrisy you'd think
Herman would seize upon. Milosevic is
being judged by a different standard.
3. There are substantial reasons to
doubt that a massacre ever occurred at
Racak, and good reasons to suspect the
incident was contrived to offer a
pretext for NATO bombing.
The official story went like this: on
January 15, 1999, Serb policemen
entered the Kosovo village of Racak, a
KLA stronghold, and killed men, women
and children at close range, after
torturing and mutilating them.
Chillingly, the Serb police were said
to have whistled merrily as they went
about their work of slaughtering the
villagers. (9)
It was a horrible tableau, sure to
whip up the indignation of the world
-- and it did.
US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, as eager to scratch her ever
itchy trigger finger as her boss was to
scratch his illimitable sexual itches,
demanded that Yugoslavia be bombed
immediately. Albright, like a kid
agonizingly counting down the hours to
Christmas, would have to wait until
after Milosevic's rejection of NATO's
ultimata at Rambouillet to get her wish.
Bill Clinton, not to be surpassed in
expressing indignation, said, "We
should remember what happened in the
village of Racak...Innocent men, women,
and children were taken from their
homes to a gully, forced to kneel in
the dirt, sprayed with gunfire -- not
because of anything they had done, but
because of who they were." (10)
But the French newspaper Le Monde
doubted the authenticity of the
massacre.
It reported on Jan. 21, 1999, a few
days after the incident, that an
Associated Press TV crew had filmed a
gun battle at Racak between Serb
police and KLA guerillas. The crew was
present because the Serbs had tipped
them off that they were going to enter
the village to arrest a man accused
of shooting a police officer. Also
present were two teams of
international monitors.
It seems unlikely that if you're about
to carry out a massacre you would
invite the press -- and international
observers -- to watch.
The film showed that as the Serbs
entered Racak they came under heavy fire
from KLA guerillas positioned in the
surrounding hills. The idea that the
police could dig a trench and then
kill villagers at close range while being
fired upon troubled Le Monde. So too
did the fact that, entering the village
after the firefight to assess the
damage and interview the villagers, the
observers saw no sign of a massacre.
What's more, the villagers said nothing
about a massacre either.
It was only a day later, when
Washington's man in Kosovo, William Walker,
returned with the press in tow -- at
the KLA's invitation -- that a trench
was found filled with bodies.
Could the police have returned after
their firefight with the KLA, when the
observers and TV crew had gone, and
carried out the massacre under cover
of darkness?
That seems unlikely. Racak is a KLA
stronghold. Serb police had already
discovered that if they were going to
enter the village they would have to
deal with guerillas, or what,
Washington, would call terrorists, if
the tables were turned. How could they
torture, mutilate and cold-bloodedly
kill villagers at close range while
harassed by KLA gunfire?
And why, wondered Le Monde, were there
few signs of spent cartridges and
blood at the trench?
Adding to the implausibility of the
claim, a report last February by the
Finnish forensic team that
investigated the incident on behalf of
the European Union said none of the bodies
were mutilated, there was no evidence
of torture, and only one was shot at
close range -- all at variance with
the official story. (11)
Thirty-seven of the corpses had
gunpowder residue on their hands, suggesting
that they had been using firearms, and
only one of the corpses was a woman,
and only one was under 15 years of
age.
The pathologists say Walker was quick
to come to the conclusion a massacre
had happened, even though the evidence
was weak.
And they point out that there is no
evidence the deceased were from Racak.
If there aren't good reasons to
dismiss the incident entirely, there
at least very good reasons to doubt it.
But Herman, as disciple, is no
different from Chomsky, the Messiah.
In his The New Military Humanism,
Lessons From Kosovo, (12) Chomsky
neither accepts Racak as genuine or a
fake. Instead, he compares
Washington's concern over the events
at Racak to the lack of concern over events of
similar or greater enormity perpetrated
by US clients. If US foreign policy is
really driven by humanitarian intent,
Chomsky asks, why the inconsistency?
This is a clever way to expose the
institutional patterns of American
foreign policy -- a kind of reductio
ad absurdum approach. If what you say is
true, then x, y, and z, must follow,
and since they don't, what you say
must be false. In this case, however,
Chomsky broaches Racak not to
challenge the claim that a massacre
occurred, but to challenge the claim the
decision to bomb Kosovo was precipitated by
humanitarian concern over events such
as the alleged massacre at Racak. It
is still possible, however, to believe
that a massacre did occur, while
accepting Chomsky's analysis that
NATO's humanitarian concern was a
stalking horse behind which the alliance
pursued other goals. The truth or falsity of
the claimed massacre is neither here
nor there in Chomsky's analysis,
another reason the analysis is clever:
it avoids altogether the difficult
problem of assessing whether the
accusations NATO, and now the Tribunal,
made against Milosevic are true or
false. While useful in laying bare
Washington's hypocrisy -- a Herman
speciality -- it has the unfortunate,
and doubtless unintended consequence, of
encouraging others to take a
pusillanimous position. Since what
NATO says about Milosevic could be
true, and since I could look like an
apologist for horrible atrocities, I'll take
the easy path and declare everyone a
thug -- Milosevic, Blair, Clinton. If
I'm wrong about Milosevic, so what? It
will never be said I was an apologist
for a monster, and my moral hymen
remains intact -- or so it seems. But
thinking like that suffuses lynch
mobs. Is it moral to allow the innocent to
be railroaded into a jail cell on
false charges?
So, as the high priests of the Chomsky
Left think they're making headway
with their "Milosevic is bad, but
Clinton was worse" line, their
co-religionists work themselves up
into high dudgeon over Milosevic, not
Clinton. An ardent Z-Netter (Z-Net
being the church of Noam Chomskyism,
presided over by its Pope, Michael
Albert, at Woods Hole, Mass.) wrote me
that it was all right that NATO bombed
Serb Radio-TV, an obvious war crime,
because Milosevic is a thug who
deserves what he gets and the radio-TV
building was Milosevic's Ministry of
Propaganda. So irredeemably evil is
Milosevic, that destroying anything he
touched, must, by definition, be
good. He hoped Milosevic would meet
the same fate as Mussolini -- strung
upside down from a bridge. This was
followed by a paean to Otpor, the
"grassroots" movement funded and
trained by Washington, to bring down
Milosevic "peacefully," but not, as
the Z-Netters seemed to have missed,
to establish a libertarian socialist
society, or "parecon," the Pope's
participatory economics model, but to
turn the economy over to the IMF and
WTO so that Yugoslavia's assets can be
sold off to the highest bidder, while
millions of Serbs are thrown out of
work.
There's something disquieting about
the Church of Chomskyism. Willing to
allow the press to have its head where
official US enemies are concerned,
the faithful channel their
considerable enmity into the media-led
two minute hate against the latest Emanuel
Goldstein. But while Church doctrine holds
that Western leaders are bigger thugs,
the hate-filled, almost hysterical
denunciations reserved for the world's
Milosevics, Mugabes and Lukashenkos,
are accompanied by a measured,
reasonable, tone where Bush, Blair and
other NATO war-mongerers are concerned.
Milosevic can be called a murderer,
dictator and thug; his ouster, by
force, can be applauded, but it would
be considered over the top to call Bush
Jr. anything as incendiary, and calling
for an insurrection to pressure the
president to step down would be
denounced as the height of
irresponsibility. It's all right to
hope Milosevic is strung up, but
Chomskyites would never wish the same
fate on Bush or Clinton, though Church
doctrine holds these leaders to be
bigger thugs, and therefore, presumably
deserving of an equal or worse fate.
On another front, Chomsky remarked in
a recent interview that "If there is a
serious proposal as to how to
overthrow Saddam, we should surely
want to consider it. He remains as much a
monster as he was when the US and
Britain supported him." (13)
Yes he does. But there's something
pusillanimous in this, as in Chomsky's
accepting Milosevic as a thug: First,
a succession of US presidents, their
minions, and their eminence grise,
have been every bit as much monsters
as Saddam, not least of which were those
who supported Saddam, yet I have no
doubt Chomsky would decry as
recklessly irresponsible any "serious
proposal as to how to overthrow" any U.S.
president, past or present.
Second, in this, as in other cases,
Chomsky remains silent on who the
successor to the overthrown monster
will be. Which isn't to suggest that
Saddam Hussein is a great choice, but
it doesn't follow that getting rid of
one bad egg means the next egg won't
also be unremittingly rotten, if not
more so. That the new government is
installed by Washington and is
constrained, if not inclined, to
pursue policies to benefit US foreign
policy goals and economic interests,
is simply ignored. Hence, in the case
of Yugoslavia, Chomsky lauds the
overthrow of Milosevic but says nothing of
who follows, and on whose behalf they
work, cautioning others not to make
too much of US backing of the
opposition. Likewise, we're to consider any
serious proposal to oust Saddam, while
turning a blind eye to the fact that
any "serious proposal," by definition,
is one intended to aggrandize US
interests at the expense of ordinary
Iraqis. Any serious proposal would not
involve installing the Iraqi communist
party in power, for example, or
anyone for that matter who has even a
passing interest in Albert's parecon.
As Chomsky's critics of the Left put
it, the State Department must be pleased.
The problem here is that with attacks
on foreign leaders coming from all
parts of the American political
spectrum, that peculiarly American
conceit is strengthened -- that "we" have a
right, if not a moral obligation, to
intervene in the affairs of sovereign
nations to oust unpleasant leaders and
impose our own. Were that not
offensive enough, it's all done
without a tittle of an effort made to
substantiate whether the charges against
foreign leaders are anything other than pure
wind and self-serving
pro-interventionist propaganda, or if
there's substance to the charges,
whether American leaders would be
excused for doing exactly the same
under similar circumstances. So it is that
NATO's Munchausens have almost free
rein to propagate pro-interventionist
nonsense virtually unopposed. There's
no opposition from Western media and
no opposition from the Chomsky Left.
Worse, the press and the Messiah talk
as one, both in favour of tribunals.
The Hague Tribunal isn't, despite what
newspaper editors tell you, a step
forward for justice. It's simply a way
of obscuring the motives NATO had for
lying about why it intervened
militarily in Yugoslavia. Not justice,
but its antithesis.
Here's how it works: NATO fires from
the hip, accusing Milosevic of all
manner of atrocities and crimes. Spin,
it's called. The problem is war-time
spin is often recognized for what it
is -- mendacity, the truth getting
lost in the fog of war, pressure to put
things in the worst possible light. So
NATO hits upon the idea of
establishing a tribunal to indict Serb
leaders on war crimes charges, ignoring the fact
that the UN Security Council hasn't
the jurisdiction to establish a
criminal court. Jurisdiction or not, a
tribunal is established. The same "fog
of war" charges are made, but now,
the charges seem to have more
substance because they're made by a
tribunal, said to be backed by "the
international community," and because
legal language is pressed into service:
indictment, prosecution, conviction,
trial. It's one thing to have Jamie
Shea, in the midst of a NATO bombing
campaign say that Milosevic committed
genocide, since Jamie Shea has a
motive to lie under those
circumstances, but it's quite another
-- or so it seems -- to say Milosevic was
convicted by an International
Tribunal. It seems so much less like the
self-serving propaganda of NATO, and
so much more impartial. But is it? It's not
Jamie Shea making the charges, or Blair,
but it is people NATO hired and
appointed, whose salaries they pay,
making exactly the same charges with as
little evidence as Blair and Shea ever
had, repeating the same whoppers from the
same press reports that were used the
first time NATO sought to put a moral
gloss on its immoral acts.
But does the tribunal change anything?
Is del Ponte really any different
from Shea? If NATO lied about there
being 100,000 Kosovar Albanians murdered
to justify a bombing campaign that
under Nuremberg and the UN Charter is
a crime against peace; if it lied about
a passenger train that was travelling
too fast for a NATO pilot's missile to
avoid; if it lied about Serbs
attacking a refugee column that had
really been attacked by NATO; if it
lied about Albanian Kosovars imprisoned in
a Pristina stadium; if it lied about
organized rapes; if it lied about
dozens of other things, (14) why
shouldn't we expect the same from a tribunal
that was set up and is controlled by
the very same governments that lied so
freely in the first place?
Look at it this way. If someone who
has lied to you over and over again
sets up a tribunal, hires the prosecutors,
provides the evidence, and selects the
judges, is it not criminally stupid to
accept the tribunal as anything other
than a continuation of the same
pattern of lying? Is it not criminally
irresponsible to accept the charges
made against those who are indicted as
beyond dispute, or even as probably
true?
Ewan MacColl, who Washington never
liked (he was denied a visa in 1962 to
enter the US because of his political
leanings), died before The Hague
Tribunal was established, but he seems
to have anticipated its hypocrisy.
It's illegal to carve up your missus,
wrote MacColl,
Or put poison in your old man's tea
But poison the rivers, the sea, and
the skies
And poison the mind of a nation with
lies
If it's done in the interest of free
enterprise
Then it's proper and perfectly legal.
(15)
MacColl would have known it's not
Swiss chocolate del Ponte is serving.
Moreover, he would have said so.
Notes
1. Deutshce Press-Agentur, February
11, 2002 (back)
2. See Jared Israel, Official
Statements Prove Hague 'Tribunal'
Belongs to NATO,
http://www.tenc.net/docs/h-list.htm
(back)
3. Francisco Gil-White, Assistant
Professor of Psychology at the University
of Pennsylvania and a Fellow at the
Solomon Asch Center for Study of
Ethnopolitical Conflict, examined the
media's depiction of Milosevic's
Kosovo Field speech, comparing press
reports against a BBC transcript of
the address. See Expert in Psychology of
Ethnic Conflict Changes his Mind about
Yugoslavia,
http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/gw.htm
. The press reports on
the Kosovo Field speech are taken from
Gil-White's work. Gil-White's article
is highly recommended.
See also Stephen Gowans, When it comes
to Milosevic stories, more than a
little scepticism is in order, Media
Monitors Network,
http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans43.html
(back)
4. Milosevic's Speech, Kosovo Field,
June 28, 1989,
http://www.swans.com/libray/art8/smilos01.html
(back)
5. Ibid. (back)
6. Ibid. (back)
7. May 17, 1999 Transcript of NATO
press conference by Jamie Shea & Major
General W. Jertz in Brussels
Transcribed by M2 PRESSWIRE (c) 1999
cited in
Jared Israel, Official Statements
Prove Hague 'Tribunal' Belongs to
NATO,
http://www.icdsm.org/more/belongs.htm
(back)
8. Edward Herman, Final Solution in
the Occupied Territories,
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-02/11herman.cfm
(back)
9. See also Stephen Gowans, Sorting
Through the Lies of the Racak Massacre
and other Myths of Kosovo, Media
Monitors Network,
http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans1.html
(back)
10. March 19, 1999 address to the
nation, cited in FAIR: Media Advisory,
An Update on Racak, July 18, 2001,
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/racak-update.html
(back)
11. FAIR: Media Advisory, An Update
on Racak, July 18, 2001,
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/racak-update.html
See also Racak 'massacre' exposed as
fraud, Workers World, Feb. 15, 2001,
http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/yugo0215.html
(back)
12. Noam Chomsky, The New Military
Humanism, Lessons From Kosovo, New
Star Books, Vancouver, 1999, p. 40 - 48.
(back)
13. Stephen R. Shalom Interviews Noam
Chomsky, January 2002
http://www.zmag.org/shalom0122.htm
(back)
14. See Stephen Gowans, Genocide or
Veracicide Will NATO's Lying Ever Stop?
http://www.swans.com/library/art7/gowans02.html
(back)
15. Legal-Illegal, Words and music by
Ewan MacColl, From Hot Blast,
Folkways. Published in Broadside #154,
1984 (back)
Stephen Gowans is a writer and
political activist who lives in
Ottawa, Canada. He writes a regular
column for Canadian Content and is
also a frequent contributor to the Media
Monitors Network. In addition, Gowans
maintains his own Web site, What's
Left in Suburbia?, that is filled with
relevant information.
Dear All,
this is a short excerpt from the book "Diary of an Uncivil War" by
Scott Taylor. You could obtain it in every major book store in Canada,
or by contacting the author/publisher at : espritdecorp@...
The book is easy to read. In his book Mr. Taylor writes about the war in
Kosovo and Macedonia the way he experienced it. Similar to Ernest
Hemingway, Taylor sees all sides of the conflict not only through the
eyes of a military reporter but also as a human being.
Boba Borojevic
====================
> http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2002/02/24/f289.raw.html
Sunday, February 24, 2002 Back The Halifax Herald Limited
---
Misadventures in an uncivil war
The wreckage of a Macedonian vehicle marks the Aug. 8, 2001 ambush site
on the Skopje-Tetovo highway. Two policemen were killed and 14 wounded
in this attack.
This passenger bus was another casualty of the Aug. 8, 2001 Grupcin
ambush. It was attacked in full view of a NATO camp 800 meters beyond.
Andrej Ginovski / The Associated Press
A police officer walks behind a police armored personnel carrier through
the Macedonian village of Ratae. Macedonian police still guard the
village fearing attacks from ethnic Albanian splinter insurgent groups.
By Scott Taylor / Special to The Sunday Herald
Editor's note: Military writer Scott Taylor spent some time last year in
the middle of the conflict between Macedonia and ethnic Albanian rebels.
Here is an excerpt from his forthcoming book on the conflict, Diary of
an Uncivil War
Skopje, Aug. 8, 2001 - DESPITE THE FACT that the weather forecast called
for the temperature to soar above 40 C, I was wearing a long-sleeved
shirt and tie. I had an interview later in the morning with Macedonia's
new defence minister, Vladimir Buchkovski, and I felt a certain amount
of decorum was necessary.
I hitched a ride back to the Macedonian capital. Arriving in the city
centre before 9:30 a.m., we agreed to meet for a late supper back at our
hotel in Tetovo (about 30 km west of Skopje, near the Kosovo border). We
had no idea that at that moment all hell was breaking loose on the
stretch of road we had just traveled over.
The first inkling I had that something was wrong was the flurry of
activity at the Macedonian Defence Ministry. A crowd had gathered in the
guarded entranceway and were trying to get in, while on the other side
of a barrier people were trying to reclaim their identification cards in
order to get out.
It took me a while to work my way forward to a harassed military
policeman at the reception window. As soon as I told him I was there to
interview Minister Buchkovski, the young corporal put a finger to his
temple and asked incredulously, "Are you f-----? Do you have any idea of
what is going on?"
When I tried to explain to him that I didn't, I was contemptuously
dismissed.
A short, pot-bellied colonel at the rear of the queue had seen and
understood the curt exchange. Politely, he explained to me that the UCK
had just mounted a major offensive. The Tetovo-Skopje highway had been
cut off and that many soldiers were killed in an ambush. Furthermore,
there could be no interview with Buchkovski today because he was trapped
in Tetovo. The helpful colonel did not know when or if there would be a
press conference, as the information was too sketchy. He suggested that
I go to the official press accreditation counter for an update on the
situation.
As I walked to the nearby foreign media office, a flight of Mi-24 Hind
helicopters flew overhead towards the Tetovo highway. Unfortunately,
Atanas Georgievski was the only person on duty in the office. He knew
nothing of the UCK attack, and without a mutual language (he spoke only
Macedonian and Greek, a decided drawback when dealing with the foreign
media) we were reduced to communicating in sign language.
In this manner, I learned that I was one of only five foreign
journalists registered in Macedonia. The others were an American, two
from a Dutch television crew and a reporter from Abu Dhabi. As it seemed
unlikely that the Macedonian military would hold a press conference, I
contacted Rade Lesko at Skynet Television. He told me that ten soldiers
had been killed and 14 wounded. A number of civilians had also been
attacked along the 42 kilometres of highway that separate Tetovo and
Skopje, and the Macedonian army had closed the road.
"Until when?" I asked stupidly. "Until we win the battle, I would
assume," Lesko answered. The ambush had taken place outside the village
of Grupcin, about halfway between the two cities.
I had no way of knowing whether or not this was part of a sustained
offensive by the UCK or an isolated attack. However, with most of my
gear and travel documents still in Tetovo, I had to get back as quickly
as possible.
I hailed a taxi and told the driver I wanted to go to Grupcin. He had
been listening to his radio and told me it was not possible. "The road
is closed," he said. I showed him my press pass and told him that as a
foreign correspondent I had clearance to get through. He bought it, and
we set off.
The bluff worked at the first police checkpoint as well. However, at
Saraj, a village on the western outskirts of Skopje, the Macedonian
security forces were turning back all traffic, and there was a lineup of
vehicles parked along the roadside. A crowd of curious drivers had
gathered at the head of the column, anxious to obtain word of the
battle's progress.
My driver was only too ready to obey the policeman at the barricade. As
soon as he stopped and I stepped out of the car, he turned around and
sped off back to Skopje without waiting to be paid.
There were at least two dozen heavily armed security personnel at the
Saraj roadblock, along with armoured personnel carriers and a sandbagged
punkt, which appeared to be the headquarters. I was hoping to talk my
way through by telling the commanding officer that it was important for
a foreign journalist to be on the scene to confirm the UCK's ambush at
Grupcin and present the "big picture."
A surly-looking policeman came towards me shouting "f--- off" or its
Macedonian equivalent before I even had time to state my case. I
therefore politely asked to see his superior.
Overhearing the conversation, a hatless policeman lounging in the shade
nearby yelled out that he was in charge. After a few moments of talking
to him, I realized my case was hopeless. Even when I asked for details
of the ambush and the current situation, he just shrugged and said, "Ask
the Defence Ministry spokesman."
Admitting defeat, I turned to the policeman who had first approached me
and said, "Izvini (I'm sorry)." As I picked up my briefcase, he suddenly
lunged forward and struck me across the chest with his Kalashnikov.
"Ne ma izvini!" (No, 'I'm sorry!') he shouted. Surprised and knocked off
balance, I was just regaining my composure when he struck me again, this
time more forcefully, still shouting, "Ne ma izvini!"
As I walked back towards the line of parked cars, the police and the
assembled onlookers were all laughing. I decided then and there that,
whatever it took, I would get through to Tetovo.
Kondovo, Aug. 8, 2001
(Wednesday afternoon)
I climbed a hillside in order to get around the police checkpoint.
Without a map, I reasoned that if I headed west, then south, I could get
back onto the main highway at the bottom of the hill. I came across a
rail line, which I wrongly assumed led to Grupcin and Tetovo. After
walking nearly three kilometres, I learned of my mistake from a trio of
young Albanian boys who were crossing the tracks on their way back from
swimming. They had been quite startled by my sudden appearance. Drenched
in sweat, dressed in a shirt and tie, and carrying a briefcase and
camera bag, I must have been a very strange sight indeed.
The boys were puzzled when I asked how far it was to the highway. My
dead reckoning had been correct, but I had forgotten to factor in the
curve of the Vardar River, which ran through the valley. To get to
Grupcin, I would have to retrace my steps, almost all the way back to
the police punkt in Saraj.
Footsore from walking in my leather dress shoes, I asked the boys if I
could rent a bicycle. This request amused them and they ran off ahead of
me to the village of Kondovo to see if they could find one.
News of the approaching stranger soon spread throughout this little
Albanian village, and when I arrived in Kondovo, I was swarmed by
curious children. An uncle of one of the boys I had met on the tracks
joined the group and tried his best to dissuade me from making the trip.
There is much fighting in the valley; it is very dangerous right now,"
he said. "Join my family for lunch and we will arrange for a driver to
take you to Tetovo via Kosovo tonight."
He told me that he could put me in touch with the local UCK commanders
as they still had routes open. I really did not want to spend too much
time with the UCK, especially with copies of my book in my briefcase
that had not been well received in Kosovo. Finally realizing that I was
determined to get to Grupcin, he produced a battered old mountain bike.
Using his tractor engine as a compressor, he re-inflated the rear tire
and explained that only the front brake worked. After sharing a midday
meal with his family, I changed from my sweat-soaked shirt and tie into
the clean T-shirt they gave me and bade them farewell.
A number of young Albanians offered to guide me across the Vardar and
when I started off, they ran along beside me. From the direction of
Tetovo, the crump of far-off mortars could be clearly heard and columns
of black smoke rose from the next valley. Macedonian fighter jets were
visible overhead and helicopter gunships occasionally appeared above the
ridgeline.
Things were really heating up. As we reached the banks of the Vardar, an
American Twin Huey utility helicopter roared over us at treetop level. A
grinning door-gunner gave us a thumbs-up and the kids cheered wildly.
Startled at the appearance of a NATO aircraft so blatantly violating
Macedonian air space, I asked out loud, "What the hell are the Yanks
doing here?"
One of the older boys looked at me sternly and said, "They're here to
help us, or don't you think they should?"
I noticed that the helicopter had veered west and was heading straight
towards the Grupcin ambush site. Dodging the boy's question, I pointed
at the now distant chopper and said, "At least with NATO up there,
things should be a little safer."
There was a ford across the Vardar about a kilometre from the Macedonian
police punkt at Saraj. Crossing the river, I knew that the police could
see us. I just hoped that they would not be unduly alarmed by a
bicyclist surrounded by a cluster of teenage Albanians. I came out on
the highway on a slight rise, just out of sight of the roadblock.
With my heavy briefcase clamped across the handlebars and my camera bag
tightly slung across my back, I set off on the 25-kilometre ride to
Grupcin. I have never been much of a cyclist and with my unbalanced
baggage, I dared not lift a hand to wave goodbye to my Albanian escorts.
Shouting thank you over my shoulder, I wobbled away.
It did not take long for the euphoria of having slipped past the police
to evaporate. I was overcome by an overwhelming sense of anxiety and
fear. As I climbed the first long slope on the eerily empty four-lane
highway, I suddenly felt very much alone. I realized that nobody had any
idea of my whereabouts and that I was riding a dilapidated bicycle into
the middle of a combat zone. I convinced myself that I could not go back
now, and that I would be able to visit the ambush site and make it all
the way back to Tetovo before dusk.
The ride was proving to be much more strenuous than I had thought it
would be. The bicycle had seen better days - a slight warp in the front
wheel prevented me from picking up any speed, even on the downhill
stretches. The seat was set too low and I could not peddle safely while
standing for fear that my shoes would slip. My butt was also beginning
to feel the effects of not having a ridden a bike for at least ten
years.
I had not seen another living soul since I got back on the highway, and
without a watch or map, it was difficult to measure my progress. Ahead,
plumes of smoke were rising above the horizon and the dull thump of
artillery was becoming louder. As my fears mounted, I began talking out
loud to the bicycle, coaxing it along.
Two Hind gunships suddenly roared overhead less than 30 metres off the
ground, the aircrew probably as startled at the sight of a lone cyclist
as I was of them. About 800 meters ahead of me, they hovered directly
over the highway and began firing rockets at an unseen UCK position.
Startled by the blasts, I almost fell off the bicycle. Empty metal
casings, each weighing approximately one kilogram, came plummeting down
all over the highway and bounced off the asphalt with a curious metallic
pinging sound. When I reached the spot where the gunships had fired, I
stopped briefly to pick up one of the still-hot rocket tubes as a
souvenir.
I was beginning to wonder if I had somehow passed Grupcin when, off to
my right, I heard a muffled hiss, and turned to see a camouflaged figure
on a grassy slope, pointing in my direction. Two other armed men joined
him and took up firing positions. They were about 150 meters away, but
they offered no formal challenge. I could not tell whether they were UCK
or Macedonian security forces, but assumed that this was close to the
ambush site, and with so much air activity about, the UCK would be long
gone. I kept riding straight down the middle of the road, hoping that I
looked more ridiculous than threatening. At any moment I expected to be
either shot or at least challenged and stopped.
Just as I was beginning to believe that I was in the clear, I saw a pair
of flashing headlights coming towards me in the oncoming lane. I assumed
that the hidden gunmen had radioed for a mobile police unit to check me
out. I was already thinking about how I could get rid of the bike and
hitch a ride when the white Mercedes roared past me. The flashing lights
were not a signal for me to stop, but to get the hell out of the way.
I passed the burnt-out hulk of a civilian Yugo, with the charred remains
of the driver still inside, the flames flickering at the edge of a
blackened field. A little farther on, I rode past an abandoned
Macedonian army bunker.
A few minutes later, I came upon four armoured personnel carriers in the
middle of the road, their turrets constantly traversing in a threatening
manner. Ahead of them were the shattered remains of two army vehicles,
their blackened hulks still smoldering.
As I approached, a dismounted soldier spotted me and shouted an alarm.
The turret of the rearmost APC swung around and the machinegun barrel
was depressed until it centred squarely on my chest. I could not
understand what the soldier said, but knew immediately that I was not
welcome here.
A sergeant gestured for me to raise my hands in the air. With my
briefcase on the handlebar and only one brake handle, this proved to be
rather difficult. About 20 metres away from him, I dismounted and walked
toward him with my hands raised high. He was not only angry with me but
also very edgy about the situation. Behind him, I could see body parts
of Macedonian soldiers strewn across the road.
After examining my passport and press credentials, the sergeant shouted,
"What the f--- are you doing here? The road is closed!"
Realizing he meant to intimidate me, I instead shouted back my own
question: "If the road is closed, then how did I get here?" Startled by
my outburst, he calmed down a little and asked where I got on the
highway. I told him past Saraj, and that I came here directly from
Kondovo. Playing dumb, I asked, "Is there some sort of trouble ahead?"
He didn't wish to elaborate and kept telling me that I must go back, as
this place was too dangerous. When I asked why the other Macedonian
patrol had not stopped me, this news puzzled him. When I explained to
him exactly where I had seen the figures on the hillside, it was
apparent from his reaction that they must have been UCK.
Not only were he and his detachment stuck in the open in a killing
ground, but now I had also brought the unwelcome news that the UCK had
stepped in behind them. He became even more insistent that I leave the
site immediately and ride all the way back to Skopje.
I knew that, physically, I could not manage it even if I had wanted to.
My (backside) was killing me and I was so dehydrated that I was no
longer sweating. Then I spotted three Albanian civilians; an old man and
what appeared to be a young married couple standing beside the road. I
asked the sergeant why I could not simply stay with them.
"Just forget that you ever saw these people," he snapped, and went over
to the nearest APC to use the radio.
A member of the Wolves special forces had overheard our conversation.
Lowering his voice, he said, "Look, just get your bike and get out of
sight. Go back a couple of kilometres and hide beside the road. We hope
to have the road to Tetovo clear in a couple of hours."
As I started to ask another question, he cut me off. "Just get going
before that terrified idiot kills you." I hurried back to my bicycle.
I decided to get off the highway and try to find a telephone to contact
the Ottawa Citizen. I hoped to dictate a quick story, and at least let
someone know where I was.
I retraced my route back a couple of kilometres and turned onto a small
farm track. The first house I approached appeared to be deserted. I
called out, hoping to attract the owner's attention but the sudden roar
of two gunships coming in low drowned me out. The helicopters passed
directly overhead and began to plaster the next hillside, meaning the
UCK forces had cut the road to Skopje. Getting no answer at the
farmhouse, I pushed my bicycle up the steep path towards the hamlet I
could see about a kilometre away.
I had barely gone 60 meters when two UCK soldiers emerged from the woods
lining the track. To say that they startled me would be an
understatement. One had a Kalashnikov, the other a pistol, and both were
aimed directly at me. I dropped the bicycle and put up my hands.
The one with the pistol hissed in German, "Get off the road, you idiot.
Do you want to get us all killed?"
I grabbed my briefcase and camera bag and plunged into a thicket with
them.
"Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?" he asked.
When I told him I was a Canadian journalist, his demeanour changed
completely. Holstering his pistol, he smiled broadly and said, "Welcome,
my friend."
From our vantage point it was still possible to see the Macedonian
armoured column at the ambush site. My new friend advised me that it was
dangerous for me here, and he used his cell phone to call for a car and
driver to take me further away from the highway.
Within minutes, a little red Yugo came racing down the farm track and
braked beside us. Hiding the bicycle under some branches, I hurried over
and got in. Our destination was the hamlet I had been heading towards,
which I learned was Bojane.
In the central square, about a dozen cheerful Albanian men and teenage
boys came over to greet me. I asked for some mineral water, which I
drank thirstily, and then a telephone. Several of them produced their
cellular phones, even after I told them that I wanted to put a call
through to Canada.
I reached Bruce Garvey at the Citizen and brought him up to date. He had
heard of the ambush on the wire service, then I informed him that I had
been in the middle of the fighting. It was not a great phone connection,
but I dictated the details as best I could. Garvey assured me he would
be able to piece together a story from what I told him.
Not wanting to worry my family with my predicament, nor for them to
learn of it in the morning paper, I asked Garvey to call my wife early
the next morning in order to brace her. He wished me luck and I signed
off.
During my phone call, several Albanians had crowded around, trying to
follow my story. When I finished, one of the older men asked, "Why
didn't you tell them about how our women and children are suffering?"
When I replied that I hadn't seen any women or children, I immediately
realized that I had taken his bait.
A few men escorted me to the basements of some of Bojane's larger
houses. In each crowded cellar, there were about two dozen women and
children sitting on mats around the floor, rocking back and forth and
pretending to cry from fear of the Macedonian police, I was told. I say
pretending because the whole scene was so badly acted, it was
embarrassing to be a part of. I knew that I was expected to express my
shock and sympathy, but seeing the young girls laughing behind their
hands at each other's phony tears made it impossible for me to feign
compassion.
When my guide asked if I would like to photograph this "suffering," I
lied and said that I was out of film.
"They have been down in this shelter since the fighting in June," he
told me. When I asked if all they did was sit and cry all day, every
day, he replied with a straight face, "Yes."
As we were leaving, I glanced back and saw young children spilling out
eagerly into the back garden, and teenage girls watching our passage
from an upstairs window.
Scott Taylor is a military affairs columnist for The Herald and editor
of the magazine Esprit de Corps.
this is a short excerpt from the book "Diary of an Uncivil War" by
Scott Taylor. You could obtain it in every major book store in Canada,
or by contacting the author/publisher at : espritdecorp@...
The book is easy to read. In his book Mr. Taylor writes about the war in
Kosovo and Macedonia the way he experienced it. Similar to Ernest
Hemingway, Taylor sees all sides of the conflict not only through the
eyes of a military reporter but also as a human being.
Boba Borojevic
====================
> http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2002/02/24/f289.raw.html
Sunday, February 24, 2002 Back The Halifax Herald Limited
---
Misadventures in an uncivil war
The wreckage of a Macedonian vehicle marks the Aug. 8, 2001 ambush site
on the Skopje-Tetovo highway. Two policemen were killed and 14 wounded
in this attack.
This passenger bus was another casualty of the Aug. 8, 2001 Grupcin
ambush. It was attacked in full view of a NATO camp 800 meters beyond.
Andrej Ginovski / The Associated Press
A police officer walks behind a police armored personnel carrier through
the Macedonian village of Ratae. Macedonian police still guard the
village fearing attacks from ethnic Albanian splinter insurgent groups.
By Scott Taylor / Special to The Sunday Herald
Editor's note: Military writer Scott Taylor spent some time last year in
the middle of the conflict between Macedonia and ethnic Albanian rebels.
Here is an excerpt from his forthcoming book on the conflict, Diary of
an Uncivil War
Skopje, Aug. 8, 2001 - DESPITE THE FACT that the weather forecast called
for the temperature to soar above 40 C, I was wearing a long-sleeved
shirt and tie. I had an interview later in the morning with Macedonia's
new defence minister, Vladimir Buchkovski, and I felt a certain amount
of decorum was necessary.
I hitched a ride back to the Macedonian capital. Arriving in the city
centre before 9:30 a.m., we agreed to meet for a late supper back at our
hotel in Tetovo (about 30 km west of Skopje, near the Kosovo border). We
had no idea that at that moment all hell was breaking loose on the
stretch of road we had just traveled over.
The first inkling I had that something was wrong was the flurry of
activity at the Macedonian Defence Ministry. A crowd had gathered in the
guarded entranceway and were trying to get in, while on the other side
of a barrier people were trying to reclaim their identification cards in
order to get out.
It took me a while to work my way forward to a harassed military
policeman at the reception window. As soon as I told him I was there to
interview Minister Buchkovski, the young corporal put a finger to his
temple and asked incredulously, "Are you f-----? Do you have any idea of
what is going on?"
When I tried to explain to him that I didn't, I was contemptuously
dismissed.
A short, pot-bellied colonel at the rear of the queue had seen and
understood the curt exchange. Politely, he explained to me that the UCK
had just mounted a major offensive. The Tetovo-Skopje highway had been
cut off and that many soldiers were killed in an ambush. Furthermore,
there could be no interview with Buchkovski today because he was trapped
in Tetovo. The helpful colonel did not know when or if there would be a
press conference, as the information was too sketchy. He suggested that
I go to the official press accreditation counter for an update on the
situation.
As I walked to the nearby foreign media office, a flight of Mi-24 Hind
helicopters flew overhead towards the Tetovo highway. Unfortunately,
Atanas Georgievski was the only person on duty in the office. He knew
nothing of the UCK attack, and without a mutual language (he spoke only
Macedonian and Greek, a decided drawback when dealing with the foreign
media) we were reduced to communicating in sign language.
In this manner, I learned that I was one of only five foreign
journalists registered in Macedonia. The others were an American, two
from a Dutch television crew and a reporter from Abu Dhabi. As it seemed
unlikely that the Macedonian military would hold a press conference, I
contacted Rade Lesko at Skynet Television. He told me that ten soldiers
had been killed and 14 wounded. A number of civilians had also been
attacked along the 42 kilometres of highway that separate Tetovo and
Skopje, and the Macedonian army had closed the road.
"Until when?" I asked stupidly. "Until we win the battle, I would
assume," Lesko answered. The ambush had taken place outside the village
of Grupcin, about halfway between the two cities.
I had no way of knowing whether or not this was part of a sustained
offensive by the UCK or an isolated attack. However, with most of my
gear and travel documents still in Tetovo, I had to get back as quickly
as possible.
I hailed a taxi and told the driver I wanted to go to Grupcin. He had
been listening to his radio and told me it was not possible. "The road
is closed," he said. I showed him my press pass and told him that as a
foreign correspondent I had clearance to get through. He bought it, and
we set off.
The bluff worked at the first police checkpoint as well. However, at
Saraj, a village on the western outskirts of Skopje, the Macedonian
security forces were turning back all traffic, and there was a lineup of
vehicles parked along the roadside. A crowd of curious drivers had
gathered at the head of the column, anxious to obtain word of the
battle's progress.
My driver was only too ready to obey the policeman at the barricade. As
soon as he stopped and I stepped out of the car, he turned around and
sped off back to Skopje without waiting to be paid.
There were at least two dozen heavily armed security personnel at the
Saraj roadblock, along with armoured personnel carriers and a sandbagged
punkt, which appeared to be the headquarters. I was hoping to talk my
way through by telling the commanding officer that it was important for
a foreign journalist to be on the scene to confirm the UCK's ambush at
Grupcin and present the "big picture."
A surly-looking policeman came towards me shouting "f--- off" or its
Macedonian equivalent before I even had time to state my case. I
therefore politely asked to see his superior.
Overhearing the conversation, a hatless policeman lounging in the shade
nearby yelled out that he was in charge. After a few moments of talking
to him, I realized my case was hopeless. Even when I asked for details
of the ambush and the current situation, he just shrugged and said, "Ask
the Defence Ministry spokesman."
Admitting defeat, I turned to the policeman who had first approached me
and said, "Izvini (I'm sorry)." As I picked up my briefcase, he suddenly
lunged forward and struck me across the chest with his Kalashnikov.
"Ne ma izvini!" (No, 'I'm sorry!') he shouted. Surprised and knocked off
balance, I was just regaining my composure when he struck me again, this
time more forcefully, still shouting, "Ne ma izvini!"
As I walked back towards the line of parked cars, the police and the
assembled onlookers were all laughing. I decided then and there that,
whatever it took, I would get through to Tetovo.
Kondovo, Aug. 8, 2001
(Wednesday afternoon)
I climbed a hillside in order to get around the police checkpoint.
Without a map, I reasoned that if I headed west, then south, I could get
back onto the main highway at the bottom of the hill. I came across a
rail line, which I wrongly assumed led to Grupcin and Tetovo. After
walking nearly three kilometres, I learned of my mistake from a trio of
young Albanian boys who were crossing the tracks on their way back from
swimming. They had been quite startled by my sudden appearance. Drenched
in sweat, dressed in a shirt and tie, and carrying a briefcase and
camera bag, I must have been a very strange sight indeed.
The boys were puzzled when I asked how far it was to the highway. My
dead reckoning had been correct, but I had forgotten to factor in the
curve of the Vardar River, which ran through the valley. To get to
Grupcin, I would have to retrace my steps, almost all the way back to
the police punkt in Saraj.
Footsore from walking in my leather dress shoes, I asked the boys if I
could rent a bicycle. This request amused them and they ran off ahead of
me to the village of Kondovo to see if they could find one.
News of the approaching stranger soon spread throughout this little
Albanian village, and when I arrived in Kondovo, I was swarmed by
curious children. An uncle of one of the boys I had met on the tracks
joined the group and tried his best to dissuade me from making the trip.
There is much fighting in the valley; it is very dangerous right now,"
he said. "Join my family for lunch and we will arrange for a driver to
take you to Tetovo via Kosovo tonight."
He told me that he could put me in touch with the local UCK commanders
as they still had routes open. I really did not want to spend too much
time with the UCK, especially with copies of my book in my briefcase
that had not been well received in Kosovo. Finally realizing that I was
determined to get to Grupcin, he produced a battered old mountain bike.
Using his tractor engine as a compressor, he re-inflated the rear tire
and explained that only the front brake worked. After sharing a midday
meal with his family, I changed from my sweat-soaked shirt and tie into
the clean T-shirt they gave me and bade them farewell.
A number of young Albanians offered to guide me across the Vardar and
when I started off, they ran along beside me. From the direction of
Tetovo, the crump of far-off mortars could be clearly heard and columns
of black smoke rose from the next valley. Macedonian fighter jets were
visible overhead and helicopter gunships occasionally appeared above the
ridgeline.
Things were really heating up. As we reached the banks of the Vardar, an
American Twin Huey utility helicopter roared over us at treetop level. A
grinning door-gunner gave us a thumbs-up and the kids cheered wildly.
Startled at the appearance of a NATO aircraft so blatantly violating
Macedonian air space, I asked out loud, "What the hell are the Yanks
doing here?"
One of the older boys looked at me sternly and said, "They're here to
help us, or don't you think they should?"
I noticed that the helicopter had veered west and was heading straight
towards the Grupcin ambush site. Dodging the boy's question, I pointed
at the now distant chopper and said, "At least with NATO up there,
things should be a little safer."
There was a ford across the Vardar about a kilometre from the Macedonian
police punkt at Saraj. Crossing the river, I knew that the police could
see us. I just hoped that they would not be unduly alarmed by a
bicyclist surrounded by a cluster of teenage Albanians. I came out on
the highway on a slight rise, just out of sight of the roadblock.
With my heavy briefcase clamped across the handlebars and my camera bag
tightly slung across my back, I set off on the 25-kilometre ride to
Grupcin. I have never been much of a cyclist and with my unbalanced
baggage, I dared not lift a hand to wave goodbye to my Albanian escorts.
Shouting thank you over my shoulder, I wobbled away.
It did not take long for the euphoria of having slipped past the police
to evaporate. I was overcome by an overwhelming sense of anxiety and
fear. As I climbed the first long slope on the eerily empty four-lane
highway, I suddenly felt very much alone. I realized that nobody had any
idea of my whereabouts and that I was riding a dilapidated bicycle into
the middle of a combat zone. I convinced myself that I could not go back
now, and that I would be able to visit the ambush site and make it all
the way back to Tetovo before dusk.
The ride was proving to be much more strenuous than I had thought it
would be. The bicycle had seen better days - a slight warp in the front
wheel prevented me from picking up any speed, even on the downhill
stretches. The seat was set too low and I could not peddle safely while
standing for fear that my shoes would slip. My butt was also beginning
to feel the effects of not having a ridden a bike for at least ten
years.
I had not seen another living soul since I got back on the highway, and
without a watch or map, it was difficult to measure my progress. Ahead,
plumes of smoke were rising above the horizon and the dull thump of
artillery was becoming louder. As my fears mounted, I began talking out
loud to the bicycle, coaxing it along.
Two Hind gunships suddenly roared overhead less than 30 metres off the
ground, the aircrew probably as startled at the sight of a lone cyclist
as I was of them. About 800 meters ahead of me, they hovered directly
over the highway and began firing rockets at an unseen UCK position.
Startled by the blasts, I almost fell off the bicycle. Empty metal
casings, each weighing approximately one kilogram, came plummeting down
all over the highway and bounced off the asphalt with a curious metallic
pinging sound. When I reached the spot where the gunships had fired, I
stopped briefly to pick up one of the still-hot rocket tubes as a
souvenir.
I was beginning to wonder if I had somehow passed Grupcin when, off to
my right, I heard a muffled hiss, and turned to see a camouflaged figure
on a grassy slope, pointing in my direction. Two other armed men joined
him and took up firing positions. They were about 150 meters away, but
they offered no formal challenge. I could not tell whether they were UCK
or Macedonian security forces, but assumed that this was close to the
ambush site, and with so much air activity about, the UCK would be long
gone. I kept riding straight down the middle of the road, hoping that I
looked more ridiculous than threatening. At any moment I expected to be
either shot or at least challenged and stopped.
Just as I was beginning to believe that I was in the clear, I saw a pair
of flashing headlights coming towards me in the oncoming lane. I assumed
that the hidden gunmen had radioed for a mobile police unit to check me
out. I was already thinking about how I could get rid of the bike and
hitch a ride when the white Mercedes roared past me. The flashing lights
were not a signal for me to stop, but to get the hell out of the way.
I passed the burnt-out hulk of a civilian Yugo, with the charred remains
of the driver still inside, the flames flickering at the edge of a
blackened field. A little farther on, I rode past an abandoned
Macedonian army bunker.
A few minutes later, I came upon four armoured personnel carriers in the
middle of the road, their turrets constantly traversing in a threatening
manner. Ahead of them were the shattered remains of two army vehicles,
their blackened hulks still smoldering.
As I approached, a dismounted soldier spotted me and shouted an alarm.
The turret of the rearmost APC swung around and the machinegun barrel
was depressed until it centred squarely on my chest. I could not
understand what the soldier said, but knew immediately that I was not
welcome here.
A sergeant gestured for me to raise my hands in the air. With my
briefcase on the handlebar and only one brake handle, this proved to be
rather difficult. About 20 metres away from him, I dismounted and walked
toward him with my hands raised high. He was not only angry with me but
also very edgy about the situation. Behind him, I could see body parts
of Macedonian soldiers strewn across the road.
After examining my passport and press credentials, the sergeant shouted,
"What the f--- are you doing here? The road is closed!"
Realizing he meant to intimidate me, I instead shouted back my own
question: "If the road is closed, then how did I get here?" Startled by
my outburst, he calmed down a little and asked where I got on the
highway. I told him past Saraj, and that I came here directly from
Kondovo. Playing dumb, I asked, "Is there some sort of trouble ahead?"
He didn't wish to elaborate and kept telling me that I must go back, as
this place was too dangerous. When I asked why the other Macedonian
patrol had not stopped me, this news puzzled him. When I explained to
him exactly where I had seen the figures on the hillside, it was
apparent from his reaction that they must have been UCK.
Not only were he and his detachment stuck in the open in a killing
ground, but now I had also brought the unwelcome news that the UCK had
stepped in behind them. He became even more insistent that I leave the
site immediately and ride all the way back to Skopje.
I knew that, physically, I could not manage it even if I had wanted to.
My (backside) was killing me and I was so dehydrated that I was no
longer sweating. Then I spotted three Albanian civilians; an old man and
what appeared to be a young married couple standing beside the road. I
asked the sergeant why I could not simply stay with them.
"Just forget that you ever saw these people," he snapped, and went over
to the nearest APC to use the radio.
A member of the Wolves special forces had overheard our conversation.
Lowering his voice, he said, "Look, just get your bike and get out of
sight. Go back a couple of kilometres and hide beside the road. We hope
to have the road to Tetovo clear in a couple of hours."
As I started to ask another question, he cut me off. "Just get going
before that terrified idiot kills you." I hurried back to my bicycle.
I decided to get off the highway and try to find a telephone to contact
the Ottawa Citizen. I hoped to dictate a quick story, and at least let
someone know where I was.
I retraced my route back a couple of kilometres and turned onto a small
farm track. The first house I approached appeared to be deserted. I
called out, hoping to attract the owner's attention but the sudden roar
of two gunships coming in low drowned me out. The helicopters passed
directly overhead and began to plaster the next hillside, meaning the
UCK forces had cut the road to Skopje. Getting no answer at the
farmhouse, I pushed my bicycle up the steep path towards the hamlet I
could see about a kilometre away.
I had barely gone 60 meters when two UCK soldiers emerged from the woods
lining the track. To say that they startled me would be an
understatement. One had a Kalashnikov, the other a pistol, and both were
aimed directly at me. I dropped the bicycle and put up my hands.
The one with the pistol hissed in German, "Get off the road, you idiot.
Do you want to get us all killed?"
I grabbed my briefcase and camera bag and plunged into a thicket with
them.
"Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?" he asked.
When I told him I was a Canadian journalist, his demeanour changed
completely. Holstering his pistol, he smiled broadly and said, "Welcome,
my friend."
From our vantage point it was still possible to see the Macedonian
armoured column at the ambush site. My new friend advised me that it was
dangerous for me here, and he used his cell phone to call for a car and
driver to take me further away from the highway.
Within minutes, a little red Yugo came racing down the farm track and
braked beside us. Hiding the bicycle under some branches, I hurried over
and got in. Our destination was the hamlet I had been heading towards,
which I learned was Bojane.
In the central square, about a dozen cheerful Albanian men and teenage
boys came over to greet me. I asked for some mineral water, which I
drank thirstily, and then a telephone. Several of them produced their
cellular phones, even after I told them that I wanted to put a call
through to Canada.
I reached Bruce Garvey at the Citizen and brought him up to date. He had
heard of the ambush on the wire service, then I informed him that I had
been in the middle of the fighting. It was not a great phone connection,
but I dictated the details as best I could. Garvey assured me he would
be able to piece together a story from what I told him.
Not wanting to worry my family with my predicament, nor for them to
learn of it in the morning paper, I asked Garvey to call my wife early
the next morning in order to brace her. He wished me luck and I signed
off.
During my phone call, several Albanians had crowded around, trying to
follow my story. When I finished, one of the older men asked, "Why
didn't you tell them about how our women and children are suffering?"
When I replied that I hadn't seen any women or children, I immediately
realized that I had taken his bait.
A few men escorted me to the basements of some of Bojane's larger
houses. In each crowded cellar, there were about two dozen women and
children sitting on mats around the floor, rocking back and forth and
pretending to cry from fear of the Macedonian police, I was told. I say
pretending because the whole scene was so badly acted, it was
embarrassing to be a part of. I knew that I was expected to express my
shock and sympathy, but seeing the young girls laughing behind their
hands at each other's phony tears made it impossible for me to feign
compassion.
When my guide asked if I would like to photograph this "suffering," I
lied and said that I was out of film.
"They have been down in this shelter since the fighting in June," he
told me. When I asked if all they did was sit and cry all day, every
day, he replied with a straight face, "Yes."
As we were leaving, I glanced back and saw young children spilling out
eagerly into the back garden, and teenage girls watching our passage
from an upstairs window.
Scott Taylor is a military affairs columnist for The Herald and editor
of the magazine Esprit de Corps.
> http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/worthington.html
February 22, 2002
The Balkan connection
Books says al-Qaida now active in Macedonia
By PETER WORTHINGTON -- Toronto Sun
An irony of the war against terrorism since Sept. 11 is that while the
prime enemy was Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network, not
Afghanistan's Taliban regime, it's the Taliban that has been crushed,
and not al-Qaida.
Osama and al-Qaida have become household words, yet they remain shadowy,
ill-defined, unfathomable. We are routinely told al-Qaida-trained
suicidal assassins are scattered in something like 68 countries, poised
to do dreadful things that they believe will get them into paradise,
where 72 virgins await to give them a martyr's welcome.
What most don't know, and few in the media have paid much attention to,
is the Balkan connection with al-Qaida. Much to their embarrassment now,
NATO and the Americans realize they may have unwittingly contributed to
al-Qaida fronts in Bosnia and Kosovo prior to Sept. 11.
One who knows more than most about the western-orchestrated chaos in the
Balkans is Scott Taylor, the peripatetic publisher of the military
magazine Esprit de Corps. He's been back and forth to the area
innumerable times, especially during NATO'S air war against Serbia and,
more recently, to note simmering unrest in Macedonia - where
al-Qaida-trained Albanian insurgents seek to overthrow the government.
Taylor wrote a book about Serbia and the Kosovo war (Inat: Images of
Serbia and the Kosovo Conflict), and this week has a new book about
Kosovo overlapping into Macedonia, which is a target in the unspoken
campaign for a Greater Albania, that involves al-Qaida and various
Muslim extremist groups.
This book, Diary of an Uncivil War, is ahead of the wave in that it
anticipates the next phase of the Balkan wars. Al-Qaida and Islamic
Jihad fighters have been active in Muslim areas of the Balkans ever
since Slobodan Milosevic began a megalomaniac campaign that resulted in
a shrinking of Serbia.
Bunked with villagers
Taylor's book is based on what he witnessed in travels in the area
during war - experiences different from those of establishment
journalists on expense accounts, with rented cars, translators and the
best hotels. Taylor bunked in with local villagers, bummed rides, took
buses, depended on locals for food.
There's authenticity in Taylor's stuff that's often missing in
conventional news reports. His adventures are one thing, and give a
flavour of the Balkans, but on a more serious level, his is a withering
reflection of western (U.S.) policy gone awry.
Today, Macedonia's independence is threatened by rebellion led by
Kosovar Albanians who fought the Serbs. The European Union, NATO and the
U.S. downplay this, but Albanian insurgents in Macedonia are well armed
and financed from abroad.
Reports suggest some 5,000 al-Qaida terrorists have been trained in
Bosnia and Kosovo. In January, the Americans announced the capture of
Algerian al-Qaida members in Sarajevo.
The fragile peace signed last August giving more power to Albanians
living in Macedonia, is crumbling. The NATO- and U.S.-armed rebel
National Liberation Army in northern Macedonia continues to harass.
Another Albanian insurgent group, the Real National Liberation Army, is
led by a mysterious figure who calls himself "The Raven," who is prone
to give interviews to journalists who publicize him and his cause.
NATO Secretary-General George Robertson has condemned "extremists on
both sides" who resort to violence, conveniently overlooking that
tactics being used against Macedonia are similar to what the allies
supported in Kosovo against Serbia.
Montenegro also fears Albanian subversion. Albanian maps that show a
"Greater Albania" that includes parts of neighbouring countries, are
ignored by our media and governments, just as they ignore the presence
of foreign Muslim extremists in the Balkans.
Some al-Qaida members have been given Bosnian citizenship.
This is pretty significant, but has largely been ignored in President
Bush's "war on terrorism."
Taylor's book, which touches on all this, is not an academic exercise or
partisan polemic, but based on first-hand experiences and findings.
Ordinary Canadian soldiers who served in the Balkans, first as UN
peacekeepers, then as NATO peacemakers, often have greater understanding
of the area than politicians, academics and policy-makers in Washington
and elsewhere.
So Taylor has a view that's closer to reality than pundits who observe
from afar - and whom history proves are wrong far more often than they
are right.
---
To contact the author:
Esprit de Corps Magazine & Books
#204 - 1066 Somerset St. W.
Ottawa, ON K1Y 4T3, Canada
Tel: (613) 725-5060
Fax: (613) 725-1019
www.espritdecorps.on.ca
===*===
> http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2002/02/24/f120.raw.html
Sunday, February 24, 2002 Back The Halifax Herald Limited
Balkans will likely re-erupt -author
By Bill Spurr / Military Reporter
A new book by Herald columnist Scott Taylor
predicts another round of violence in the
Balkans as early as this spring,
as soon as the snow melts.
In Diary of an Uncivil War, which was
released Friday, Taylor writes that observers
of the region are bracing for
an Albanian offensive following the
melting of the winter snows, an
offensive the presence of 50,000 NATO
soldiers seems unable to stop.
"The Albanians have reconstituted the army
that they were supposed to have disbanded
... which is a harbinger of a spring offensive,"
Mr. Taylor said in an interview Thursday.
There are 1,400 Canadian troops in Bosnia
and smaller groups in Kosovo and Croatia.
Only the presence of western
armies prevents war, writes Mr. Taylor.
"They're sitting on top of a powder keg in
Bosnia, there's no long-term solution,"
he said. "And if they leave, it'll
all go up tomorrow."
Adding to the tension is the fact that on
Tuesday, the UN refused to recognize the
boundary between Kosovo and
Macedonia, and Mr. Taylor, recently
returned from his 16th visit to the
area, thinks the survival of Macedonia
depends on its ability to control its
own border.
Mr. Taylor said the Americans are taking a
anti-Macedonia stand, and are taking
care to ensure the safety of Albanians.
He quotes an American general in Kosovo
as saying any interference from the
Macedonians will result in the U.S.
crushing their army "like a pop can."
Aside from a significant military presence
in the area, Canada also has a large
Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian
population, totalling perhaps
three-quarters of a million people.
"After (the Second World War), there was a
tremendous influx, and since the (Balkan)
war began we have been one of the
two major countries to take in refugees
from there, (along with Australia),"
said Mr. Taylor.
He also writes that many westerners have an
over-simplified view of the conflict
in the war-torn Balkans, in which
Serbians are considered evil and the
other factions good.
He said during the war many western
reporters compared Serbian soldiers
to Nazi storm troopers and are now
ignoring legitimate arguments being
made by former Serbian president
Slobodan Milosevic at his war crimes trial.
"I think he's already pronounced guilty,"
said Mr. Taylor, who pointed out that
as recently as 1996, the U.S. was a
staunch supporter of the Milosevic regime.
===*===
The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, February 22, 2002
U.S. backed Albanian rebels with al-Qaeda links, book says:
Author predicts renewed Balkan war
By Bruce Garvey
The Balkans will likely be plunged into a new round of war as
early as this spring, with fighting centred in Macedonia, according
to a new book by Ottawa military writer Scott Taylor.
Diary of an Uncivil War warns that despite concessions made by the
Macedonian government, ethnic Albanians and their guerrilla army,
made up of Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, are preparing for a
major offensive in the region. The wildcard will be whether the U.S.
government backs away from its support of the Albanians in their
quest to take control of parts of the region they claim as theirs,
Mr. Taylor writes.
"While everyone is bracing for an Albanian offensive following the
melting of the winter snows, what remains unclear is whether the
U.S. will continue to support the guerrillas," Mr. Taylor writes.
"Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated that the U.S. will
scale back its military presence in the Balkans. But it will not be
easy for the Americans to disengage themselves from the mess they
created without setting off another round of factional violence."
The ethnic Albanians and their guerrilla army are intent on carving
out what they call "Greater Albania" -- an area that includes 90,000
square kilometres of Kosovo, Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and
Montenegro.
Mr. Taylor has covered the fighting and political situation in the
Balkans over the past several years for the Citizen. Diary of an
Uncivil War, published by Esprit de Corps books, has just been
released in stores.
A news report this week from Macedonia includes warnings from
western intelligence officials that former KLA guerrillas and
Albanian extremists have used profits from a Taliban drug-smuggling
ring to re-arm themselves. The money has been used to buy
surface-to-air missiles that give the Albanians the ability to shoot
down Macedonian helicopter gunships, one of that force's main
deterrents against the guerrillas.
Mr. Taylor's book chronicles his first-hand observations of
fighting in Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia over three years. It also
outlines the strong support by former U.S. president Bill Clinton's
government for the KLA, despite the links the guerrilla group has to
extremist Muslim organizations such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.
Mr. Taylor writes that the U.S. military has supplied the group
with equipment and advisers, including former senior U.S. army
officers, who have been training the Albanian guerrillas.
In some cases, the U.S. support has been blatant. In August 2001
U.S. troops were to disarm 500 KLA guerrillas and transport them to
camps in Kosovo. Instead, they transported the men, still armed, to
a location inside Macedonia near an ethnic Albanian stronghold.
There the guerrillas promptly resumed their attacks.
But the Clinton administration's unofficial policy of supporting
the ethnic Albanians and KLA has backfired and has only created
instability in the region, Mr. Taylor argues.
The current crisis in Macedonia began last March, when Albanian
guerrillas staged attacks from inside NATO-occupied Kosovo, using
weapons that NATO was supposed to have confiscated, Mr. Taylor
reports.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. also highlight the folly
of Mr. Clinton's policies in the Balkans. Over the past decade,
mujahedeen fighters, and in particular Mr. bin Laden's followers,
have fought in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and have benefited from
the U.S. military support. Previously, Macedonian intelligence
officials had tried to warn western governments that Arab and Afghan
volunteers form the backbone of organizations such as the KLA.
An exclusive excerpt from Diary of an Uncivil War by Scott Taylor
will appear tomorrow (Saturday, Feb 23, 2002) in the Ottawa Citizen.
===*===
GRAVISSIMO AFFRONTO DIPLOMATICO: USA E KFOR
NON RICONOSCONO L'ACCORDO JUGOSLAVO-MACEDONE SUI CONFINI!!!
YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT ASKS KOFI ANNAN TO EXERT HIS INFLUENCE ON KFOR AND
UNMIK
BELGRADE, Feb. 21 (Beta) - Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica asked
UN general secretary Kofi Annan on Feb. 21 to exert his influence on the
high representatives of KFOR and UNMIK in Kosovo and Metohija to observe
the articles of the Agreement on the Yugoslav-Macedonian border.
"Your Excellency, with grave concern and surprise I received the
statements of KFOR and UNMIK high representatives in Kosovo and Metohija
doubting the legality of the Agreement," reads the letter Kostunica sent
to Annan.
"I would like to ask you to... exert influence on UNMIK and KFOR
representatives in Kosovo and Metohija to observe the articles of the
ratified Agreement on the Yugoslav-Macedonian border and abstain from
similar public statements in the future, because it is clear that they
do not serve the efforts of the international community to strengthen
regional stability but, on the contrary, serve the efforts of those who
advocate unacceptable solutions," added Kostunica.
Kostunica says the Agreement, concluded on Feb. 23, 2001, has been
welcomed by all international factors, including the EU and the US and
the participants of the Summit of state presidents and prime ministers
of southeastern Europe held in Skopje on Feb. 23, 2001.
MACEDONIAN GOVERNMENT STUNNED, WILL SEND DEMARCHE TO UNITED NATIONS
SKOPJE, Feb. 21 (Tanjug) - Macedonian government is stunned by KFOR Gen.
Keith Huber's statement, which is supported by UMNIK, as well, saying
that the Kosovo part of Macedonian-Yugoslav border line is illegal.
The Macedonian Interior Ministry has announced it would send a demarche
to the United Nations and NATO, both KFOR and UNMIK being under their
wing.
The Ministry said that the demarche would focus on the Security Council
Resolution 1244 on Kosovo, which is obligatory for everyone, including
the UN mission, and which does not give KFOR and UNMIK officials the
right to define the document in a way that intensifies the tensions in
the region and questions the Yugoslav and Macedonian sovereignty.
The Ministry views Huber's statement as harmful and unacceptable, and
points out that it is beyond KFOR and UNMIK's mandate, and that it is in
contradiction with efforts aimed at establishing lasting peace in the
region.
The Ministry also reminded of the fact that the agreement on border
lines, which had been signed by Yugoslav and Macedonian representatives
a year ago, had been welcomed by NATO Secretary General George
Robertson, EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten, and then
Stability Pact head Bodo Hombach, who had attended the signing of the
document, as well as by top international officials, including those
from the UN and the European Union.
Skopje demands that NATO and the UN give their stand on the
Yugoslav-Macedonian border line, which, according to the statement, was
ascertained in keeping with all international regulations.
AGREEMENT ON BORDER UNCONTESTABLE FOR STATE DEPARTMENT
SKOPJE, Feb. 21 (Tanjug) - The UN Security Council requested on March
12 last year that everyone respects the agreement on the demarcation of
the border between Macedonia and Yugoslavia, signed on February 23,
2001, and the government of the United States supported, just as does
now, the State Department said Thursday through the intermediary of the
Voice of America in the Macedonian language.
The statement added that the United States has a long-term policy of
support to the territorial integrity of states in the region to which
also belongs Macedonia, and to consult with the UN on issues relating to
Kosovo, bearing in mind the accord on the demarcation of borders.
The official US stand was made known following the statement of US Gen.
Huber, with KFOR, and the spokesman for the UN Civilian Mission in
Kosovo-Metohija (UNMIK), Andrea Agnelli, that the accord on the border
between Yugoslavia and Macedonia was not valid for them and that they
will abide by it.
STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN AGREES WITH US GENERAL ON YUGOSLAV-MACEDONIAN
BORDER
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 (Tanjug) - State Department Spokesman Richard
Boucher has agreed with a statement by the commander of the US forces in
Kosovo that the border agreement between Macedonia and Yugoslavia is not
valid.
Asked whether he agreed with General Keith Huber and UNMIK that they do
not recognize this agreement, Boucher replied positively. "I believe I
agree with this, but I do not know the circumstances," Boucher said.
YUGOSLAV-MACEDONIAN BORDER TREATY NOT REGISTERED WITH UN
SKOPJE, Feb. 24 (Beta) - The UN missions of Macedonia and Yugoslavia
have not registered a border treaty signed in Skopje in February,
diplomatic sources in Skopje told BETA.
"Both missions, the Macedonian and Yugoslav, did not follow regular
procedure after the treaty was signed -- submitting it to the UN
secretary's office in New York and receiving confirmation that the
document has been registered and placed in the world organization's
archives," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The source added that Macedonian Foreign Minister Slobodan Casule would
visit New York on Feb. 25 to file a written statement and settle the
matter. "The Macedonian foreign minister will not participate in
tomorrow's session of the UN Security Council, as some in Skopje have
alleged, because Kosovo and not Macedonia is on the agenda," the unnamed
diplomat added.
CASULE: PERMANENT MEMBERS OF UN SECURITY COUNCIL RECOGNIZE BORDER
AGREEMENT
SKOPJE, Feb. 25 (Beta) - Macedonian Foreign Minister, Slobodan Casule,
said on the evening of Feb. 25, that the ambassadors of the five
permanent members of the U.N. Security Council had accepted the
Macedonian-Yugoslav border agreement as valid, and that it must be
observed by all U.N. members.
Casule told Macedonian television from a U.N. session in New York that
the Security Council suggested that the border be secured immediately,
"especially the part with Kosovo, so that citizens who have fields on
Macedonian territory be legally able to access and cultivate them."
"I said that Macedonia was ready to take up the operation of securing
the border on its side, and that it remained for Yugoslavia and the U.N.
to agree on their engagement concerning securing the border on their
terrain," (along the border with Kosovo) he added.
Macedonian ambassador to the U.N. Srdan Kerim told the A1 television
station that the Macedonian and Yugoslav missions to the U.N. made a
"technical admission/omission" by not enclosing a topographic map with
the agreement. He said that this will be done on Feb. 26.
The agreement on the border between Yugoslavia and Macedonia was signed
in Skopje last February by Yugoslav minister of foreign affairs Goran
Svilanovic and Kerim, who was then head Macedonian diplomat.
UNMIK, KFOR TO RESPECT YUGOSLAV - MACEDONIAN BORDER TREATY
SKOPJE, Feb. 25 (Beta) - UNMIK and KFOR officials announced on Feb. 25
that they would accept a border treaty signed by Yugoslavia and
Macedonia in Skopje last February.
UNMIK spokeswoman Susan Manuel said that a UN declaration recognizing
the treaty had eliminated any dilemma that may have existed regarding
its validity, adding that the UN Mission in Kosovo would respect the
agreement.KFOR representatives said that they had been sticking to the
treaty for more than a year, adding that border patrols were being
carried out based on its provisions.
However, Kosovo Albanians are against the treaty because it gives almost
2,500 hectares of Kosovo territory to Macedonia. The Alliance for the
Future of Kosovo said on Feb. 25 that it is against the border treaty,
adding that the people of Kosovo are against having a part of the
province ceded to Macedonia. Riza Smakaj, chairman of the Association of
Independent Lawyers of Kosovo, criticized the U.N. and KFOR for
accepting the treaty and called the entire matter a scandal.
===*===
> http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=6976
Stars And Stripes
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
General's comments about disputed Balkans border area
set off diplomatic furor
-Then last week, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Keith Huber
reportedly told the Macedonian news media the
agreement was illegal because Yugoslavian President
Vojislav Kostunica lacked authority to make deals
regarding Kosovo.
By Steve Liewer, Kosovo bureau
European edition, Tuesday, February 26, 2002
PRISTINA, Kosovo - The U.S. general in charge of Task
Force Falcon kicked up a diplomatic furor last week
after he was quoted as saying he would send U.S.
troops to protect Kosovar Albanians who farm a
disputed border region claimed by Macedonia.
At stake is about 2,500 acres of farmland near Vitina,
about five miles southeast of Camp Bondsteel. U.S.
troops regularly patrol near the area.
In February 2001, Macedonia and Yugoslavia signed an
agreement settling several land disputes along their
mutual border, including lands in Kosovo. As part of
the agreement, the disputed 2,500 acres was turned
over to Macedonia, which was part of the Yugoslav
federation until it declared independence in 1991. At
the time the United Nations, NATO and the European
Union praised the agreement.
Then last week, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Keith Huber
reportedly told the Macedonian news media the
agreement was illegal because Yugoslavian President
Vojislav Kostunica lacked authority to make deals
regarding Kosovo.
The Yugoslav province has been run as a U.N.
protectorate since the summer of 1999. A spokeswoman
for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo supported
Huber?s statement.
His comments earned criticism in both Belgrade and
Skopje.
Some Macedonians viewed the statement as tacit support
for Albanian rebels in Macedonia who would like to
break away, according to analysts for the London-based
Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
Shortly after the agreement was signed last year, a
rash of border disputes in and around the area broke
out. At one point, a company of U.S. troops with the
82nd Airborne Division, which already was in Kosovo,
deployed to the border to move ethnic Albanian rebels
off the line. A brief gunfire ensued in the town of
Mijak on March 7.
Eventually, the border battle in that area subsided,
but fresh fighting broke out to the west along the
border, especially around the city of Tetovo.
News media in Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Kosovo have
been buzzing with news of the dispute for almost a
week. The Kosovo newspaper Zeri quoted a Macedonian
army spokesman as saying his troops would shoot any
settlers or KFOR soldiers who trespassed.
A Task Force Falcon spokesman said Huber will issue a
statement on the matter later, but could offer no
comment at this time
"It?s a very hot issue," said French navy Col. Vincent
Campredon, chief spokesman for KFOR headquarters in
Pristina.
Late last week, the matter landed on the desk of U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan. His office issued a
statement supporting the Yugoslav/Macedonian treaty.
"[T]he Security Council emphasized that the
demarcation agreement must be respected by all," the
statement said. "Accordingly, the United Nations
respects it."
On Monday, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson?s
office issued similar comments.
"NATO also emphasizes its unchanged respect for the
border as agreed by [Macedonia] and [Yugoslavia] in
February 2001," the statement said. "We look forward
to building on the already close working relationship
in the border area."
Campredon said KFOR will follow the agreement and
won?t send patrols into the area the international
community now agrees belongs to Macedonia. At a press
conference Monday in Pristina, he and UNMIK
spokeswoman Susan Manuel refused to discuss the matter
further and referred reporters to the U.N. and NATO
statements.
"That?s the last word on this issue," Manuel said.
===*===
Subject: NATO Feigns Ignorance As Terrorists Plan FYROM
Offensive
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 07:20:54 -0800 (PST)
From: Rick Rozoff
-"I can't say either yes or no," spokesman to the NATO
mission in Macedonia Craig Ratcliff said.
An unnamed group of ethnic Albanian rebels allegedly
spent some 4.2 million dollars since October for a
wide range of sophisticated weapons, including light
anti-aircraft missiles SA-18 and SA-7, anti- tank
rockets and infantry weapons for some 2,000 soldiers,
Macedonian media reported Monday, quoting the British
Daily Telegraph.
-The money for the weapons was, according to the
reports, provided by the Albanian mafia selling heroin
from Afghan stocks controlled by the Osama bin Laden's
Al-Quaeda terrorist network.
NATO Has No Information on the Alleged Rebel Buildup
SKOPJE, Feb 18, 2002 -- (dpa) The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) has no information on an
alleged ethnic Albanian rebel arms buildup in
Macedonia, NATO in Skopje said Monday.
"I can't say either yes or no," spokesman to the NATO
mission in Macedonia Craig Ratcliff said.
An unnamed group of ethnic Albanian rebels allegedly
spent some 4.2 million dollars since October for a
wide range of sophisticated weapons, including light
anti-aircraft missiles SA-18 and SA-7, anti- tank
rockets and infantry weapons for some 2,000 soldiers,
Macedonian media reported Monday, quoting the British
Daily Telegraph.
However, western intelligence sources in the
Macedonian capital said earlier that some 1,200
guerrillas were spotted training in the hills still
out of control of government security forces.
The money for the weapons was, according to the
reports, provided by the Albanian mafia selling heroin
from Afghan stocks controlled by the Osama bin Laden's
Al-Quaeda terrorist network.
(C)2002. dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur
===*===
See also:
http://www.nationalpost.com/search/
story.html?f=/stories/20020219/98481.html&qs=jennings
February 19, 2002
Taliban heroin profits arming Balkan rebels
Albanian extremists: Weapons order could equip force
of up to 2,000
Christian Jennings
The Daily Telegraph
February 22, 2002
The Balkan connection
Books says al-Qaida now active in Macedonia
By PETER WORTHINGTON -- Toronto Sun
An irony of the war against terrorism since Sept. 11 is that while the
prime enemy was Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network, not
Afghanistan's Taliban regime, it's the Taliban that has been crushed,
and not al-Qaida.
Osama and al-Qaida have become household words, yet they remain shadowy,
ill-defined, unfathomable. We are routinely told al-Qaida-trained
suicidal assassins are scattered in something like 68 countries, poised
to do dreadful things that they believe will get them into paradise,
where 72 virgins await to give them a martyr's welcome.
What most don't know, and few in the media have paid much attention to,
is the Balkan connection with al-Qaida. Much to their embarrassment now,
NATO and the Americans realize they may have unwittingly contributed to
al-Qaida fronts in Bosnia and Kosovo prior to Sept. 11.
One who knows more than most about the western-orchestrated chaos in the
Balkans is Scott Taylor, the peripatetic publisher of the military
magazine Esprit de Corps. He's been back and forth to the area
innumerable times, especially during NATO'S air war against Serbia and,
more recently, to note simmering unrest in Macedonia - where
al-Qaida-trained Albanian insurgents seek to overthrow the government.
Taylor wrote a book about Serbia and the Kosovo war (Inat: Images of
Serbia and the Kosovo Conflict), and this week has a new book about
Kosovo overlapping into Macedonia, which is a target in the unspoken
campaign for a Greater Albania, that involves al-Qaida and various
Muslim extremist groups.
This book, Diary of an Uncivil War, is ahead of the wave in that it
anticipates the next phase of the Balkan wars. Al-Qaida and Islamic
Jihad fighters have been active in Muslim areas of the Balkans ever
since Slobodan Milosevic began a megalomaniac campaign that resulted in
a shrinking of Serbia.
Bunked with villagers
Taylor's book is based on what he witnessed in travels in the area
during war - experiences different from those of establishment
journalists on expense accounts, with rented cars, translators and the
best hotels. Taylor bunked in with local villagers, bummed rides, took
buses, depended on locals for food.
There's authenticity in Taylor's stuff that's often missing in
conventional news reports. His adventures are one thing, and give a
flavour of the Balkans, but on a more serious level, his is a withering
reflection of western (U.S.) policy gone awry.
Today, Macedonia's independence is threatened by rebellion led by
Kosovar Albanians who fought the Serbs. The European Union, NATO and the
U.S. downplay this, but Albanian insurgents in Macedonia are well armed
and financed from abroad.
Reports suggest some 5,000 al-Qaida terrorists have been trained in
Bosnia and Kosovo. In January, the Americans announced the capture of
Algerian al-Qaida members in Sarajevo.
The fragile peace signed last August giving more power to Albanians
living in Macedonia, is crumbling. The NATO- and U.S.-armed rebel
National Liberation Army in northern Macedonia continues to harass.
Another Albanian insurgent group, the Real National Liberation Army, is
led by a mysterious figure who calls himself "The Raven," who is prone
to give interviews to journalists who publicize him and his cause.
NATO Secretary-General George Robertson has condemned "extremists on
both sides" who resort to violence, conveniently overlooking that
tactics being used against Macedonia are similar to what the allies
supported in Kosovo against Serbia.
Montenegro also fears Albanian subversion. Albanian maps that show a
"Greater Albania" that includes parts of neighbouring countries, are
ignored by our media and governments, just as they ignore the presence
of foreign Muslim extremists in the Balkans.
Some al-Qaida members have been given Bosnian citizenship.
This is pretty significant, but has largely been ignored in President
Bush's "war on terrorism."
Taylor's book, which touches on all this, is not an academic exercise or
partisan polemic, but based on first-hand experiences and findings.
Ordinary Canadian soldiers who served in the Balkans, first as UN
peacekeepers, then as NATO peacemakers, often have greater understanding
of the area than politicians, academics and policy-makers in Washington
and elsewhere.
So Taylor has a view that's closer to reality than pundits who observe
from afar - and whom history proves are wrong far more often than they
are right.
---
To contact the author:
Esprit de Corps Magazine & Books
#204 - 1066 Somerset St. W.
Ottawa, ON K1Y 4T3, Canada
Tel: (613) 725-5060
Fax: (613) 725-1019
www.espritdecorps.on.ca
===*===
> http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2002/02/24/f120.raw.html
Sunday, February 24, 2002 Back The Halifax Herald Limited
Balkans will likely re-erupt -author
By Bill Spurr / Military Reporter
A new book by Herald columnist Scott Taylor
predicts another round of violence in the
Balkans as early as this spring,
as soon as the snow melts.
In Diary of an Uncivil War, which was
released Friday, Taylor writes that observers
of the region are bracing for
an Albanian offensive following the
melting of the winter snows, an
offensive the presence of 50,000 NATO
soldiers seems unable to stop.
"The Albanians have reconstituted the army
that they were supposed to have disbanded
... which is a harbinger of a spring offensive,"
Mr. Taylor said in an interview Thursday.
There are 1,400 Canadian troops in Bosnia
and smaller groups in Kosovo and Croatia.
Only the presence of western
armies prevents war, writes Mr. Taylor.
"They're sitting on top of a powder keg in
Bosnia, there's no long-term solution,"
he said. "And if they leave, it'll
all go up tomorrow."
Adding to the tension is the fact that on
Tuesday, the UN refused to recognize the
boundary between Kosovo and
Macedonia, and Mr. Taylor, recently
returned from his 16th visit to the
area, thinks the survival of Macedonia
depends on its ability to control its
own border.
Mr. Taylor said the Americans are taking a
anti-Macedonia stand, and are taking
care to ensure the safety of Albanians.
He quotes an American general in Kosovo
as saying any interference from the
Macedonians will result in the U.S.
crushing their army "like a pop can."
Aside from a significant military presence
in the area, Canada also has a large
Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian
population, totalling perhaps
three-quarters of a million people.
"After (the Second World War), there was a
tremendous influx, and since the (Balkan)
war began we have been one of the
two major countries to take in refugees
from there, (along with Australia),"
said Mr. Taylor.
He also writes that many westerners have an
over-simplified view of the conflict
in the war-torn Balkans, in which
Serbians are considered evil and the
other factions good.
He said during the war many western
reporters compared Serbian soldiers
to Nazi storm troopers and are now
ignoring legitimate arguments being
made by former Serbian president
Slobodan Milosevic at his war crimes trial.
"I think he's already pronounced guilty,"
said Mr. Taylor, who pointed out that
as recently as 1996, the U.S. was a
staunch supporter of the Milosevic regime.
===*===
The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, February 22, 2002
U.S. backed Albanian rebels with al-Qaeda links, book says:
Author predicts renewed Balkan war
By Bruce Garvey
The Balkans will likely be plunged into a new round of war as
early as this spring, with fighting centred in Macedonia, according
to a new book by Ottawa military writer Scott Taylor.
Diary of an Uncivil War warns that despite concessions made by the
Macedonian government, ethnic Albanians and their guerrilla army,
made up of Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, are preparing for a
major offensive in the region. The wildcard will be whether the U.S.
government backs away from its support of the Albanians in their
quest to take control of parts of the region they claim as theirs,
Mr. Taylor writes.
"While everyone is bracing for an Albanian offensive following the
melting of the winter snows, what remains unclear is whether the
U.S. will continue to support the guerrillas," Mr. Taylor writes.
"Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated that the U.S. will
scale back its military presence in the Balkans. But it will not be
easy for the Americans to disengage themselves from the mess they
created without setting off another round of factional violence."
The ethnic Albanians and their guerrilla army are intent on carving
out what they call "Greater Albania" -- an area that includes 90,000
square kilometres of Kosovo, Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and
Montenegro.
Mr. Taylor has covered the fighting and political situation in the
Balkans over the past several years for the Citizen. Diary of an
Uncivil War, published by Esprit de Corps books, has just been
released in stores.
A news report this week from Macedonia includes warnings from
western intelligence officials that former KLA guerrillas and
Albanian extremists have used profits from a Taliban drug-smuggling
ring to re-arm themselves. The money has been used to buy
surface-to-air missiles that give the Albanians the ability to shoot
down Macedonian helicopter gunships, one of that force's main
deterrents against the guerrillas.
Mr. Taylor's book chronicles his first-hand observations of
fighting in Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia over three years. It also
outlines the strong support by former U.S. president Bill Clinton's
government for the KLA, despite the links the guerrilla group has to
extremist Muslim organizations such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.
Mr. Taylor writes that the U.S. military has supplied the group
with equipment and advisers, including former senior U.S. army
officers, who have been training the Albanian guerrillas.
In some cases, the U.S. support has been blatant. In August 2001
U.S. troops were to disarm 500 KLA guerrillas and transport them to
camps in Kosovo. Instead, they transported the men, still armed, to
a location inside Macedonia near an ethnic Albanian stronghold.
There the guerrillas promptly resumed their attacks.
But the Clinton administration's unofficial policy of supporting
the ethnic Albanians and KLA has backfired and has only created
instability in the region, Mr. Taylor argues.
The current crisis in Macedonia began last March, when Albanian
guerrillas staged attacks from inside NATO-occupied Kosovo, using
weapons that NATO was supposed to have confiscated, Mr. Taylor
reports.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. also highlight the folly
of Mr. Clinton's policies in the Balkans. Over the past decade,
mujahedeen fighters, and in particular Mr. bin Laden's followers,
have fought in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and have benefited from
the U.S. military support. Previously, Macedonian intelligence
officials had tried to warn western governments that Arab and Afghan
volunteers form the backbone of organizations such as the KLA.
An exclusive excerpt from Diary of an Uncivil War by Scott Taylor
will appear tomorrow (Saturday, Feb 23, 2002) in the Ottawa Citizen.
===*===
GRAVISSIMO AFFRONTO DIPLOMATICO: USA E KFOR
NON RICONOSCONO L'ACCORDO JUGOSLAVO-MACEDONE SUI CONFINI!!!
YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT ASKS KOFI ANNAN TO EXERT HIS INFLUENCE ON KFOR AND
UNMIK
BELGRADE, Feb. 21 (Beta) - Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica asked
UN general secretary Kofi Annan on Feb. 21 to exert his influence on the
high representatives of KFOR and UNMIK in Kosovo and Metohija to observe
the articles of the Agreement on the Yugoslav-Macedonian border.
"Your Excellency, with grave concern and surprise I received the
statements of KFOR and UNMIK high representatives in Kosovo and Metohija
doubting the legality of the Agreement," reads the letter Kostunica sent
to Annan.
"I would like to ask you to... exert influence on UNMIK and KFOR
representatives in Kosovo and Metohija to observe the articles of the
ratified Agreement on the Yugoslav-Macedonian border and abstain from
similar public statements in the future, because it is clear that they
do not serve the efforts of the international community to strengthen
regional stability but, on the contrary, serve the efforts of those who
advocate unacceptable solutions," added Kostunica.
Kostunica says the Agreement, concluded on Feb. 23, 2001, has been
welcomed by all international factors, including the EU and the US and
the participants of the Summit of state presidents and prime ministers
of southeastern Europe held in Skopje on Feb. 23, 2001.
MACEDONIAN GOVERNMENT STUNNED, WILL SEND DEMARCHE TO UNITED NATIONS
SKOPJE, Feb. 21 (Tanjug) - Macedonian government is stunned by KFOR Gen.
Keith Huber's statement, which is supported by UMNIK, as well, saying
that the Kosovo part of Macedonian-Yugoslav border line is illegal.
The Macedonian Interior Ministry has announced it would send a demarche
to the United Nations and NATO, both KFOR and UNMIK being under their
wing.
The Ministry said that the demarche would focus on the Security Council
Resolution 1244 on Kosovo, which is obligatory for everyone, including
the UN mission, and which does not give KFOR and UNMIK officials the
right to define the document in a way that intensifies the tensions in
the region and questions the Yugoslav and Macedonian sovereignty.
The Ministry views Huber's statement as harmful and unacceptable, and
points out that it is beyond KFOR and UNMIK's mandate, and that it is in
contradiction with efforts aimed at establishing lasting peace in the
region.
The Ministry also reminded of the fact that the agreement on border
lines, which had been signed by Yugoslav and Macedonian representatives
a year ago, had been welcomed by NATO Secretary General George
Robertson, EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten, and then
Stability Pact head Bodo Hombach, who had attended the signing of the
document, as well as by top international officials, including those
from the UN and the European Union.
Skopje demands that NATO and the UN give their stand on the
Yugoslav-Macedonian border line, which, according to the statement, was
ascertained in keeping with all international regulations.
AGREEMENT ON BORDER UNCONTESTABLE FOR STATE DEPARTMENT
SKOPJE, Feb. 21 (Tanjug) - The UN Security Council requested on March
12 last year that everyone respects the agreement on the demarcation of
the border between Macedonia and Yugoslavia, signed on February 23,
2001, and the government of the United States supported, just as does
now, the State Department said Thursday through the intermediary of the
Voice of America in the Macedonian language.
The statement added that the United States has a long-term policy of
support to the territorial integrity of states in the region to which
also belongs Macedonia, and to consult with the UN on issues relating to
Kosovo, bearing in mind the accord on the demarcation of borders.
The official US stand was made known following the statement of US Gen.
Huber, with KFOR, and the spokesman for the UN Civilian Mission in
Kosovo-Metohija (UNMIK), Andrea Agnelli, that the accord on the border
between Yugoslavia and Macedonia was not valid for them and that they
will abide by it.
STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN AGREES WITH US GENERAL ON YUGOSLAV-MACEDONIAN
BORDER
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 (Tanjug) - State Department Spokesman Richard
Boucher has agreed with a statement by the commander of the US forces in
Kosovo that the border agreement between Macedonia and Yugoslavia is not
valid.
Asked whether he agreed with General Keith Huber and UNMIK that they do
not recognize this agreement, Boucher replied positively. "I believe I
agree with this, but I do not know the circumstances," Boucher said.
YUGOSLAV-MACEDONIAN BORDER TREATY NOT REGISTERED WITH UN
SKOPJE, Feb. 24 (Beta) - The UN missions of Macedonia and Yugoslavia
have not registered a border treaty signed in Skopje in February,
diplomatic sources in Skopje told BETA.
"Both missions, the Macedonian and Yugoslav, did not follow regular
procedure after the treaty was signed -- submitting it to the UN
secretary's office in New York and receiving confirmation that the
document has been registered and placed in the world organization's
archives," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The source added that Macedonian Foreign Minister Slobodan Casule would
visit New York on Feb. 25 to file a written statement and settle the
matter. "The Macedonian foreign minister will not participate in
tomorrow's session of the UN Security Council, as some in Skopje have
alleged, because Kosovo and not Macedonia is on the agenda," the unnamed
diplomat added.
CASULE: PERMANENT MEMBERS OF UN SECURITY COUNCIL RECOGNIZE BORDER
AGREEMENT
SKOPJE, Feb. 25 (Beta) - Macedonian Foreign Minister, Slobodan Casule,
said on the evening of Feb. 25, that the ambassadors of the five
permanent members of the U.N. Security Council had accepted the
Macedonian-Yugoslav border agreement as valid, and that it must be
observed by all U.N. members.
Casule told Macedonian television from a U.N. session in New York that
the Security Council suggested that the border be secured immediately,
"especially the part with Kosovo, so that citizens who have fields on
Macedonian territory be legally able to access and cultivate them."
"I said that Macedonia was ready to take up the operation of securing
the border on its side, and that it remained for Yugoslavia and the U.N.
to agree on their engagement concerning securing the border on their
terrain," (along the border with Kosovo) he added.
Macedonian ambassador to the U.N. Srdan Kerim told the A1 television
station that the Macedonian and Yugoslav missions to the U.N. made a
"technical admission/omission" by not enclosing a topographic map with
the agreement. He said that this will be done on Feb. 26.
The agreement on the border between Yugoslavia and Macedonia was signed
in Skopje last February by Yugoslav minister of foreign affairs Goran
Svilanovic and Kerim, who was then head Macedonian diplomat.
UNMIK, KFOR TO RESPECT YUGOSLAV - MACEDONIAN BORDER TREATY
SKOPJE, Feb. 25 (Beta) - UNMIK and KFOR officials announced on Feb. 25
that they would accept a border treaty signed by Yugoslavia and
Macedonia in Skopje last February.
UNMIK spokeswoman Susan Manuel said that a UN declaration recognizing
the treaty had eliminated any dilemma that may have existed regarding
its validity, adding that the UN Mission in Kosovo would respect the
agreement.KFOR representatives said that they had been sticking to the
treaty for more than a year, adding that border patrols were being
carried out based on its provisions.
However, Kosovo Albanians are against the treaty because it gives almost
2,500 hectares of Kosovo territory to Macedonia. The Alliance for the
Future of Kosovo said on Feb. 25 that it is against the border treaty,
adding that the people of Kosovo are against having a part of the
province ceded to Macedonia. Riza Smakaj, chairman of the Association of
Independent Lawyers of Kosovo, criticized the U.N. and KFOR for
accepting the treaty and called the entire matter a scandal.
===*===
> http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=6976
Stars And Stripes
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
General's comments about disputed Balkans border area
set off diplomatic furor
-Then last week, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Keith Huber
reportedly told the Macedonian news media the
agreement was illegal because Yugoslavian President
Vojislav Kostunica lacked authority to make deals
regarding Kosovo.
By Steve Liewer, Kosovo bureau
European edition, Tuesday, February 26, 2002
PRISTINA, Kosovo - The U.S. general in charge of Task
Force Falcon kicked up a diplomatic furor last week
after he was quoted as saying he would send U.S.
troops to protect Kosovar Albanians who farm a
disputed border region claimed by Macedonia.
At stake is about 2,500 acres of farmland near Vitina,
about five miles southeast of Camp Bondsteel. U.S.
troops regularly patrol near the area.
In February 2001, Macedonia and Yugoslavia signed an
agreement settling several land disputes along their
mutual border, including lands in Kosovo. As part of
the agreement, the disputed 2,500 acres was turned
over to Macedonia, which was part of the Yugoslav
federation until it declared independence in 1991. At
the time the United Nations, NATO and the European
Union praised the agreement.
Then last week, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Keith Huber
reportedly told the Macedonian news media the
agreement was illegal because Yugoslavian President
Vojislav Kostunica lacked authority to make deals
regarding Kosovo.
The Yugoslav province has been run as a U.N.
protectorate since the summer of 1999. A spokeswoman
for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo supported
Huber?s statement.
His comments earned criticism in both Belgrade and
Skopje.
Some Macedonians viewed the statement as tacit support
for Albanian rebels in Macedonia who would like to
break away, according to analysts for the London-based
Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
Shortly after the agreement was signed last year, a
rash of border disputes in and around the area broke
out. At one point, a company of U.S. troops with the
82nd Airborne Division, which already was in Kosovo,
deployed to the border to move ethnic Albanian rebels
off the line. A brief gunfire ensued in the town of
Mijak on March 7.
Eventually, the border battle in that area subsided,
but fresh fighting broke out to the west along the
border, especially around the city of Tetovo.
News media in Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Kosovo have
been buzzing with news of the dispute for almost a
week. The Kosovo newspaper Zeri quoted a Macedonian
army spokesman as saying his troops would shoot any
settlers or KFOR soldiers who trespassed.
A Task Force Falcon spokesman said Huber will issue a
statement on the matter later, but could offer no
comment at this time
"It?s a very hot issue," said French navy Col. Vincent
Campredon, chief spokesman for KFOR headquarters in
Pristina.
Late last week, the matter landed on the desk of U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan. His office issued a
statement supporting the Yugoslav/Macedonian treaty.
"[T]he Security Council emphasized that the
demarcation agreement must be respected by all," the
statement said. "Accordingly, the United Nations
respects it."
On Monday, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson?s
office issued similar comments.
"NATO also emphasizes its unchanged respect for the
border as agreed by [Macedonia] and [Yugoslavia] in
February 2001," the statement said. "We look forward
to building on the already close working relationship
in the border area."
Campredon said KFOR will follow the agreement and
won?t send patrols into the area the international
community now agrees belongs to Macedonia. At a press
conference Monday in Pristina, he and UNMIK
spokeswoman Susan Manuel refused to discuss the matter
further and referred reporters to the U.N. and NATO
statements.
"That?s the last word on this issue," Manuel said.
===*===
Subject: NATO Feigns Ignorance As Terrorists Plan FYROM
Offensive
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 07:20:54 -0800 (PST)
From: Rick Rozoff
-"I can't say either yes or no," spokesman to the NATO
mission in Macedonia Craig Ratcliff said.
An unnamed group of ethnic Albanian rebels allegedly
spent some 4.2 million dollars since October for a
wide range of sophisticated weapons, including light
anti-aircraft missiles SA-18 and SA-7, anti- tank
rockets and infantry weapons for some 2,000 soldiers,
Macedonian media reported Monday, quoting the British
Daily Telegraph.
-The money for the weapons was, according to the
reports, provided by the Albanian mafia selling heroin
from Afghan stocks controlled by the Osama bin Laden's
Al-Quaeda terrorist network.
NATO Has No Information on the Alleged Rebel Buildup
SKOPJE, Feb 18, 2002 -- (dpa) The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) has no information on an
alleged ethnic Albanian rebel arms buildup in
Macedonia, NATO in Skopje said Monday.
"I can't say either yes or no," spokesman to the NATO
mission in Macedonia Craig Ratcliff said.
An unnamed group of ethnic Albanian rebels allegedly
spent some 4.2 million dollars since October for a
wide range of sophisticated weapons, including light
anti-aircraft missiles SA-18 and SA-7, anti- tank
rockets and infantry weapons for some 2,000 soldiers,
Macedonian media reported Monday, quoting the British
Daily Telegraph.
However, western intelligence sources in the
Macedonian capital said earlier that some 1,200
guerrillas were spotted training in the hills still
out of control of government security forces.
The money for the weapons was, according to the
reports, provided by the Albanian mafia selling heroin
from Afghan stocks controlled by the Osama bin Laden's
Al-Quaeda terrorist network.
(C)2002. dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur
===*===
See also:
http://www.nationalpost.com/search/
story.html?f=/stories/20020219/98481.html&qs=jennings
February 19, 2002
Taliban heroin profits arming Balkan rebels
Albanian extremists: Weapons order could equip force
of up to 2,000
Christian Jennings
The Daily Telegraph
International Committee to Defend
Slobodan Milosevic www.icdsm.org
The URL for this article is:
http://www.icdsm.org/more/stopfarce.htm
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http://www.icdsm.org/maillist.htm
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=======================================
APPEAL TO PEOPLE THE WORLD OVER:
DEMAND THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL STOP THE
DANGEROUS FARCE AT THE HAGUE!
[Posted 26 February 2002]
=======================================
At the start of today's (Feb. 26) session
of his so-called trial at The
Hague, President Slobodan Milosevic said:
"There is no kind of equality when one
side has only a telephone and the
other has organization, institutions,
secret services, governments, and the
mass media. And even my telephone was
mysteriously not working yesterday
afternoon. That is why I again repeat the
demand for you to release me so
that I may have some semblance of
equality in this process and... "
Before President Milosevic could finish,
Judge May turned off his microphone.
The 'tribunal' has made clear that its
strategy for answering President
Milosevic's unanswerable charges against
NATO is to silence him, physically
exhausting him with abusive conditions
and an endless stream of obviously
lying witnesses.
We urge all who care about justice to
protest these attacks. Show Slobodan
Milosevic and NATO's 'tribunal' that he
is not alone.
Recently, a Radio Netherlands journalist
wrote:
"The performance Slobodan Milosevic is
putting up at his trial for war crimes
and genocide in The Hague - alone,
without a lawyer to defend him - has
earned him admiration and respect - not
just among his supporters, but in the
Belgrade newspapers and the Serb public
as a whole. As one newspaper put it:
'Milosevic -1, The Hague - 0.'" (Radio
Netherlands, February 22, 2002,
http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/icty020222.html
)
It is not only the brilliance of Slobodan
Milosevic's presentation and
cross-examination that took the world by
storm. It is the content. He has
forced people previously fooled by NATO's
cartoon-babble about 'humanitarian
bombing' and 'collateral damage,' to face
reality. NATO still sponsors the
KLA and other terrorists. It destroyed
multiethnic life in Kosovo. It
deliberately murdered thousands in an
effort to terrorize Yugoslavia into
surrender.
President Milosevic's style, intelligence
and political message simply do not
fit the fabricated media image of
'another new Hitler.'
"To the outside world, used to Slobodan
Milosevic being referred to as the
'Butcher of the Balkans', his courtroom
performance has come as a surprise.
Is this man they've seen depicted in
political cartoons in their
newspapersâ?¦?" (Radio Netherlands)
Those of us who labor to counter media
lies about Yugoslavia asked ourselves:
has NATO made a disastrous error? Have
they, inadvertently and at long last
given truth a platform? How can NATO
possibly answer Slobodan Milosevic?
After two weeks, we know their strategy.
They are trying to silence him.
First, the foreign policy establishments
of the NATO countries are using
their stranglehold on the media to
guarantee one-sided coverage of the
'trial.' Thus, a newspaper will report
the claims of a 'witness' but not
report the details of President
Milosevic's devastating
cross-examination.
And second, the 'tribunal' is doing
everything it can to physically exhaust
Slobodan Milosevic and eventually, they
hope, lower his morale.
Example - the Dutch government, obviously
on orders from the 'tribunal', has
refused to give a visa to Mira Markovic,
President Milosevic's wife.
Example - He is awakened every day at 7am
even though the 'trial' doesn't
start until 9:30 and his cell is only a
few minutes from the 'tribunal.'
Example - Last Thursday, he was kept
waiting 2 and a half hours after the
proceedings ended because the 'tribunal'
claimed it couldn't find a vehicle
to take him back to the World War II Nazi
prison where he is incarcerated.
Example - He is not permitted to exercise
or even to walk outside when the
'tribunal' is in session.
And perhaps worst of all, the 'tribunal'
is using every trick to drag out the
nightmarish process.
Most 'tribunal' proceedings last a few
days or weeks. This one is projected
to go two years, or longer, with
President Milosevic forced to listen to
an
endless stream of ridiculous, obviously
false witnesses.
For example, on Monday, February 25,
President Milosevic cross-examined Halil
Morina. Morina claimed Yugoslav soldiers
wantonly attacked his village of
Landovice on March 26, 1999.
President Milosevic challenged him:
''Wasn't what happened in Landovice in
fact a firefight between Yugoslav forces
and Kosovo Liberation Army
terrorists?"
Morina claimed there were no KLA members
in his village.
Milosevic asked: ''Wasn't a monument to
Ramiz Sadiku and Boro Vukmirovic
destroyed in Landovice?'' (These slain
partisans, an ethnic Albanian and an
ethnic Montenegrin, symbolized
brotherhood in Yugoslavia.)
"Yes," said Morina.
"And what replaced it?" asked President
Milosevic.
"Why, a monument to our fallen KLA
soldiers," said Morina.
This prompted the following quite
reasonable response:
"I question that he does not know
anything about these [KLA] activities,"
President Milosevic said. "I must say you
[the "prosecutor"] are bringing in
witnesses of this kind to ill-treat me.
These are false witnesses."
Earlier, Morina testified that Yugoslav
soldiers arrived in Landovice in a
particular army vehicle. Though this
assertion had no bearing on anything or
anyone, least of all President Milosevic,
the prosecution produced pictures
of different army vehicles and everyone
had to wait while the 'witness'
studied them, finally picking the one
that looked like the vehicle in which
the troops had traveled.
This combination of physical abuse,
isolation from family, friends and
advisors - even President Milosevic's
lawyers in the Dutch courts are not
permitted to see him - and a stream of
ridiculous 'witnesses' is the real
content of the prosecution case against
President Milosevic.
We urge all individuals, groups, mass
media and members of parliament who
care about justice to protest this abuse
in any way possible including with
letters and petitions to the United
Nations Security Council. Demand:
1) End this farce of a trial. It is
already obvious the 'prosecution' has no
case.
2) Until The Hague farce is ended,
Slobodan Milosevic must be freed from the
abusive Hague jail. He must be allowed to
live in a house in The Netherlands
with his family, thus preserving his
physical well being and allowing him to
conduct his defense and counter attack in
full contact with advisers and
research facilities
This kind of action and public pressure
must go on continuously in different
forms until we FREE SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC.
Milosevic must not be silenced.
-- International Committee to Defend
Slobodan Milosevic
Security Council Members
* Mexico [President of Council in
February]
Permanent Representative of Mexico to the
United Nations
Two United Nations Plaza, 28th Floor, New
York, N.Y. 10017
Telephone: (212) 752-0220, Telefax: (212)
688-8862
* Norway [President of Council in March]
Permanent Representative of Norway to the
United Nations
825 Third Avenue, 39th Floor, New York,
N.Y. 10022
Telephone: (212) 421-0280/ 0281/ 0282/
0283/0284, Telefax: (212) 688-0554
* Russian Federation [President of
Council in April]
Permanent Representative of the Russian
Federation to the United Nations
136 East 67th Street, New York, N.Y.
10021
Telephone: (212) 861-4900/4901/4902,
Telefax: (212) 628-0252
Bulgaria
Permanent Representative of the Republic
of Bulgaria to the United Nations
11 East 84th Street, New York, N.Y. 10028
Telephone: (212) 737-4790/4791 or
327-4180/4181, Telefax: (212) 472-9865
Cameroon
Permanent Representative of the Republic
of Cameroon to the United Nations
22 East 73rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10021
Telephone: (212)
794-2295/2296/2297/2298/2299, Telefax:
(212) 249-0533
China
Permanent Representative of the People's
Republic of China to the United
Nations
350 East 35th Street, New York, N.Y.
10016
Telephone: (212) 655-6100, Telefax: (212)
634-7626
Colombia
Permanent Representative of Colombia to
the United Nations
140 East 57th Street, 5th Floor, New
York, N.Y. 10022
Telephone: (212) 355-7776, Telefax: (212)
371-2813
France
Permanent Representative of France to the
United Nations
One Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, 245 East
47th Street, 44th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10017, Telephone: (212)
308-5700
Telefax: (212) 421-6889
Guinea
Permanent Representative of the Republic
of Guinea to the United Nations
140 East 39th Street, New York, N.Y.
10016
Telephone: (212) 687-8115/8116/8117,
Telefax: (212) 687-8248
Ireland
Permanent Representative of Ireland to
the United Nations
One Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, 885 Second
Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, N.Y.
10017
Telephone: (212) 421-6934, Telefax: (212)
752-4726
Mauritius
Permanent Representative of the Republic
of Mauritius to the United Nations
211 East 43rd St., 15th Floor, New York,
N.Y. 10017
Telephone: (212) 949-0190/0191, Telefax:
(212) 697-3829
Singapore
Permanent Representative of the Republic
of Singapore to the United Nations
231 East 51st Street, New York, N.Y.
10022
Telephone: (212)
826-0840/0841/0842/0843/0844, Telefax:
(212) 826-2964
Syrian Arab Republic
Permanent Representative of the Syrian
Arab Republic to the United Nations
820 Second Avenue, 15th Floor, New York,
N.Y. 10017
Telephone: (212) 661-1313, Telefax: (212)
983-4439
United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland
Permanent Representative of the United
Kingdom to the United Nations
One Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, 885 Second
Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017
Telephone: (212) 745-9200, Telefax: (212)
745-9316
United States of America
Permanent Representative of the United
States to the United Nations
799 United Nations Plaza, New York, N.Y.
10017-3505
Telephone: (212) 415-4000, Telefax: (212)
415-4443
==========================
FURTHER READING
==========================
1) 'By Adding Three Lies, One Does Not
Get the Truth â?? Only a Bigger Lie ' -
President Slobodan Miloševic in The
Hague, January 30th 2002 (transcript)
2) 'Why is NATO Decimating the Balkans
and Trying to Force Milosevic to
Surrender?'
By Jared Israel and Nico Varkevisser
3) 'Illegal Tribunal - Illegal
Indictment,' by Dr. Hans Koechler at
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/prog2.htm
4) How Madeline Albright Ordered The
Hague 'Tribunal' To 'Indict' Milosevic
at
http://www.icdsm.org/more/lovie.htm
5) Official Statements Prove Hague
'Tribunal' Belongs to NATO
by Jared Israel at
http://www.icdsm.org/more/belongs.htm
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Click here to send the link to this
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THE DEFENSE OF MILOSEVIC - AND THE TRUTH
- NEEDS YOUR HELP!
NATO has billions of dollars and the
media to spread lies. We have the truth,
supported by hundreds of millions of
people. To develop legal, educational,
parliamentary and other work, our
Committee needs donations, large or
small,
from those who want to get the truth to
the people.
Here is how you can help:
* Contribute via credit card by calling
our Dutch or U.S. offices:
Dutch office: 31 20 6151122
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Thank you!
http://www.icdsm.org
===*===
Dear friends,
Please support concretely the following ICDSM appeal. The situation is
dramatic. Behind the UN insignia NATO criminals are attempting another
crime: to silence the voice of freedom, dignity and consciousness. Let
us not allow them to avoid their final defeat from president Milosevic.
At the moment, 77% of Yugoslav citizens support president Milosevic.
That amount of support is far above any other individual, party or
institution.
The puppets in Belgrade are in panic!
Vladimir Krsljanin
International Secretary of the
Socialist Party of Serbia
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sps.org.yu/ (official SPS website)
http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the world of equals)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan
Milosevic)
http://www.jutarnje.co.yu/ ('morning news' the only Serbian newspaper
advocating liberation)
===*===
FREE PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC NOW!
HANDS OFF YUGOSLAVIA!
URL for petition is
http://emperors-clothes.com/petition/petition.htm
To add your name(s) to this petition, please click
here or write to icdsm@...
500,000 Sign Petition In Ukraine!!
FREE PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC NOW!
HANDS OFF YUGOSLAVIA!
Since this petition was written President Milosevic has been
kidnapped in violation of the
Yugoslav constitution and international law by authorities in
Belgrade. He was delivered by the
RAF to NATO'S Tribunal in The Hague. The signers of this petition
most strongly demand that
President Milosevic be immediately released from illegal detention
and be returned a free man to his country and his family.
We the undersigned demand that the Serbian authorities immediately
release Slobodan Milosevic and all other Serbian patriots from jail.
The arrest of Mr. Milosevic is an attempt by NATO leaders to blame the
Serbian people for crimes against Yugoslavia committed by NATO.
We demand that Mr. Milosevic immediately be given proper medical
treatment, in the hospital of his choice, with
doctors of his choice, for a heart condition that appeared only after he
was jailed.
We demand that neither Slobodan Milosevic, nor any other Yugoslav, be
sent to the Hague Tribunal.
We demand an end to the arbitrary kidnapping, arrest, harassment and
persecution of Yugoslav leaders and soldiers
and ordinary people whose crime was to set an example to the world by
resisting NATO aggression.
Free Slobodan Milosevic at once!
End persecution of Mr. Milosevic and all Yugoslav patriots and soldiers
at once!
Jail the real war criminals: the NATO leaders who committed crimes
against humanity and against Yugoslav
sovereignty and who continue to commit those crimes today.
Petition is being circulated by the International Committee to
Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM) at icdsm@... To sign
petition, please click here or go to
http://emperors-clothes.com/petition/sign.htm
For Signers' Comments see
http://emperors-clothes.com/petition/states.htm or click on highlighted
names.
Slobodan Milosevic www.icdsm.org
The URL for this article is:
http://www.icdsm.org/more/stopfarce.htm
Subscribe to the ICDSM email list at
http://www.icdsm.org/maillist.htm
Receive no more than one article per day.
=======================================
APPEAL TO PEOPLE THE WORLD OVER:
DEMAND THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL STOP THE
DANGEROUS FARCE AT THE HAGUE!
[Posted 26 February 2002]
=======================================
At the start of today's (Feb. 26) session
of his so-called trial at The
Hague, President Slobodan Milosevic said:
"There is no kind of equality when one
side has only a telephone and the
other has organization, institutions,
secret services, governments, and the
mass media. And even my telephone was
mysteriously not working yesterday
afternoon. That is why I again repeat the
demand for you to release me so
that I may have some semblance of
equality in this process and... "
Before President Milosevic could finish,
Judge May turned off his microphone.
The 'tribunal' has made clear that its
strategy for answering President
Milosevic's unanswerable charges against
NATO is to silence him, physically
exhausting him with abusive conditions
and an endless stream of obviously
lying witnesses.
We urge all who care about justice to
protest these attacks. Show Slobodan
Milosevic and NATO's 'tribunal' that he
is not alone.
Recently, a Radio Netherlands journalist
wrote:
"The performance Slobodan Milosevic is
putting up at his trial for war crimes
and genocide in The Hague - alone,
without a lawyer to defend him - has
earned him admiration and respect - not
just among his supporters, but in the
Belgrade newspapers and the Serb public
as a whole. As one newspaper put it:
'Milosevic -1, The Hague - 0.'" (Radio
Netherlands, February 22, 2002,
http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/icty020222.html
)
It is not only the brilliance of Slobodan
Milosevic's presentation and
cross-examination that took the world by
storm. It is the content. He has
forced people previously fooled by NATO's
cartoon-babble about 'humanitarian
bombing' and 'collateral damage,' to face
reality. NATO still sponsors the
KLA and other terrorists. It destroyed
multiethnic life in Kosovo. It
deliberately murdered thousands in an
effort to terrorize Yugoslavia into
surrender.
President Milosevic's style, intelligence
and political message simply do not
fit the fabricated media image of
'another new Hitler.'
"To the outside world, used to Slobodan
Milosevic being referred to as the
'Butcher of the Balkans', his courtroom
performance has come as a surprise.
Is this man they've seen depicted in
political cartoons in their
newspapersâ?¦?" (Radio Netherlands)
Those of us who labor to counter media
lies about Yugoslavia asked ourselves:
has NATO made a disastrous error? Have
they, inadvertently and at long last
given truth a platform? How can NATO
possibly answer Slobodan Milosevic?
After two weeks, we know their strategy.
They are trying to silence him.
First, the foreign policy establishments
of the NATO countries are using
their stranglehold on the media to
guarantee one-sided coverage of the
'trial.' Thus, a newspaper will report
the claims of a 'witness' but not
report the details of President
Milosevic's devastating
cross-examination.
And second, the 'tribunal' is doing
everything it can to physically exhaust
Slobodan Milosevic and eventually, they
hope, lower his morale.
Example - the Dutch government, obviously
on orders from the 'tribunal', has
refused to give a visa to Mira Markovic,
President Milosevic's wife.
Example - He is awakened every day at 7am
even though the 'trial' doesn't
start until 9:30 and his cell is only a
few minutes from the 'tribunal.'
Example - Last Thursday, he was kept
waiting 2 and a half hours after the
proceedings ended because the 'tribunal'
claimed it couldn't find a vehicle
to take him back to the World War II Nazi
prison where he is incarcerated.
Example - He is not permitted to exercise
or even to walk outside when the
'tribunal' is in session.
And perhaps worst of all, the 'tribunal'
is using every trick to drag out the
nightmarish process.
Most 'tribunal' proceedings last a few
days or weeks. This one is projected
to go two years, or longer, with
President Milosevic forced to listen to
an
endless stream of ridiculous, obviously
false witnesses.
For example, on Monday, February 25,
President Milosevic cross-examined Halil
Morina. Morina claimed Yugoslav soldiers
wantonly attacked his village of
Landovice on March 26, 1999.
President Milosevic challenged him:
''Wasn't what happened in Landovice in
fact a firefight between Yugoslav forces
and Kosovo Liberation Army
terrorists?"
Morina claimed there were no KLA members
in his village.
Milosevic asked: ''Wasn't a monument to
Ramiz Sadiku and Boro Vukmirovic
destroyed in Landovice?'' (These slain
partisans, an ethnic Albanian and an
ethnic Montenegrin, symbolized
brotherhood in Yugoslavia.)
"Yes," said Morina.
"And what replaced it?" asked President
Milosevic.
"Why, a monument to our fallen KLA
soldiers," said Morina.
This prompted the following quite
reasonable response:
"I question that he does not know
anything about these [KLA] activities,"
President Milosevic said. "I must say you
[the "prosecutor"] are bringing in
witnesses of this kind to ill-treat me.
These are false witnesses."
Earlier, Morina testified that Yugoslav
soldiers arrived in Landovice in a
particular army vehicle. Though this
assertion had no bearing on anything or
anyone, least of all President Milosevic,
the prosecution produced pictures
of different army vehicles and everyone
had to wait while the 'witness'
studied them, finally picking the one
that looked like the vehicle in which
the troops had traveled.
This combination of physical abuse,
isolation from family, friends and
advisors - even President Milosevic's
lawyers in the Dutch courts are not
permitted to see him - and a stream of
ridiculous 'witnesses' is the real
content of the prosecution case against
President Milosevic.
We urge all individuals, groups, mass
media and members of parliament who
care about justice to protest this abuse
in any way possible including with
letters and petitions to the United
Nations Security Council. Demand:
1) End this farce of a trial. It is
already obvious the 'prosecution' has no
case.
2) Until The Hague farce is ended,
Slobodan Milosevic must be freed from the
abusive Hague jail. He must be allowed to
live in a house in The Netherlands
with his family, thus preserving his
physical well being and allowing him to
conduct his defense and counter attack in
full contact with advisers and
research facilities
This kind of action and public pressure
must go on continuously in different
forms until we FREE SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC.
Milosevic must not be silenced.
-- International Committee to Defend
Slobodan Milosevic
Security Council Members
* Mexico [President of Council in
February]
Permanent Representative of Mexico to the
United Nations
Two United Nations Plaza, 28th Floor, New
York, N.Y. 10017
Telephone: (212) 752-0220, Telefax: (212)
688-8862
* Norway [President of Council in March]
Permanent Representative of Norway to the
United Nations
825 Third Avenue, 39th Floor, New York,
N.Y. 10022
Telephone: (212) 421-0280/ 0281/ 0282/
0283/0284, Telefax: (212) 688-0554
* Russian Federation [President of
Council in April]
Permanent Representative of the Russian
Federation to the United Nations
136 East 67th Street, New York, N.Y.
10021
Telephone: (212) 861-4900/4901/4902,
Telefax: (212) 628-0252
Bulgaria
Permanent Representative of the Republic
of Bulgaria to the United Nations
11 East 84th Street, New York, N.Y. 10028
Telephone: (212) 737-4790/4791 or
327-4180/4181, Telefax: (212) 472-9865
Cameroon
Permanent Representative of the Republic
of Cameroon to the United Nations
22 East 73rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10021
Telephone: (212)
794-2295/2296/2297/2298/2299, Telefax:
(212) 249-0533
China
Permanent Representative of the People's
Republic of China to the United
Nations
350 East 35th Street, New York, N.Y.
10016
Telephone: (212) 655-6100, Telefax: (212)
634-7626
Colombia
Permanent Representative of Colombia to
the United Nations
140 East 57th Street, 5th Floor, New
York, N.Y. 10022
Telephone: (212) 355-7776, Telefax: (212)
371-2813
France
Permanent Representative of France to the
United Nations
One Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, 245 East
47th Street, 44th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10017, Telephone: (212)
308-5700
Telefax: (212) 421-6889
Guinea
Permanent Representative of the Republic
of Guinea to the United Nations
140 East 39th Street, New York, N.Y.
10016
Telephone: (212) 687-8115/8116/8117,
Telefax: (212) 687-8248
Ireland
Permanent Representative of Ireland to
the United Nations
One Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, 885 Second
Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, N.Y.
10017
Telephone: (212) 421-6934, Telefax: (212)
752-4726
Mauritius
Permanent Representative of the Republic
of Mauritius to the United Nations
211 East 43rd St., 15th Floor, New York,
N.Y. 10017
Telephone: (212) 949-0190/0191, Telefax:
(212) 697-3829
Singapore
Permanent Representative of the Republic
of Singapore to the United Nations
231 East 51st Street, New York, N.Y.
10022
Telephone: (212)
826-0840/0841/0842/0843/0844, Telefax:
(212) 826-2964
Syrian Arab Republic
Permanent Representative of the Syrian
Arab Republic to the United Nations
820 Second Avenue, 15th Floor, New York,
N.Y. 10017
Telephone: (212) 661-1313, Telefax: (212)
983-4439
United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland
Permanent Representative of the United
Kingdom to the United Nations
One Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, 885 Second
Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017
Telephone: (212) 745-9200, Telefax: (212)
745-9316
United States of America
Permanent Representative of the United
States to the United Nations
799 United Nations Plaza, New York, N.Y.
10017-3505
Telephone: (212) 415-4000, Telefax: (212)
415-4443
==========================
FURTHER READING
==========================
1) 'By Adding Three Lies, One Does Not
Get the Truth â?? Only a Bigger Lie ' -
President Slobodan Miloševic in The
Hague, January 30th 2002 (transcript)
2) 'Why is NATO Decimating the Balkans
and Trying to Force Milosevic to
Surrender?'
By Jared Israel and Nico Varkevisser
3) 'Illegal Tribunal - Illegal
Indictment,' by Dr. Hans Koechler at
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/prog2.htm
4) How Madeline Albright Ordered The
Hague 'Tribunal' To 'Indict' Milosevic
at
http://www.icdsm.org/more/lovie.htm
5) Official Statements Prove Hague
'Tribunal' Belongs to NATO
by Jared Israel at
http://www.icdsm.org/more/belongs.htm
Subscribe to the ICDSM email list at
http://www.icdsm.org/maillist.htm
Receive a few articles a week.
Click here to send the link to this
article to a friend.
THE DEFENSE OF MILOSEVIC - AND THE TRUTH
- NEEDS YOUR HELP!
NATO has billions of dollars and the
media to spread lies. We have the truth,
supported by hundreds of millions of
people. To develop legal, educational,
parliamentary and other work, our
Committee needs donations, large or
small,
from those who want to get the truth to
the people.
Here is how you can help:
* Contribute via credit card by calling
our Dutch or U.S. offices:
Dutch office: 31 20 6151122
US office: 1 617 916-1705
* Donate over the internet via PayPal at:
https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=icdsm%40aol.com
PayPal accepts VISA and MasterCard
* Or mail a check to: ICDSM
831 Beacon St., #295
Newton Centre, MA 02459 (USA)
Thank you!
http://www.icdsm.org
===*===
Dear friends,
Please support concretely the following ICDSM appeal. The situation is
dramatic. Behind the UN insignia NATO criminals are attempting another
crime: to silence the voice of freedom, dignity and consciousness. Let
us not allow them to avoid their final defeat from president Milosevic.
At the moment, 77% of Yugoslav citizens support president Milosevic.
That amount of support is far above any other individual, party or
institution.
The puppets in Belgrade are in panic!
Vladimir Krsljanin
International Secretary of the
Socialist Party of Serbia
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sps.org.yu/ (official SPS website)
http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the world of equals)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan
Milosevic)
http://www.jutarnje.co.yu/ ('morning news' the only Serbian newspaper
advocating liberation)
===*===
FREE PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC NOW!
HANDS OFF YUGOSLAVIA!
URL for petition is
http://emperors-clothes.com/petition/petition.htm
To add your name(s) to this petition, please click
here or write to icdsm@...
500,000 Sign Petition In Ukraine!!
FREE PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC NOW!
HANDS OFF YUGOSLAVIA!
Since this petition was written President Milosevic has been
kidnapped in violation of the
Yugoslav constitution and international law by authorities in
Belgrade. He was delivered by the
RAF to NATO'S Tribunal in The Hague. The signers of this petition
most strongly demand that
President Milosevic be immediately released from illegal detention
and be returned a free man to his country and his family.
We the undersigned demand that the Serbian authorities immediately
release Slobodan Milosevic and all other Serbian patriots from jail.
The arrest of Mr. Milosevic is an attempt by NATO leaders to blame the
Serbian people for crimes against Yugoslavia committed by NATO.
We demand that Mr. Milosevic immediately be given proper medical
treatment, in the hospital of his choice, with
doctors of his choice, for a heart condition that appeared only after he
was jailed.
We demand that neither Slobodan Milosevic, nor any other Yugoslav, be
sent to the Hague Tribunal.
We demand an end to the arbitrary kidnapping, arrest, harassment and
persecution of Yugoslav leaders and soldiers
and ordinary people whose crime was to set an example to the world by
resisting NATO aggression.
Free Slobodan Milosevic at once!
End persecution of Mr. Milosevic and all Yugoslav patriots and soldiers
at once!
Jail the real war criminals: the NATO leaders who committed crimes
against humanity and against Yugoslav
sovereignty and who continue to commit those crimes today.
Petition is being circulated by the International Committee to
Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM) at icdsm@... To sign
petition, please click here or go to
http://emperors-clothes.com/petition/sign.htm
For Signers' Comments see
http://emperors-clothes.com/petition/states.htm or click on highlighted
names.
GERMANIA: L'UNICO PAESE D'EUROPA CHE DIFENDE LE "MINORANZE" OVUNQUE
- DOPO AVERE SPAZZATO VIA QUELLE ESISTENTI IN CASA PROPRIA
Chiusa la scuola sorba
KROSTWITZ, 25 febbraio 2002. Nella localita' sassone di
Krostwitz e' stata recentemente chiusa una delle due ultime
scuole medie dei Sorbi di Lausitz [popolazione di origine slava
insediata in questa area della ex-DDR]. Questa scuola non
aveva piu' abbastanza studenti ed e' stata percio' chiusa
su decisione della amministrazione locale. I rimanenti 55
scolari sono stati distribuiti tra le scuole vicine. I Sorbi
di Lausitz, di origine slava-occidentale, erano riconosciuti
come minoranza nazionale in Germania fino alla Seconda Guerra
Mondiale, e costituivano una comunita' di quasi mezzo milione
di persone. Disponevano di varie scuole elementari e medie.
Oggi la minoranza sorba in Germania [l'unica "minoranza etnica"
di questo paese, che e' "etnicamente" il piu' omogeneo
d'Europa ed anzi rivendica legami con le popolazioni di
lingua germanica dalla Alsazia fino al Volga] conta meno
di 50mila individui.
+++ Sorbische Schule geschlossen +++
KROSTWITZ, 25. Februar 2002. In dem sächsischen Ort
Krostwitz wurde vor kurzem eine der letzten beiden
Mittelschulen der Lausitzer Sorben geschlossen. Diese Schule
hatte nicht mehr genügend Schüler und wurde deswegen auf
Anordnung des Gemeinderates geschlossen. Die verbliebenen 55
Schüler wurden auf die umliegenden Schulen verteilt. Die
Lausitzer Sorben,Angehörige der West-Slawen, waren in
Deutschland bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg als nationale
Minderheit anerkannt und zählten annähernd eine halbe
Million Menschen. Sie hatten mehrere Grud- und
Mittelschulen. Heute zählt die sorbische Minderheit in
Deutschland kaum noch 50.000 Menschen.
TIKER.CO.YU / AMSELFELD.COM
- DOPO AVERE SPAZZATO VIA QUELLE ESISTENTI IN CASA PROPRIA
Chiusa la scuola sorba
KROSTWITZ, 25 febbraio 2002. Nella localita' sassone di
Krostwitz e' stata recentemente chiusa una delle due ultime
scuole medie dei Sorbi di Lausitz [popolazione di origine slava
insediata in questa area della ex-DDR]. Questa scuola non
aveva piu' abbastanza studenti ed e' stata percio' chiusa
su decisione della amministrazione locale. I rimanenti 55
scolari sono stati distribuiti tra le scuole vicine. I Sorbi
di Lausitz, di origine slava-occidentale, erano riconosciuti
come minoranza nazionale in Germania fino alla Seconda Guerra
Mondiale, e costituivano una comunita' di quasi mezzo milione
di persone. Disponevano di varie scuole elementari e medie.
Oggi la minoranza sorba in Germania [l'unica "minoranza etnica"
di questo paese, che e' "etnicamente" il piu' omogeneo
d'Europa ed anzi rivendica legami con le popolazioni di
lingua germanica dalla Alsazia fino al Volga] conta meno
di 50mila individui.
+++ Sorbische Schule geschlossen +++
KROSTWITZ, 25. Februar 2002. In dem sächsischen Ort
Krostwitz wurde vor kurzem eine der letzten beiden
Mittelschulen der Lausitzer Sorben geschlossen. Diese Schule
hatte nicht mehr genügend Schüler und wurde deswegen auf
Anordnung des Gemeinderates geschlossen. Die verbliebenen 55
Schüler wurden auf die umliegenden Schulen verteilt. Die
Lausitzer Sorben,Angehörige der West-Slawen, waren in
Deutschland bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg als nationale
Minderheit anerkannt und zählten annähernd eine halbe
Million Menschen. Sie hatten mehrere Grud- und
Mittelschulen. Heute zählt die sorbische Minderheit in
Deutschland kaum noch 50.000 Menschen.
TIKER.CO.YU / AMSELFELD.COM
Subject: ADOZIONI ZASTAVA - IN
PROGRAMMA UNA NUOVA CONSEGNA
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 14:31:31 +0100
From: "Rossi Alma" <alma@...>
Dal coordinamento RSU
Vi informiamo che (dopo quello dell'ottobre
2001) è programmato un ulteriore
viaggio alla Zastava di Kragujevac per la
consegna delle nuove adozioni a
distanza attivate ultimamente e delle quote
dei rinnovi per parte delle adozioni gia'
attive.
La partenza e' prevista per il giorno 15
marzo. La delegazione sarà composta
da compagni di Milano, Lodi, Trieste,
Padova e Toscana (totale 9 persone ..
completamente a loro spese) in
rappresentanza dei nodi che hanno gestito
le adozioni raccolte in questi 2 mesi.
Nello stesso periodo è prevista la partenza
anche dei compagni di Lecco che
consegneranno le loro adozioni sabato 16 marzo.
Per parte nostra, le consegne (direttamente
alle famiglie dei lavoratori
della Zastava coinvolte)
averranno la mattina di domenica 17 marzo
nel corso di una assemblea che si
terrà nei locali dello stabilimento.
In previsione di questo viaggio
sollecitiamo quindi:
- chi avesse la possibilità di versare la
rata della propria adozione o di
aprirne una nuova in tempo per la partenza
della delegazione di contattare
Alma Rossi (055-8498256) in modo da
sveltire la procedura.
- chi avesse lettere o regali da far
pervenire alle famiglie adottate di
mettersi in contatto sempre con Alma per
mettersi d'accordo sul loro ritiro.
E' necessario, anche per le lettere ed i
regali da consegnare alle famiglie,
avere al più presto i dati in modo da
muoverci per tempo ad informare le
famiglie interessate ad essere presenti
alla assemblea alla zastava del 17 marzo.
Al ritorno dal viaggio vi faremo avere un
rendiconto completo.
Vi anticipiamo inoltre che si sta ormai
concretizzando anche la spedizione
di 2 TIR (medicinali, materiali per
l'igiene personale e della casa, altri
generi di conforto) prevista per la prima
settimana di Aprile. In questo
modo (visti i tempi lunghi dello
sdoganamento alla dogana di Kragujevac) si
dovrebbe riuscire a consegnare il materiale
alle famiglie (per i generi di
conforto) ed all'ospedale (per il materiale
sanitario) nella settimana del 1
maggio (in occasione di una iniziativa
nella giornata del lavoro) per
rendere ancora una volta visibile (oltre
alle adozioni) la solidarietà dei
lavoratori italiani verso quelli Jugoslavi
ed alle loro famiglie
barbaramente colpiti nel loro diritto al
lavoro ed al salario da una assurda
guerra per l'egemonia politica e
territoriale condotta dalla Nato.
I materiali che comporranno il carico dei
due Tir sono il risultato di una
raccolta realizzata grazie all'impegno di
diverse Rsu che hanno concordato
con le rispettive aziende la donazione dei
prodotti.
Alla zastava di Kragujevac si sono da poco
concluse le elezioni per la nuova
struttura sindacale. Di questo e della
situazione sindacale più in generale
vi daremo maggiori informazioni al nostro
ritorno.
Resta il fatto che i lavoratori della
zastava devono fare i conti
con non pochi problemi.
Infatti continua la politica di
smantellamento delle prospettive
occupazionali della fabbrica di automobili
e camion. Oltre ai 1500
licenziamenti dell'inverno scorso sono in
programma altri 5000 licenziamenti
nei primi mesi del 2002. Licenziamenti che
tolgono oltretutto al personale
zastava quel minimo supporto economico di
12.000 lire mensili di indennità
di mancato impiego (un po' come la nostra
CIG). A questo si aggiunge la politica
antisociale del Governo che ha iniziato un
pesante smantellamento di quello che era il
livello dei diritti e delle
tutele che il mondo del lavoro Jugoslavo ha
conquistato negli anni
precedenti. Sulla tutela in caso di
maternità, sulla flessibilità in entrata
ed in uscita con maggiori libertà di
licenziamento, sulla struttura e sul grado
di copertura contrattuale, sul sistema
previdenziale.
Una politica che si accompagna ad una
violenta privatizzazione dei servizi
pubblici, sopratutto la sanità, che rende
sempre più inacessibile il diritto
alla salute da parte dei ceti popolari ed
impossibile per i pensionati ed i
lavoratori senza reddito.
Alla zastava, come nelle altre aziende
jugoslave si ricomincia a scioperare
ed a manifestare.
Forniremo di questa situazione un
esauriente rendiconto al nostro rientro
ciao
Alma Rossi - email - alma@...
indirizzo internet del Coordinamento RSU -
http://www.ecn.org/coord.rsu/
PROGRAMMA UNA NUOVA CONSEGNA
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 14:31:31 +0100
From: "Rossi Alma" <alma@...>
Dal coordinamento RSU
Vi informiamo che (dopo quello dell'ottobre
2001) è programmato un ulteriore
viaggio alla Zastava di Kragujevac per la
consegna delle nuove adozioni a
distanza attivate ultimamente e delle quote
dei rinnovi per parte delle adozioni gia'
attive.
La partenza e' prevista per il giorno 15
marzo. La delegazione sarà composta
da compagni di Milano, Lodi, Trieste,
Padova e Toscana (totale 9 persone ..
completamente a loro spese) in
rappresentanza dei nodi che hanno gestito
le adozioni raccolte in questi 2 mesi.
Nello stesso periodo è prevista la partenza
anche dei compagni di Lecco che
consegneranno le loro adozioni sabato 16 marzo.
Per parte nostra, le consegne (direttamente
alle famiglie dei lavoratori
della Zastava coinvolte)
averranno la mattina di domenica 17 marzo
nel corso di una assemblea che si
terrà nei locali dello stabilimento.
In previsione di questo viaggio
sollecitiamo quindi:
- chi avesse la possibilità di versare la
rata della propria adozione o di
aprirne una nuova in tempo per la partenza
della delegazione di contattare
Alma Rossi (055-8498256) in modo da
sveltire la procedura.
- chi avesse lettere o regali da far
pervenire alle famiglie adottate di
mettersi in contatto sempre con Alma per
mettersi d'accordo sul loro ritiro.
E' necessario, anche per le lettere ed i
regali da consegnare alle famiglie,
avere al più presto i dati in modo da
muoverci per tempo ad informare le
famiglie interessate ad essere presenti
alla assemblea alla zastava del 17 marzo.
Al ritorno dal viaggio vi faremo avere un
rendiconto completo.
Vi anticipiamo inoltre che si sta ormai
concretizzando anche la spedizione
di 2 TIR (medicinali, materiali per
l'igiene personale e della casa, altri
generi di conforto) prevista per la prima
settimana di Aprile. In questo
modo (visti i tempi lunghi dello
sdoganamento alla dogana di Kragujevac) si
dovrebbe riuscire a consegnare il materiale
alle famiglie (per i generi di
conforto) ed all'ospedale (per il materiale
sanitario) nella settimana del 1
maggio (in occasione di una iniziativa
nella giornata del lavoro) per
rendere ancora una volta visibile (oltre
alle adozioni) la solidarietà dei
lavoratori italiani verso quelli Jugoslavi
ed alle loro famiglie
barbaramente colpiti nel loro diritto al
lavoro ed al salario da una assurda
guerra per l'egemonia politica e
territoriale condotta dalla Nato.
I materiali che comporranno il carico dei
due Tir sono il risultato di una
raccolta realizzata grazie all'impegno di
diverse Rsu che hanno concordato
con le rispettive aziende la donazione dei
prodotti.
Alla zastava di Kragujevac si sono da poco
concluse le elezioni per la nuova
struttura sindacale. Di questo e della
situazione sindacale più in generale
vi daremo maggiori informazioni al nostro
ritorno.
Resta il fatto che i lavoratori della
zastava devono fare i conti
con non pochi problemi.
Infatti continua la politica di
smantellamento delle prospettive
occupazionali della fabbrica di automobili
e camion. Oltre ai 1500
licenziamenti dell'inverno scorso sono in
programma altri 5000 licenziamenti
nei primi mesi del 2002. Licenziamenti che
tolgono oltretutto al personale
zastava quel minimo supporto economico di
12.000 lire mensili di indennità
di mancato impiego (un po' come la nostra
CIG). A questo si aggiunge la politica
antisociale del Governo che ha iniziato un
pesante smantellamento di quello che era il
livello dei diritti e delle
tutele che il mondo del lavoro Jugoslavo ha
conquistato negli anni
precedenti. Sulla tutela in caso di
maternità, sulla flessibilità in entrata
ed in uscita con maggiori libertà di
licenziamento, sulla struttura e sul grado
di copertura contrattuale, sul sistema
previdenziale.
Una politica che si accompagna ad una
violenta privatizzazione dei servizi
pubblici, sopratutto la sanità, che rende
sempre più inacessibile il diritto
alla salute da parte dei ceti popolari ed
impossibile per i pensionati ed i
lavoratori senza reddito.
Alla zastava, come nelle altre aziende
jugoslave si ricomincia a scioperare
ed a manifestare.
Forniremo di questa situazione un
esauriente rendiconto al nostro rientro
ciao
Alma Rossi - email - alma@...
indirizzo internet del Coordinamento RSU -
http://www.ecn.org/coord.rsu/
NATO and US Government War Crimes in Yugoslavia
Michel Chossudovsky
Economic War Crimes:
Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia-Herzegovina
Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1996
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), 19 February 2002
> http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO202G.html
===*===
'MEDIEVAL SAVAGERY¹
Compiled by Ian Johnson
At NATO's tribunal Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic has been portrayed as a perpetrator of
'medieval savagery.' The following items were compiled
from the mass media during the 1999 NATO bombing.
Unlike the false charges presented in The Hague
against Milosevic these public and verifiable facts
are irrefutable evidence of NATO's own high-tech
genocide. Pity then that the vigilantes in wigs have
decided that in their court the case against NATO
cannot be heard.
NATO and the bombing of Yugoslavia 1999.
5th April. The southern mining town of Aleksinac is
hit by three missiles which destroy a block of flats
and three streets of houses.
7th April. The Montenegrin capital of Podgorica sees
its residential area struck by four missiles.
9th April. The Zastava car plant in Kragujevac hit by
six missiles. The factory is occupied by its workers
trying to prevent it being destroyed and there are 132
casualties.
11th April. Nine more missiles blast the Zastava car
plant. 124 casualties.
12th April. A passenger train travelling between
Leskovac and the Macedonian capital Skopje is bombed
and first reports confirm twenty civilians burnt
alive.
14th April. Seventy-five Albanian refugees killed when
NATO bomb a refugee convoy near Meja, between
Djakovica and Prizren in Kosovo. The column was two
kilometres long and NATO rained missiles on it for
twenty minutes.
14th April. NATO commences daytime bombing of Belgrade
while the city is packed with people going about their
daily business.
21st April. Refugee camp near Djakovica in Kosovo is
bombed.
22nd April. Assassination attempt by NATO on Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic and his family. Three
laser-guided bombs hit the family home in Belgrade.
None of the family was at home.
This attack is reminiscent of the attempt to
assassinate Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi, when US
planes, flying from Britain, attacked Gadaffi's
home in Tripoli. They missed Gaddafi but managed to
murder his daughter.
23rd April. The bombing of Yugoslavian television,
killing broadcasters, technicians, cleaners and
make-up ladies.
Robert Fisk, writing in the Independent of 24th April,
described the resultant carnage:
"Deep inside the tangle of cement and plastic and
iron, in what had once been the make-up room next to
the broadcasting studio of Serb television, was all
that was left of a young woman, burnt alive when
Nato¹s missile exploded in the radio control room. A
young technician could only be extracted from the
hundreds of tons of concrete in which he was encased
by amputating both his legs. A Belgrade fireman pulled
at one of the bodies for all of thirty seconds before
he realised that the man, swinging back and forth amid
the wreckage, was dead. By dusk last night, ten
crushed bodies, two of them women, had been tugged
from
beneath the concrete, another man had died in hospital
and fifteen other technicians and secretaries still
lay buried."
Tony Blair described this attack as 'entirely
justified' and Clare Short, then Secretary of State
for International Development, claimed that television
was a 'legitimate target'. Fisk wasn't so sure. He
continued his article: " I recall Croatian television
spreading hatred aplenty when it was ethnically
cleansing 170,000 Serbs from Croatia in 1995. But we
didn't bomb Zagreb. And when President Franjo
Tudjman¹s lads were massacring Serbs and Muslims in
Bosnia, we didn't bomb his residence. Was Serbian
television's real sin its broadcasting of film of the
Nato massacre of refugees last week?"
23rd April. Neighbouring Bulgaria hit by a third
missile. This time a suburb of the capital Sofia is
struck, thirty miles from the Yugoslav border.
26th April. The northern Yugoslav town of Nombor
suffers another bombing blitz.
The majority of the population of Nombor is of
Hungarian origin.
27th April. In a daytime bombing raid on the southern
town of Surdulica a quarter of the town is destroyed.
28th April. Twenty civilians killed instantly when a
2000lb laser-guided missile demolishes fifty homes on
the outskirts of Belgrade.
1st May. Forty people die after NATO missile hits a
civilian bridge in Kosovo, close to the capital,
Pristina.
7th May. Fifteen people are killed and sixty injured
when NATO bombers hit homes and a hospital in the
southern city of Nis.
7th May. NATO bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
Three dead and twenty injured. The Chinese government
accuses NATO of a 'barbarian act' and state that
three missiles were fired from different angles at its
embassy.
13th May. Kosovo village of Korisa bombed killing
eighty-seven ethnic Albanian civilians.
22nd May. Intense bombing of Yugoslavia¹s electricity
grid begins, causing major disruption of power and
water supplies, most notably affecting the country¹s
hospitals.
30th May. NATO jets bomb crowded bridge in Varvarin,
central Yugoslavia. First reports confirm nineteen
dead.
This brief review by no means tells the full story of
the horror inflicted on the civilian population of
Yugoslavia, affecting all twenty-six ethnic groups who
make up the population of the Federal Republic. Truly
a confirmed and undeniable example of 'medieval
savagery'.
Ian Johnson. Feb. 2002.
Michel Chossudovsky
Economic War Crimes:
Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia-Herzegovina
Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1996
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), 19 February 2002
> http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO202G.html
===*===
'MEDIEVAL SAVAGERY¹
Compiled by Ian Johnson
At NATO's tribunal Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic has been portrayed as a perpetrator of
'medieval savagery.' The following items were compiled
from the mass media during the 1999 NATO bombing.
Unlike the false charges presented in The Hague
against Milosevic these public and verifiable facts
are irrefutable evidence of NATO's own high-tech
genocide. Pity then that the vigilantes in wigs have
decided that in their court the case against NATO
cannot be heard.
NATO and the bombing of Yugoslavia 1999.
5th April. The southern mining town of Aleksinac is
hit by three missiles which destroy a block of flats
and three streets of houses.
7th April. The Montenegrin capital of Podgorica sees
its residential area struck by four missiles.
9th April. The Zastava car plant in Kragujevac hit by
six missiles. The factory is occupied by its workers
trying to prevent it being destroyed and there are 132
casualties.
11th April. Nine more missiles blast the Zastava car
plant. 124 casualties.
12th April. A passenger train travelling between
Leskovac and the Macedonian capital Skopje is bombed
and first reports confirm twenty civilians burnt
alive.
14th April. Seventy-five Albanian refugees killed when
NATO bomb a refugee convoy near Meja, between
Djakovica and Prizren in Kosovo. The column was two
kilometres long and NATO rained missiles on it for
twenty minutes.
14th April. NATO commences daytime bombing of Belgrade
while the city is packed with people going about their
daily business.
21st April. Refugee camp near Djakovica in Kosovo is
bombed.
22nd April. Assassination attempt by NATO on Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic and his family. Three
laser-guided bombs hit the family home in Belgrade.
None of the family was at home.
This attack is reminiscent of the attempt to
assassinate Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi, when US
planes, flying from Britain, attacked Gadaffi's
home in Tripoli. They missed Gaddafi but managed to
murder his daughter.
23rd April. The bombing of Yugoslavian television,
killing broadcasters, technicians, cleaners and
make-up ladies.
Robert Fisk, writing in the Independent of 24th April,
described the resultant carnage:
"Deep inside the tangle of cement and plastic and
iron, in what had once been the make-up room next to
the broadcasting studio of Serb television, was all
that was left of a young woman, burnt alive when
Nato¹s missile exploded in the radio control room. A
young technician could only be extracted from the
hundreds of tons of concrete in which he was encased
by amputating both his legs. A Belgrade fireman pulled
at one of the bodies for all of thirty seconds before
he realised that the man, swinging back and forth amid
the wreckage, was dead. By dusk last night, ten
crushed bodies, two of them women, had been tugged
from
beneath the concrete, another man had died in hospital
and fifteen other technicians and secretaries still
lay buried."
Tony Blair described this attack as 'entirely
justified' and Clare Short, then Secretary of State
for International Development, claimed that television
was a 'legitimate target'. Fisk wasn't so sure. He
continued his article: " I recall Croatian television
spreading hatred aplenty when it was ethnically
cleansing 170,000 Serbs from Croatia in 1995. But we
didn't bomb Zagreb. And when President Franjo
Tudjman¹s lads were massacring Serbs and Muslims in
Bosnia, we didn't bomb his residence. Was Serbian
television's real sin its broadcasting of film of the
Nato massacre of refugees last week?"
23rd April. Neighbouring Bulgaria hit by a third
missile. This time a suburb of the capital Sofia is
struck, thirty miles from the Yugoslav border.
26th April. The northern Yugoslav town of Nombor
suffers another bombing blitz.
The majority of the population of Nombor is of
Hungarian origin.
27th April. In a daytime bombing raid on the southern
town of Surdulica a quarter of the town is destroyed.
28th April. Twenty civilians killed instantly when a
2000lb laser-guided missile demolishes fifty homes on
the outskirts of Belgrade.
1st May. Forty people die after NATO missile hits a
civilian bridge in Kosovo, close to the capital,
Pristina.
7th May. Fifteen people are killed and sixty injured
when NATO bombers hit homes and a hospital in the
southern city of Nis.
7th May. NATO bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
Three dead and twenty injured. The Chinese government
accuses NATO of a 'barbarian act' and state that
three missiles were fired from different angles at its
embassy.
13th May. Kosovo village of Korisa bombed killing
eighty-seven ethnic Albanian civilians.
22nd May. Intense bombing of Yugoslavia¹s electricity
grid begins, causing major disruption of power and
water supplies, most notably affecting the country¹s
hospitals.
30th May. NATO jets bomb crowded bridge in Varvarin,
central Yugoslavia. First reports confirm nineteen
dead.
This brief review by no means tells the full story of
the horror inflicted on the civilian population of
Yugoslavia, affecting all twenty-six ethnic groups who
make up the population of the Federal Republic. Truly
a confirmed and undeniable example of 'medieval
savagery'.
Ian Johnson. Feb. 2002.
Milosevic, teste dell'accusa si sente male in aula
(Repubblica on line 21/2/2002)
Aja, 11:10
Milosevic, teste dell'accusa si sente male in aula
Piccolo colpo di scena questa mattina all'Aja all'inizio dell'ottava
udienza del processo Milosevic. Mentre l'ex presidente jugoslavo
stava riprendendo il contro-interrogatorio del testimone dell'accusa
Agim Tegiri, il teste ha detto di "non sentirsi bene" e di non poter
più rispondere ad altre domande. Milosevic aveva appena contestato la
traduzione fatta ieri in aula di quanto aveva dichiarato Tegiri sui
suoi rapporti con l'Uck.
Il teste aveva raccontato come il suo villaggio fosse stato attaccato
dalle forze serbe il 25 marzo 1999, all'inizio dei bombardamenti
Nato. Aveva detto di essere stato picchiato, di avere visto una
persona uccisa, e di avere perso 16 membri della sua famiglia su 18.
Stando a Milosevic una frase pronunciata ieri da Tegiri sui suoi
rapporti con l'Uck voleva dire "li ho ospitati", mentre la traduzione
è stata "li ho un po' aiutati".
L'ex-presidente jugoslavo ha pronunciato la frase in albanese ed ha
chiesto al teste di spiegarne il significato esatto. "Non sono in
grado di dirlo", ha risposto il testimone. Poi ha aggiunto "non mi
sento bene, sono sotto dialisi, non ho altro da dire, ho i miei
problemi, ho la mia sofferenza". (Red)
===*===
"Il Manifesto" 20 Febbraio 2002
Milosevic rovescia le accuse
TOMMASO DI FRANCESCO
Slobodan Milosevic, difensore di se stesso nel processo
per crimini di guerra e genocidio nel quale compare davanti al
Tribunale dell'Aja come unico imputato per dieci anni di
guerre sanguinose nei Balcani, da ieri ha cominciato a
controinterrogare i testimoni dell'accusa, a partire
dall'ex leader della provincia del Kosovo, Mahmut Bakalli.
Davanti alla corte dell'Aja, Bakalli lunedì aveva
accusato Belgrado di "apartheid" verso la maggioranza albanese,
con un piano di espulsione di centinaia di musulmani dalle cariche
pubbliche negli anni Novanta, alla quale la Lega democratica
del Kosovo guidata da Ibrahim Rugova rispose costruendo uno "stato
parallelo" - con scuole, università e strutture sanitarie albanesi
- e rifiutando ogni partecipazione alle elezioni (un dato che
per molti osservatori favorì lo strapotere di Milosevic). "Può
spiegarci cosa significa apartheid?", ha chiesto Milosevic a
Bakalli aggiungendo: "Le ricordo che è sotto giuramento".
L'anziano ex leader politico è rimasto fermo: "Lei impose
i dirigenti delle scuole e delle università".
Se Milosevic sembrava perfettamente a suo agio, Bakalli si è
trovato più volte in difficoltà. L'ex governatore del Kosovo ha
dovuto ammettere di essere stato consigliere di Adem Demaqi -
ex leader albanese kosovaro per più di 20 anni imprigionato
per i suoi legami con l'Albania di Enver Hoxha - che avrebbe
dovuto rappresentare gli albanesi alla conferenza-farsa di
Rambouillet del 1999. Secondo Milosevic, Demaqi era "il capo
dell'ala politica dell'Uck", l'Esercito di liberazione del
Kosovo - contrapposto spesso violentemente anche ai moderati
di Rugova - ritenuto da Milosevic responsabile di assassini
e stupri sulla popolazione serba "che spinsero Belgrado a
intervenire". Bakalli ha assicurato di avere avuto solo contatti
politici e diplomatici con l'Uck. Allo stesso modo, ha assicurato
di non aver mai saputo che il leader del suo attuale partito
Aak, Ramush Haradinaj, fosse stato "secondo i servizi segreti
britannici" a capo di una rete di contrabbando di sigarette e di
armi, come ha ricordato Milosevic.
Che ha rincarato la dose, sia quando ha rilanciato le accuse
di stragi provocate dai bombardamenti della Nato in Serbia e
Kosovo, e Bakalli ha dovuto ammettere che sì "ci sono stati
danni collaterali"; sia quando ha sollevato la questione dei
possibili rapporti fra la rete terrorista di Osama bin Laden e
le milizie albanesi-kosovare dell'Uck. "Che cosa sa dei legami
tra Hasim Thaqi (il leader dell'Uck ndr) e Osama bin Laden",
ha chiesto Milosevic a Bakalli, "Non so, sono sicuro che non ce
ne sono", ha risposto Bakalli, e lui di rimando: "E' al corrente
di una brigata di mujaheddin in Kosovo". "Non sono al
corrente", ha risposto il testimone.
Bakalli è apparso irritato quando l'ex presidente jugoslavo
ha messo in dubbio la sua ricostruzione della strage di Prezak, in
Kosovo, del 1998: furono uccisi 40 membri di una famiglia
albanese, i Jashari. "Uccideste civili, bambini, vecchi, donne
incinte sostenendo in continuazione che stavate combattendo
il terrorismo". Per Milosevic i Jashari si erano rifiutati di
arrendersi, sparavano e avevano un grosso quantitativo di armi.
E non ha finito con il controinterrogatorio fiume. L'ex
presidente jugoslavo ha ricordato l'assassinio di diversi oppositori
serbi in Kosovo nel '98, tra cui un eminente medico ucciso
sulla porta di casa: "Questo non è un atto di terrorismo?", ha
chiesto. "Non è stato l'Uck", ha risposto Bakalli. E allora,
ha proseguito Milosevic, "gli omicidi, gli stupri" compiuti dai
miliziani albanesi per cacciare la minoranza serba dopo l'ingresso
della Nato? "E' propaganda, non accetto queste cose", ha
replicato, in difficoltà, Bakalli. "Così, i morti che hanno visto
tutti sono propaganda?", è stata la controreplica sferzante di
Milosevic. Se Bakalli era il testimone contro, che accadrà con
quelli a favore?
Ora da Mosca si è dichiarato pronto a testimoniare l'ex
premier russo Ievgheni Primakov che ha ricordato che "senza
Milosevic gli accordi di Dayton sarebbero stati impossibili".
Non ci sarà, invece, per "motivi di salute" l'ex leader
musulmano bosniaco Alia Izetbegovic, da tempo malato e in
cura in Arabia saudita - il principale paese finanziatore del
Tribunale dell'Aja.
===*===
RAGIONI DELLA ILLEGITTIMITA' DEL "TRIBUNALE AD HOC" DELL'AIA
--- In Ova adresa el. pošte je zaštićena od spambotova. Omogućite JavaScript da biste je videli., "Fausto Concer" wrote:
Vi rigiro questa analisi di Andrea Catone, più che mai attuale. Ciao
Fausto
Il Tribunale, non rispetta diversi principi di legge assolutamente
fondamentali: la separazione dei poteri (esecutivo, legislativo e
giudiziario), parità fra accusa e difesa, presunzione di innocenza
finché non si giunge ad una condanna.
Il Tribunale Internazionale per i Crimini di Guerra è stato fondato
nel 1993 dal Consiglio di Sicurezza delle Nazioni Unite (15 membri
dominati dai grandi poteri e dal veto USA), su insistenza del
Senatore Albright. Il normale canale per creare un Tribunale come
questo, come a suo tempo ha puntualizzato il Segretario Generale
delle Nazioni Unite, avrebbe dovuto essere "attraverso un Trattato
Internazionale stabilito ed approvato dagli Stati Membri che
avrebbero permesso al Tribunale di esercitare in pieno nell'ambito
della loro sovranità" (Rapporto No X S/25704, sezione 18). Tuttavia,
Washington ha imposto un'interpretazione arbitraria del Cap.VII della
Carta delle Nazioni Unite, che consente al Consiglio di Sicurezza di
prendere "misure speciali" per restaurare la pace in sede
internazionale. Può essere la creazione di un Tribunale una "misura
speciale"? E' arduo pensarlo! Il Tribunale Internazionale per i
Crimini di Guerra è esso stesso non legale.
Senza precedenti nella storia della legge, il Tribunale ha avuto
pieni poteri di costituire le proprie leggi e i regolamenti -
regolamenti che nei fatti ha modificato frequentemente. Attraverso
una procedura totalmente ridicola, il Presidente può apportare
variazioni di sua propria iniziativa o ratificarle via fax ad altri
giudici! (regola 6).
Vi è un'altra norma creativa. Le leggi del Tribunale Internazionale
per i Crimini di Guerra hanno il carattere della retroattività,
emanate e confezionate per adattarsi ai fatti, dopo l'evento.
Ancora peggio: il Procuratore (l'Accusa) può anche cambiare queste
norme (la Difesa non lo può fare). E non esiste un "giudice per le
indagini preliminari" che investighi sulle accuse e le contro-accuse.
Il Procuratore conduce l'inchiesta nel modo che più gli aggrada.
La Corte può ricusare un avvocato della difesa o semplicemente non
ascoltarlo, se lo ritiene "aggressivo" (regola 46).
Il Procuratore può, con il consenso dei giudici, rifiutare di
concedere all'avvocato difensore di consultare libri, documenti, foto
e altro materiale probatorio (regola 66).
Inoltre, la fonte testimoniale e di informazioni può essere tenuta
segreta. Questo significa che agenti CIA possono riempire i dossier
del Tribunale con accuse raccolte illegalmente (attraverso
intercettazioni foniche, corruzione, furti) senza averle sottoposte
ad alcun tipo di verifica o di controllo incrociato.
Anche i rappresentanti di altri Stati (partecipanti nel conflitto, ma
alleati degli Stati Uniti) possono sottoporre informazioni
confidenziali senza alcuna formale richiesta in merito.
Un atto di accusa può rimanere segreto "nell'interesse della
giustizia" (regola 53), in modo tale che l'accusato non possa
difendersi nei modi normali.
Un sospetto, cioè qualcuno che non è ancora stato imputato, può
essere detenuto per novanta giorni prima di essere accusato, un tempo
più che sufficiente per estorcergli forzatamente una confessione.
Inoltre, la regola 92 stabilisce che le confessioni saranno ritenute
credibili, a meno che l'accusato possa provare il contrario. Mentre,
in qualsiasi altra parte del mondo, l'accusato è ritenuto innocente
fino a quando non sia provata la sua colpevolezza.
Nessun Tribunale nazionale, negli Stati Uniti o in qualsiasi altra
parte del mondo, potrebbe operare in una tale maniera platealmente
illegale o arbitraria. Ma quando questo serve a condannare i nemici
degli Stati Uniti d'America, allora i principi della legge non
valgono più di tanto. In accordo con i padroni del mondo, il diritto
appartiene ai più forti e ai più ricchi. [cfr. al proposito
Christopher Black e Edward Herman, Il manifesto del 27 e 28 maggio
2000; Raniero la Valle, Liberazione, 4.4.2001; Kosta Cavoski,
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/cavoski; M. Collon,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/913).
(Repubblica on line 21/2/2002)
Aja, 11:10
Milosevic, teste dell'accusa si sente male in aula
Piccolo colpo di scena questa mattina all'Aja all'inizio dell'ottava
udienza del processo Milosevic. Mentre l'ex presidente jugoslavo
stava riprendendo il contro-interrogatorio del testimone dell'accusa
Agim Tegiri, il teste ha detto di "non sentirsi bene" e di non poter
più rispondere ad altre domande. Milosevic aveva appena contestato la
traduzione fatta ieri in aula di quanto aveva dichiarato Tegiri sui
suoi rapporti con l'Uck.
Il teste aveva raccontato come il suo villaggio fosse stato attaccato
dalle forze serbe il 25 marzo 1999, all'inizio dei bombardamenti
Nato. Aveva detto di essere stato picchiato, di avere visto una
persona uccisa, e di avere perso 16 membri della sua famiglia su 18.
Stando a Milosevic una frase pronunciata ieri da Tegiri sui suoi
rapporti con l'Uck voleva dire "li ho ospitati", mentre la traduzione
è stata "li ho un po' aiutati".
L'ex-presidente jugoslavo ha pronunciato la frase in albanese ed ha
chiesto al teste di spiegarne il significato esatto. "Non sono in
grado di dirlo", ha risposto il testimone. Poi ha aggiunto "non mi
sento bene, sono sotto dialisi, non ho altro da dire, ho i miei
problemi, ho la mia sofferenza". (Red)
===*===
"Il Manifesto" 20 Febbraio 2002
Milosevic rovescia le accuse
TOMMASO DI FRANCESCO
Slobodan Milosevic, difensore di se stesso nel processo
per crimini di guerra e genocidio nel quale compare davanti al
Tribunale dell'Aja come unico imputato per dieci anni di
guerre sanguinose nei Balcani, da ieri ha cominciato a
controinterrogare i testimoni dell'accusa, a partire
dall'ex leader della provincia del Kosovo, Mahmut Bakalli.
Davanti alla corte dell'Aja, Bakalli lunedì aveva
accusato Belgrado di "apartheid" verso la maggioranza albanese,
con un piano di espulsione di centinaia di musulmani dalle cariche
pubbliche negli anni Novanta, alla quale la Lega democratica
del Kosovo guidata da Ibrahim Rugova rispose costruendo uno "stato
parallelo" - con scuole, università e strutture sanitarie albanesi
- e rifiutando ogni partecipazione alle elezioni (un dato che
per molti osservatori favorì lo strapotere di Milosevic). "Può
spiegarci cosa significa apartheid?", ha chiesto Milosevic a
Bakalli aggiungendo: "Le ricordo che è sotto giuramento".
L'anziano ex leader politico è rimasto fermo: "Lei impose
i dirigenti delle scuole e delle università".
Se Milosevic sembrava perfettamente a suo agio, Bakalli si è
trovato più volte in difficoltà. L'ex governatore del Kosovo ha
dovuto ammettere di essere stato consigliere di Adem Demaqi -
ex leader albanese kosovaro per più di 20 anni imprigionato
per i suoi legami con l'Albania di Enver Hoxha - che avrebbe
dovuto rappresentare gli albanesi alla conferenza-farsa di
Rambouillet del 1999. Secondo Milosevic, Demaqi era "il capo
dell'ala politica dell'Uck", l'Esercito di liberazione del
Kosovo - contrapposto spesso violentemente anche ai moderati
di Rugova - ritenuto da Milosevic responsabile di assassini
e stupri sulla popolazione serba "che spinsero Belgrado a
intervenire". Bakalli ha assicurato di avere avuto solo contatti
politici e diplomatici con l'Uck. Allo stesso modo, ha assicurato
di non aver mai saputo che il leader del suo attuale partito
Aak, Ramush Haradinaj, fosse stato "secondo i servizi segreti
britannici" a capo di una rete di contrabbando di sigarette e di
armi, come ha ricordato Milosevic.
Che ha rincarato la dose, sia quando ha rilanciato le accuse
di stragi provocate dai bombardamenti della Nato in Serbia e
Kosovo, e Bakalli ha dovuto ammettere che sì "ci sono stati
danni collaterali"; sia quando ha sollevato la questione dei
possibili rapporti fra la rete terrorista di Osama bin Laden e
le milizie albanesi-kosovare dell'Uck. "Che cosa sa dei legami
tra Hasim Thaqi (il leader dell'Uck ndr) e Osama bin Laden",
ha chiesto Milosevic a Bakalli, "Non so, sono sicuro che non ce
ne sono", ha risposto Bakalli, e lui di rimando: "E' al corrente
di una brigata di mujaheddin in Kosovo". "Non sono al
corrente", ha risposto il testimone.
Bakalli è apparso irritato quando l'ex presidente jugoslavo
ha messo in dubbio la sua ricostruzione della strage di Prezak, in
Kosovo, del 1998: furono uccisi 40 membri di una famiglia
albanese, i Jashari. "Uccideste civili, bambini, vecchi, donne
incinte sostenendo in continuazione che stavate combattendo
il terrorismo". Per Milosevic i Jashari si erano rifiutati di
arrendersi, sparavano e avevano un grosso quantitativo di armi.
E non ha finito con il controinterrogatorio fiume. L'ex
presidente jugoslavo ha ricordato l'assassinio di diversi oppositori
serbi in Kosovo nel '98, tra cui un eminente medico ucciso
sulla porta di casa: "Questo non è un atto di terrorismo?", ha
chiesto. "Non è stato l'Uck", ha risposto Bakalli. E allora,
ha proseguito Milosevic, "gli omicidi, gli stupri" compiuti dai
miliziani albanesi per cacciare la minoranza serba dopo l'ingresso
della Nato? "E' propaganda, non accetto queste cose", ha
replicato, in difficoltà, Bakalli. "Così, i morti che hanno visto
tutti sono propaganda?", è stata la controreplica sferzante di
Milosevic. Se Bakalli era il testimone contro, che accadrà con
quelli a favore?
Ora da Mosca si è dichiarato pronto a testimoniare l'ex
premier russo Ievgheni Primakov che ha ricordato che "senza
Milosevic gli accordi di Dayton sarebbero stati impossibili".
Non ci sarà, invece, per "motivi di salute" l'ex leader
musulmano bosniaco Alia Izetbegovic, da tempo malato e in
cura in Arabia saudita - il principale paese finanziatore del
Tribunale dell'Aja.
===*===
RAGIONI DELLA ILLEGITTIMITA' DEL "TRIBUNALE AD HOC" DELL'AIA
--- In Ova adresa el. pošte je zaštićena od spambotova. Omogućite JavaScript da biste je videli., "Fausto Concer" wrote:
Vi rigiro questa analisi di Andrea Catone, più che mai attuale. Ciao
Fausto
Il Tribunale, non rispetta diversi principi di legge assolutamente
fondamentali: la separazione dei poteri (esecutivo, legislativo e
giudiziario), parità fra accusa e difesa, presunzione di innocenza
finché non si giunge ad una condanna.
Il Tribunale Internazionale per i Crimini di Guerra è stato fondato
nel 1993 dal Consiglio di Sicurezza delle Nazioni Unite (15 membri
dominati dai grandi poteri e dal veto USA), su insistenza del
Senatore Albright. Il normale canale per creare un Tribunale come
questo, come a suo tempo ha puntualizzato il Segretario Generale
delle Nazioni Unite, avrebbe dovuto essere "attraverso un Trattato
Internazionale stabilito ed approvato dagli Stati Membri che
avrebbero permesso al Tribunale di esercitare in pieno nell'ambito
della loro sovranità" (Rapporto No X S/25704, sezione 18). Tuttavia,
Washington ha imposto un'interpretazione arbitraria del Cap.VII della
Carta delle Nazioni Unite, che consente al Consiglio di Sicurezza di
prendere "misure speciali" per restaurare la pace in sede
internazionale. Può essere la creazione di un Tribunale una "misura
speciale"? E' arduo pensarlo! Il Tribunale Internazionale per i
Crimini di Guerra è esso stesso non legale.
Senza precedenti nella storia della legge, il Tribunale ha avuto
pieni poteri di costituire le proprie leggi e i regolamenti -
regolamenti che nei fatti ha modificato frequentemente. Attraverso
una procedura totalmente ridicola, il Presidente può apportare
variazioni di sua propria iniziativa o ratificarle via fax ad altri
giudici! (regola 6).
Vi è un'altra norma creativa. Le leggi del Tribunale Internazionale
per i Crimini di Guerra hanno il carattere della retroattività,
emanate e confezionate per adattarsi ai fatti, dopo l'evento.
Ancora peggio: il Procuratore (l'Accusa) può anche cambiare queste
norme (la Difesa non lo può fare). E non esiste un "giudice per le
indagini preliminari" che investighi sulle accuse e le contro-accuse.
Il Procuratore conduce l'inchiesta nel modo che più gli aggrada.
La Corte può ricusare un avvocato della difesa o semplicemente non
ascoltarlo, se lo ritiene "aggressivo" (regola 46).
Il Procuratore può, con il consenso dei giudici, rifiutare di
concedere all'avvocato difensore di consultare libri, documenti, foto
e altro materiale probatorio (regola 66).
Inoltre, la fonte testimoniale e di informazioni può essere tenuta
segreta. Questo significa che agenti CIA possono riempire i dossier
del Tribunale con accuse raccolte illegalmente (attraverso
intercettazioni foniche, corruzione, furti) senza averle sottoposte
ad alcun tipo di verifica o di controllo incrociato.
Anche i rappresentanti di altri Stati (partecipanti nel conflitto, ma
alleati degli Stati Uniti) possono sottoporre informazioni
confidenziali senza alcuna formale richiesta in merito.
Un atto di accusa può rimanere segreto "nell'interesse della
giustizia" (regola 53), in modo tale che l'accusato non possa
difendersi nei modi normali.
Un sospetto, cioè qualcuno che non è ancora stato imputato, può
essere detenuto per novanta giorni prima di essere accusato, un tempo
più che sufficiente per estorcergli forzatamente una confessione.
Inoltre, la regola 92 stabilisce che le confessioni saranno ritenute
credibili, a meno che l'accusato possa provare il contrario. Mentre,
in qualsiasi altra parte del mondo, l'accusato è ritenuto innocente
fino a quando non sia provata la sua colpevolezza.
Nessun Tribunale nazionale, negli Stati Uniti o in qualsiasi altra
parte del mondo, potrebbe operare in una tale maniera platealmente
illegale o arbitraria. Ma quando questo serve a condannare i nemici
degli Stati Uniti d'America, allora i principi della legge non
valgono più di tanto. In accordo con i padroni del mondo, il diritto
appartiene ai più forti e ai più ricchi. [cfr. al proposito
Christopher Black e Edward Herman, Il manifesto del 27 e 28 maggio
2000; Raniero la Valle, Liberazione, 4.4.2001; Kosta Cavoski,
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/cavoski; M. Collon,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/913).
RENDON GROUP: UN NUOVO EFFICIENTE SERVIZIO
PER LA TUA DISINFORMAZIONE STRATEGICA
Dal sito online di Repubblica, 19/2/2002
New York, 18:19
Usa pronti a propaganda strategica in tutto il mondo
Presentare la politica Usa in una luce
positiva, anche attraverso notizie
false. Questo il compito dell'Ufficio
di influenza strategica. Lo staff, creato dal
Pentagono dopo l'11 settembre, sta
preparando un'offensiva su scala
mondiale: in Medio Oriente, in Asia e
anche nell'Europa occidentale. E,
secondo indiscrezioni raccolte dal New
York Times negli ambienti del
ministero della difesa, sta "elaborando
dei piani" finalizzati alla diffusione di
informazioni, "anche false", allo scopo di
influenzare l'opinione pubblica e i
politici "in paesi amici e ostili".
Ma il quotidiano newyorkese segnala anche
il pericolo disinformazione: le
agenzie di stampa potrebbero far rimbalzare
anche in patria le notizie false
create ad hoc per l'estero. E la legge
vieta, sia all'ente di spionaggio sia al
Pentagono, di svolgere attivita' di
propaganda sul suolo statunitense.
L'ufficio di influenza strategica
e' capeggiato dal generale dell'aeronautica
Simon Worden, che lavora in collaborazione
con il Rendon Group, una societa' di consulenza
internazionale, con sede a Washington, guidata da
W. Rendon Jr., che lavora alla campagna
dell'ex presidente Jimmy Carter.
(Buc)
Commento:
Ma che bello!
Che siano gli stessi che hanno organizzato Racak?
A quali altri favolosi spettacoli assisteremo?
Magari fra un qualche settimana cadranno un paio di aerei
e la colpa sara' certamente di qualche "cattivone"
che andremo subito a punire.....ed ovviamente Repubblica sara'
in prima fila a chiedere pace sociale ed unita' nazionale
contro i nuovi terroristi
ed allora faremo un'altra bella guerra.
Luca
PER LA TUA DISINFORMAZIONE STRATEGICA
Dal sito online di Repubblica, 19/2/2002
New York, 18:19
Usa pronti a propaganda strategica in tutto il mondo
Presentare la politica Usa in una luce
positiva, anche attraverso notizie
false. Questo il compito dell'Ufficio
di influenza strategica. Lo staff, creato dal
Pentagono dopo l'11 settembre, sta
preparando un'offensiva su scala
mondiale: in Medio Oriente, in Asia e
anche nell'Europa occidentale. E,
secondo indiscrezioni raccolte dal New
York Times negli ambienti del
ministero della difesa, sta "elaborando
dei piani" finalizzati alla diffusione di
informazioni, "anche false", allo scopo di
influenzare l'opinione pubblica e i
politici "in paesi amici e ostili".
Ma il quotidiano newyorkese segnala anche
il pericolo disinformazione: le
agenzie di stampa potrebbero far rimbalzare
anche in patria le notizie false
create ad hoc per l'estero. E la legge
vieta, sia all'ente di spionaggio sia al
Pentagono, di svolgere attivita' di
propaganda sul suolo statunitense.
L'ufficio di influenza strategica
e' capeggiato dal generale dell'aeronautica
Simon Worden, che lavora in collaborazione
con il Rendon Group, una societa' di consulenza
internazionale, con sede a Washington, guidata da
W. Rendon Jr., che lavora alla campagna
dell'ex presidente Jimmy Carter.
(Buc)
Commento:
Ma che bello!
Che siano gli stessi che hanno organizzato Racak?
A quali altri favolosi spettacoli assisteremo?
Magari fra un qualche settimana cadranno un paio di aerei
e la colpa sara' certamente di qualche "cattivone"
che andremo subito a punire.....ed ovviamente Repubblica sara'
in prima fila a chiedere pace sociale ed unita' nazionale
contro i nuovi terroristi
ed allora faremo un'altra bella guerra.
Luca
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