http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages
Website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com
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Tanjug News Agency - May 7, 2012
13 years since NATO bombing of Chinese Embassy
Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to Serbia Zhang Wanxue, Belgrade correspondents of the Chinese media and representatives of the Association of Serbian Journalists (UNS) paid on Monday respects to the Chinese journalists killed in the NATO bombing that took place 13 years ago.
Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to Serbia Zhang Wanxue, Belgrade correspondents of the Chinese media and representatives of the Association of Serbian Journalists (UNS) on Monday paid respects to the Chinese journalists killed in the NATO bombing that took place 13 years ago.
They laid wreaths at the site of the former Chinese embassy in New Belgrade, which at 11:45 p.m. on May 7, 1999, suffered a blast that left three Chinese journalists dead.
In 2009, then Chinese Ambassador to Belgrade Wei Jinghua and Belgrade Mayor Dragan Djilas unveiled a plaque in memory of the Chinese journalists: Xu Xinghu and Zhu Ying, correspondents of the Guang Ming Daily, and Shao Yunhuan, a correspondent of the Xinhua news agency.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/oct/17/balkans
The Observer - October 16, 1999
Nato bombed Chinese deliberately
Nato hit embassy on purpose
John Sweeney and Jens Holsoe in Copenhagen and Ed Vulliamy in Washington
Nato deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.
According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's forces.
The story is confirmed in detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. They all confirm that they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a 'rebro' [rebroadcast] station for the Yugoslav army (VJ) after alliance jets had successfully silenced Milosevic's own transmitters.
The Chinese were also suspected of monitoring the cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective counter-measures against US missiles.
The intelligence officer, who was based in Macedonia during the bombing, said: 'Nato had been hunting the radio transmitters in Belgrade. When the President's [Milosevic's] residence was bombed on 23 April, the signals disappeared for 24 hours. When they came on the air again, we discovered they came from the embassy compound.' The success of previous strikes had forced the VJ to use Milosevic's residence as a rebroadcast station. After that was knocked out, it was moved to the Chinese embassy. The air controller said: 'The Chinese embassy had an electronic profile, which Nato located and pinpointed.'
The Observer investigation, carried out jointly with Politiken newspaper in Denmark, will cause embarrassment for Nato and for the British government. On Tuesday, the Queen and the Prime Minister will host a state visit by the President of China, Jiang Zemin. He is to stay at Buckingham Palace.
Jiang Zemin is still said to be outraged at the 7 May attack, which came close to splitting the alliance. The official Nato line, as expressed by President Bill Clinton and CIA director George Tenet, was that the attack on the Chinese Embassy was a mistake. Defence Secretary William Cohen said: 'One of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map.'
Later, a source in the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency said that the 'wrong map' story was 'a damned lie'.
Tenet apologised last July, saying: 'The President of the United States has expressed our sincere regret at the loss of life in this tragic incident and has offered our condolences to the Chinese people and especially to the families of those who lost their lives in this mistaken attack.
Nato's apology was predicated on the excuse that the three missiles which landed in one corner of the embassy block were meant to be targeted at the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement, the FDSP. But inquiries have revealed there never was a VJ directorate of supply and procurement at the site named by Tenet. The VJ office for supplies - which Tenet calls FDSP - is some 500 metres down the street from the address he gave. It was bombed later.
Moreover the CIA and other Nato intelligence agencies, such as Britain's MI6 and the code-breakers at GCHQ, would have listened in to communication traffic from the Chinese embassy as a matter of course since it moved to the site in 1996.
A Nato flight control officer in Naples also confirmed to us that a map of 'non-targets': churches, hospitals and embassies, including the Chinese, did exist. On this 'don't hit' map, the Chinese embassy was correctly located at its current site, and not where it had been until 1996 - as claimed by the US and NATO.
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The Chinese military attache, Ven Bo Koy, who was seriously wounded in the attack and is now in hospital in China, told Dusan Janjic, the respected president of Forum for Ethnic Relations in Belgrade, only hours before the attack, that the embassy was monitoring incoming cruise missiles in order to develop counter-measures.
Nato spokesman Lee McClenny yesterday stood by the official version. 'It was a terrible mistake,' he said, 'and we have apologised.' A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in London said yesterday: 'We do not believe that the embassy was bombed because of a mistake with an out-of-date map.'
8 mai 2012
Aujourd’hui encore, les projectiles de l’OTAN sèment la mort au Kosovo et en Métohie parmi les Albanais et les Serbes, mais aussi parmi les soldats de la KFOR et le personnel de l’UNMIK.
President-elect Tomislav Nikolic, who is looking for more intensive relations with Russia, has promised that Serbia will never become a member of NATO.
Nikolic, who met Putin in the Russian president’s first meeting with a foreign leader since being elected, stated that Serbia is “on the road” to the European Union, admitting that it will be “a long road, and we will base our relations on the rules of international law.”
He added that he wasn’t sure if Serbia would be admitted into the EU unless “we recognize the independence of Kosovo and Metohija.”
Many Serbs are ambivalent, if not outright hostile to the idea of restoring full relations with the European Union, not to mention the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1999 Belgrade was on the receiving end of a massive 78-day bombing campaign by the alliance (March 24 – June 10) aimed at removing Yugoslav forces from Kosovo.
"Our constitution forbids us to abandon Kosovo and Metohija," Nikolic said. Meanwhile, Russia is ready to allocate the second loan tranche of $800 million to Serbia, Putin assured his Serbian guest.
The Russian leader said that for the loan to be granted there should be concrete technical proposals to rebuild Serbia’s aging infrastructure.
Earlier, Russia already provided a $200 million loan to Serbia in an effort to consolidate the country's budget.
Moscow's total investment in Serbia stands at $1.4 billion, Putin recalled.
As for the next tranche, the president-elect should lend impetus to government structures in order to ensure that they expedite the preparation of technical proposals, Putin said.
Putin also wished Nikolic success in implementing all his campaign promises.
"These tasks are plenty and difficult," he said.
The Russian leader mentioned that cooperation between the two countries will help deal with the various complicated problems. Putin also referred to Serbia as Russia’s “spiritual brother.”
“While Russia sees Serbia as a reliable partner in the Balkans, we are also spiritual brothers,” he said. "This is how it was, and this is how it will be."
At the end of the meeting Putin made "an unusual request" to Nikolic: "I would like to say that we have worked with your political opponent, previous president Boris Tadic, as partners for a number of years, and I am asking you to pass along our words of gratitude for the joint work," Putin said.
The Russian president invited the Serbian president-elect to visit Russia following his inauguration "at any time that is convenient for you."
13 ГОДИНА ОД БОМБАРДОВАЊА ВАРВАРИНА
Данас се навршава 13 година од убиства десеторо и рањавања више десетина грађана Варварина током бомбардовања моста, од авијације НАТО на Великој Морави у том шумадијском граду. Међу погинулима је била и Сања Миленковић, ученица Математичке гимназије у Београду, победница многих регионалних и европских такмичара младих математичара. По њеном имену 1999. Године, основан је Фонд за стипендирање талената из математике и техничких наука за који су средства обезбедили припадници српског расејања.
Поводом ове годишњице, синоћ је у Дому културе у Варварину одржана промоција књиге – зборника „СРБИЈА И НАТО“, у издању Београдског форума за свет равноправних. Присутне грађане и учеснике промоције поздравио је председник Општине Варварин, Професор Зоран Миленковић, отац покојне Сање Миленковић. О књизи су говорили предсеник Београдског форума Живадин Јовановић, генерал у пензији Радован Радиновић и бивши амбасадори Др Станислав Стојановић и Драгомир Вучићевић.
Основне поруке свих учесника промоције су да се злочини као што је бомбардовање Варварина и убиство његових грађана, не смеју заборавити и да за агресију НАТО на Србију (СРЈ) нема оправдања. Књига „СРБИЈА И НАТО“ , оцењено је, представља велики допринос разумевању правих узрока и циљева агресије који се виде у стварању преседана, одузимању Косова и Метохије од Србије и ширењу НАТО на Исток. Учесници промоције су подсетили на чињеницу да се око 70 одсто грађана Србије противи чланству у НАТО и истакли да Србији, као мирољубивој европској земљи, није место у НАТО – у као офанзивној, интервенциoнистичкој војној организацији.
У програму су учествовали књижевници, песници и ученици који су читали своје радове о злочинима НАТО – а.
Southeast European Times - April 23, 2014
BiH edging closer to NATO process
Sarajevo: The clock is running for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The country has roughly four weeks to determine ownership of dozens of military facilities - bases, barracks and warehouses - before NATO holds its annual spring summit, this year in Chicago.
The sorting process is a crucial step in BiH's path to potential membership in the Alliance.
On April 10th, NATO members meeting in Brussels made clear that BiH is on track to get the green light for a Membership Action Plan (MAP). Since then, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a letter to BiH's Presidency, asking authorities "to register these assets as soon as possible so that BiH can enjoy all benefits that MAP has to offer."
Specifically, 69 pieces of property are on the table. Ownership is in question because they were all once in the hands of the former Yugoslav army. For example, in Republika Srpska, there are about 45 barracks. Just over half of them are to be registered to the state. The rest will be handed over to local authorities, who will convert them into a range of purposes.
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NATO wants the list winnowed down so that BiH's military can use what is left to its full capacity. When finally registered to the state, the armed forces will have unlimited use of these properties.
Currently, the value of all this property is unclear, but by some estimates it could be worth hundreds of millions of euros.
So while a political agreement was struck last month regarding the process, the Council of Ministers must implement it by the May 22nd summit.
Denis Hadzovic, director of the Sarajevo-based NGO Centre for Security Studies, told SETimes, “I think that the technical part of the property registration is much easier than the political part. I am sure that BiH will succeed in doing this; that we will bring a document to the NATO summit in Chicago that proves that we earned the MAP."
Deputy Defence Minister Mirko Okolic seems optimistic.
"The Council of Ministers has already begun to work on this and I think that the job will be completed by the NATO summit," he told SETimes.
But larger issues loom. "After MAP, I think political debate will follow on whether BiH even needs to join NATO, because there are different views on this issue in Sarajevo and Banja Luka," Okolic added.
In mid-March, RS President Milorad Dodik reopened the issue of BiH’s membership, reiterating that the citizens of RS will decide in a referendum whether they wish to join NATO when the time comes.
Regardless, Ines Kuburovic, spokeperson for NATO Headquarters in Sarajevo, said the headquarters has continuously co-operated with state institutions to help them meet the requirements to activate the MAP.
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After meeting with BiH Presidency member Bakir Izetbegovic earlier this month, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Alliance is committed to BiH receiving full membership.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Transformation
May 14, 2012
NATO OPEN DAYS TO BE HELD IN TURKISH CULTURAL CENTER, SARAJEVO
NATO OPEN DAYS is a five day event to be held 15 - 19 May, with the goal to provide to wider public more information about NATO Alliance, NATO integrations processes in BiH, activities of NATO HQ SARAJEVO in 2011/2012 period, and to mark 60th anniversary of Turkish membership in NATO.
Specifically, Open Days will engage students and academic community in public discussions on various NATO related topics.
In the light of NATO Chicago Summit in May, the whole event, and the opening event in particular will be an opportunity to share with general public and media information about the Summit, BiH's participation in the event, including the current phase of NATO integrations processes in BIH.
During NATO Open Days, Turkish Cultural Center premises will offer:
1. Two separate exhibition floors, which will offer a photo exhibition of NATO HQ Sarajevo activities in 2011/2012 period, and a photo exhibition to present the NATO – Turkey relationship in past 60 years,
2. In the cinema hall (30 seat capacity) NATO movies will be screened daily, and the hall will be used for student lectures/round tables.
3. Event will be an opportunity to distribute various NATO promotion materials to the visitors and wider public.
PROGRAM:
EVENT TOPIC DATE AND TIME
Opening event
15 May 2012, 19:00 hrs – 21:00 hrs
Round Table/Lecture
"NATO and BiH”
"NATO's fight against organised crime and terrorist groups”
"NATO and Gender”
16 May 2012, 12:00 – 13:00 hrs
Round Table/Lecture
"NATO and BiH”
"Role of Strategic Communications in NATO”
17 May 2012, 12:00 – 13:00 hrs
Round Table/Lecture
NATO's New Strategic Concept
"Role of Strategic Communications in NATO”
18 May 2012, 13:00 – 14:30