Informazione
UN PAESE AFFIDABILE
"It was Italy's leadership that allowed NATO's strategic theory to be
transformed into strategic practice"
"E' stata la classe dirigente italiana a permettere la trasformazione
della teoria strategica della NATO in pratica strategica"
(Generale Wesley Clark, Roma, 7 ott. 1999)
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
"It was Italy's leadership that allowed NATO's strategic theory to be
transformed into strategic practice"
"E' stata la classe dirigente italiana a permettere la trasformazione
della teoria strategica della NATO in pratica strategica"
(Generale Wesley Clark, Roma, 7 ott. 1999)
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
MILITARI E SPIE DELLA NATO E DELL'OSCE
NELL'ORGANIZZAZIONE "UMANITARIA" CARE
Nelle scorse settimane sono emersi approcci tra la sezione australiana
della ONG transnazionale "CARE" ed i servizi segreti militari canadesi
(il Canada e' membro della NATO), questi ultimi interessati ad inserirsi
nelle operazioni di CARE nella RF di Jugoslavia.
Queste rivelazioni fanno seguito ad altre vicende squallide che hanno
coinvolto CARE in passato: citiamo ad esempio i legami tra la missione
CARE in Somalia ed i marines USA presenti nella citta' di Baidoa alla
fine del 1992; l'arresto al confine jugoslavo di alcuni membri di CARE
Australia (uno dei quali reo confesso) accusati di lavorare per la NATO
durante i bombardamenti del 1999; nonche' gli strani rapporti tra CARE e
la OSCE-na missione dell'OSCE nella provincia jugoslava del Kosmet, con
la quale venne preparato il terreno ai suddetti bombardamenti...
(Le altre ONG ed organizzazioni "Umanitarie" da noi analizzate in
passato: Medici senza Frontiere; Human Rights Watch)
---
HUMANITARIAN SPIES
by Jared Israel
WWW.TENC.NET (or WWW.EMPERORS-CLOTHES.COM)
It appears there are two types of Humanitarian Aid organizations in the
New
World Order: Them That Steals and Them That Spies. For the thieves, see
Soiled Rainbow at www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/martinez/soiled.htm
. If
you are interested in spies and the liars who cover up their work, stay
here.
I have been doing research on the CARE spy scandal for several days. It
is a
Labor of Sisyphus. No sooner does one think one has dug up all there is
to
dig then one encounters (if you will pardon the mixed metaphor) more
dirt
rolling down the hill. CARE has been compromised by this mess, but not
only
CARE. Also the Australian government, the US government, the OSCE
(Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the Western
mass
media. Perhaps the Western mass media worst of all.
On Nov 2, SBS TV in Australia revealed that CARE Canada had been
recruiting
what amounted to spies for NATO in Yugoslavia.
I've posted the hyperlink to the SBS CARE story below. It's worth
reading.
But before you look at the transcript, I suggest you read the background
material because in some ways it's more revealing than the TV show, more
damning. As happens often, when Western journalists uncovered this
cover-up,
they didn't uncover it all.
Spies or Victimized Aid Workers?
On March 31, 1999, three employees of CARE Australia, Steve Pratt, an
Australian who headed the Yugoslav operation, Peter Wallace, another
Australian, and Branko Jelen, a Yugoslav, were arrested at the
Serbian-Croatian border. Yugoslavia charged them with using CARE as a
cover
to spy for NATO.
CARE Australia officials ridiculed the charges, claiming CARE was
completely
neutral and that the confession of Steve Pratt, aired on Serbian TV,
could
only have resulted from coercion. Western mass media supported CARE,
presenting the men as Good Samaritans whose only crime was being in the
wrong
place at the wrong time and falling victim to Serbian paranoia and war
propaganda. CARE had clean hands...
Or did it?
Now comes a TV show, broadcast Nov. 2 by SBS in Australia. It reveals
that
CARE recruited and paid OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation
in
Europe) Verifiers in Kosovo from Oct. 1998 to March 1999. That much is
uncontested.
As you will see when you read the transcript, some CARE people justify
the
OSCE recruiting program on the grounds that the Verifiers were
legitimate
peacemakers. Alas, this simply does not wash.
Goals of the Kosovo Verification Mission
'Negotiated' (that is, 'coerced') under threat of NATO bombing last
October,
the Verification agreement let the OSCE send unarmed mediators into
Kosovo,
supposedly to help defuse tensions. However everything about the
Verification
mission suggests military intelligence, not mediation.
It was run by William Walker. Walker had no background as a mediator. He
wasn't even an expert in Balkans history or current politics. What he
did
know about was counter-insurgency and black ops. His role in Iran-Contra
and
his achievements in apologizing for the murderous El Salvador death
squads
all but prove he is a high-placed intelligence operative. (A factual
account
of Mr. Walker's work in Central America will be posted on
Emperors-Clothes as
soon as possible. In the absence of that account, which we have not had
time
yet to lay out, let me say these facts are uncontested. Period.)
The U.S. verification team was composed of employees of Dyncorp, a
Virginia
company that has grown rich off Government work. At the 1992 Senate
hearings
on R. James Woolsey's appointment as head of the CIA, Woolsey commented:
"I
own less than one-quarter of one percent of the -- diluted shares of a
company named Dyncorp here in the Washington, D.C. area. And the
corporation
has, from time to time, had a handful of very small contracts with the
Central Intelligence Agency." Ahh, sweet understatement. Dyncorp's "very
small contracts" have included covert work in Columbia and Peru. (Facts
on
this will be posted shortly on Emperors-clothes. Again, it is all
documented). In the case of Dyncorp's work in Columbia, the Clinton
administration was accused of using Dyncorp to circumvent human rights
restrictions on US aid to the death-squad-ridden Colombian military.
So what do we have? We have the head of the Verification mission and his
American team linked to covert operations and death squad activities in
Latin
America. Other than that, they have no qualifications for their work in
Kosovo.
Given this command structure, doesn't it stand to reason that the
Western
(i.e., U.S.) goal was a) to gather military intelligence and b) to
establish
command-relations with the Kosovo Liberation Army, an outfit whose
activities
- killing ethnic Serbian civilians and ethnic Albanian "collaborators"
as
well as employees of the Serbian state such as policemen, power line
repairmen, school officials, Yugoslav troops and even state-employed
wood
gatherers - whose activities are very much like those of Latin American
death
squads?
Indeed, isn't it reasonable to guess that the tactical similarity
between the
KLA and the Latin American death squads may result from their having had
the
same (US) advisors?
In any case this was the Verification Mission for which CARE Canada was
recruiting. Not only recruiting, but also apparently paying the
recruits'
salaries.
Even the Western press has virtually admitted that Walker & Co. were
spies.
Consider the following from the LA Times:
His [i.e., William Walker's] postings include a stint in Honduras from
1980
to 1982, when the Central American country was Washington's secret
conduit
for weapons and other support to right-wing Contras fighting to
overthrow the
Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua.
He also served as chief of the U.S. Embassy's political section in El
Salvador, another Central American hot spot, from 1974 to 1977, and
later as
the country's U.S. ambassador from 1988 to 1992. As a diplomat in
countries
so high on Washington's national security agenda, Walker couldn't help
knowing something about spying, said John Pike, a defense analyst at
Washington's Federation of American Scientists. "Those are front-line
postings where he would have unavoidably developed an acquaintance with
the
capabilities and limitations of intelligence sources and methods," Pike
said
from Washington. And it would be surprising if Walker's team of
ex-military
and other experts came to verify Kosovo's cease-fire without equipment
to
listen in on radio communications, Pike said. "Put it this way: They
would be
idiots if they weren't doing that," he added. "What are they going to
do,
read about it in the paper the next day?"( LA Times, Jan. 20, 1999, our
emphasis)
The Amazing Story of Mr. Pratt, Mr. Wallace and Mr. Jelen
So we had a neutral, Humanitarian Aid organization (CARE) recruiting
Verifiers, that is spies, for a Kosovo Mission run by CIA types. Shortly
after the Mission ended and NATO began bombing Yugoslavia, three of the
Humanitarian CARE employees were arrested for spying.
That was on March 31. At first CARE officials claimed they were not sure
of
the three men's whereabouts. Then, on April 11, Steve Pratt appeared on
Serbian Television, RTS. Here's the actual text of the RTS broadcast, as
transcribed by the BBC:
[Announcer] Through coordinated action, the security bodies of the
Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia have smashed a network of agents headed by Major
Steve
Pratt. The named person had been gathering intelligence on the movement
of
our military and police forces under the cover of the Care International
humanitarian organization before the aggression on our country, and,
during
the aggression, on the effects of the bombing.
[Pratt, recording in English with passage by passage Serbo-Croatian
translation] My name is Steve Pratt. I was born in 1949. I was born in
Australia and I am the citizen of Australia. Before I came to
Yugoslavia, I
worked in northern Iraq, Yemen, Zaire, Rwanda, and Kenya for the
humanitarian
organization Care of Australia.
When I came to Yugoslavia, I performed some intelligence tasks in this
country by using the cover of Care Australia. My concentration was on
Kosovo
and some effects of the bombing. I misused my Yugoslavian citizen staff
for
the acquisition of information. I realize that damage was done this
country
by these actions, for which I am greatly sorry. I always did and still
do
condemn the bombing of this country.
[Television footage shows Pratt sitting in a chair and making the
statement;
TV also shows Pratt's passport; there are no visible signs of physical
mistreatment of Pratt] (BBC, April 13, 1999)
The Western media presented a negative view of the RTS broadcast. One AP
report April 12th was headlined, "TV pictures of aid worker's spy
confession
fuzzy: Tapp". In the story Australian CARE chief Charles Tapp dismissed
the
RTS broadcast because Pratt was shown in profile, because it was
impossible
to see his eyes and because his confession was not very specific. (He
said
"confession" should be put in "immense inverted commas".) An Agence
France
Presse story on the 12th was headlined "Yugoslavs forced our man to
confess
to spying."
Amidst this reporting, which amounted to anti-Yugoslav propaganda, the
real
story was simply ignored by most of the media; where it was covered it
was
scornfully dismissed.
That story, which broke April 11th in the Australian Sunday Telegraph,
quoted
Steve Pratt's mother, Mrs. Mavis Pratt, concerning Pratt's past
activities. I
have not been able to see a copy of the Sunday Telegraph story.
Fortunately a
few sentences are quoted in a few places. One is an AP dispatch issued
hours
after the Sunday Telegraph report. According to the AP, Mrs. Pratt told
the
Telegraph that her son had worked for CARE in Iraq:
''He was letting the U.N. know what Iraq was doing, he was observing, so
Iraq
put a price on his head and they had to get him out of there quickly.''
In other words, he had been a spy.
Dishonor Thy Mother
How might one expect CARE executives to have responded to Pratt's
confession
and Mrs. Pratt's statement?
CARE presents itself as a politically neutral, humanitarian
organization.
Doesn't that suggest CARE leaders should have adopted a cautious,
neutral
approach? Perhaps said they have nothing but respect for the arrested
men and
established a fund legal expenses? Wouldn't any other approach
compromise
their neutrality and raise questions about their motives?
And what about the mass media? Since governments do employ spies, since
to be
effective, spies have to have some kind of cover, wouldn't it make sense
to
present the story in a factual manner and not use journalistic
techniques to
sway public opinion?
CARE and the media lash out at Yugoslavia
Let's look at the April 11 AP story, starting with the headline. The
headline
may be the only thing one reads and even if one reads further, the
headline
colors one's view of the rest.
What sort of headline would logically go with this story? Maybe
something
like:
Mom Says Arrested CARE worker Spied Before
Instead, AP chose:
CARE says Serbian spying 'confession' obtained under duress
This is a very strong statement. By making it the headline, AP lent it
credibility. Did it deserve such credibility?
The RTS broadcast with Pratt's confession had just been aired. What
could
Charles Tapp or anyone else at CARE actually have known about this case?
If Pratt had told them he was a spy, they would know. But if Pratt was a
spy
and told nobody, how could they have known?
Therefore Tapp's denial is either a) a lie (because he knew Pratt was a
spy
and therefore denied it) or b) pure speculation (because he had no way
of
knowing whether Pratt was innocent or guilty.)
So what's the point of the headline? By using the phrase "obtained under
duress" the headline creates a picture in the reader's mind - of threats
and
torture. Though the body of the article offers no factual basis for this
charge, the headline has a powerful impact.
Note that 'CARE' is not a person but an organization; how can CARE 'say'
anything? By quoting 'CARE' instead of a CARE executive, the AP story
capitalizes on Westerners' impression of CARE, the organization:
neutral,
selfless, honorable. A CARE spokesman might lie - but 'CARE' itself?
Never.
Compounding the Question
Note that by jumping to the question of how the confession was obtained
(supposedly 'under duress') the AP story gives the (false) impression
that
Pratt's innocence is an established fact.
The sleight of hand technique used here is similar to the compound
question.
A familiar example: "Do you still beat your wife?" The use of the very
aggressive "do you still" obscures the fact that the main charge is
unproven:
we have not been shown that you ever beat your wife. Similarly here, by
stressing the manner in which the (allegedly) false confession was
obtained
(that is, "under duress") the headline obscures the fact that we have
been
shown no evidence the confession was false.
Let's move onto the first paragraph in the article:
The aid agency CARE Australia on Monday said its field worker Steve
Pratt's
alleged spying confession broadcast by Serbian television was made under
duress.
This is just a repeat of the headline. Bad journalism, unless they want
us to
learn this statement by rote. Will there be a quiz?
Here's paragraph two:
CARE and the Australian government demanded immediate access to Pratt
and his
colleague, Peter Wallace, who were detained by Yugoslav authorities
March 31
after they left Belgrade for Montenegro to help refugees.
Still not quoting actual people, the AP adds a second institution, the
Australian government, by way of additional confirmation. The Yugoslav
offense is so great, all institutions are speaking out.
Moreover, by telling us these institutions have "demanded immediate
access to
Pratt" and Wallace, the article suggests Yugoslavia is denying such
access.
This in turn suggests the Yugoslavs must have something to hide - such
as
evidence that Pratt has been beaten. Note that there is no effort, here
or
elsewhere in the article, to discuss the normal procedure for allowing
access
to men accused of spying for a group of nations who are, in grave
violation
of international law, bombing your country.
The paragraph also includes the statement that the arrested man had been
arrested after they:
left Belgrade for Montenegro to help refugees. (My emphasis)
How could the AP possibly know why Pratt, Wallace and Jelen had left
Belgrade? Couldn't they have left to spy elsewhere? Or to escape
detection?
By asserting their humanitarian motives without evidence, the article
strengthens the reader's impression that the men are innocent.
A little further down, a CARE official is cited by name for the first
time:
CARE Australia's emergency coordinator, Brian Doolan, said threats may
have
been made against local staff or against Wallace to extract the
confession.
(My emphasis)
'May have been made.' Two thoughts on this: a) Doesn't the use of 'may'
completely contradict the headline and first paragraph, which have
'CARE'
(speaking as if it were a person) saying the confession WAS obtained
under
duress and b) isn't it true that it is always possible that a confession
'may' have been extracted based on threats?
Since by this point we've been told several times that Pratt was forced
to
confess, I would bet many readers wouldn't notice the use of "may".
The article continues as follows:
Doolan said the claims made against Pratt were ''absolute lunacy.''
If Pratt "may" (which suggests 'may not') have confessed under duress,
why is
Doolan sure the charges are lunacy? The AP ignores this obvious
contradiction. Nor does it try to bring some balance to the story by
talking
to someone from the Yugoslav side, for example a Yugoslav security
official.
Such a person might ask: "Since it's obvious that Mr. Pratt could be a
spy
without Mr. Doolan knowing, how can Mr. Doolan be so sure the charges
are
lunacy?"
And so the article continues for eight (8) more paragraphs,
strengthening the
impression that Pratt must be innocent until we get to the end, where
Mrs.
Pratt is quoted. But readers are not permitted to judge Mrs. Pratt's
words
for themselves; they are given a good deal of help by CARE Australia
chief
executive Charles Tapp who is quoted before and after Mrs. Pratt who
attacks
the charge that Pratt had previously spied against Iraq, attacks the
newspaper that covered it, and even tries to discredit Mrs. Pratt (her
sin is
being old). Here's how it reads:
...[CARE chief executive Tapp] rejected the suggestion that they [i.e.
the
arrested CARE workers] were acting for any other organization in any
capacity.
Speaking from the Yugoslavia-Croatia border, Tapp also slammed a
newspaper
report in which Pratt's mother, Mavis Pratt, was quoted as saying her
son had
supplied information about Iraqi forces to the United Nations during the
Gulf
War.
''He was letting the U.N. know what Iraq was doing, he was observing, so
Iraq
put a price on his head and they had to get him out of there quickly,''
she
[Mrs. Pratt] was quoted as saying.
Tapp said Mrs. Pratt was elderly and added, ''Frankly, I consider this
to be
extremely poor journalism.'' (AP Worldstream April 11, 1999; Sunday
22:06
Eastern Time )
When you think of it, the quote from Mrs. Pratt is the only news in this
entire news story. The rest is intended to give us a proper news
orientation.
The AP is evidently anxious to guarantee that readers approach the
arrests
with the preconception that Pratt and the others are innocent. Why?
As for CARE officials - their statements are suggestive. Consider: Pratt
confessed on April 11th. The Sunday Telegraph printed Mrs. Pratt's
statement
the next day and within hours AP broadcast furious denials from CARE
officials. How could these officials be so sure so fast? Why would they
react
without taking time to investigate and discuss the matter, including
privately with Yugoslav officials? Doesn't such a hasty and violent
response
suggest that:
Pratt et al were indeed spies;
Tapp and Doolan were fully aware that Pratt, Wallace and Jelen were
spies
because they were themselves involved in organizing such spying;
CARE officials were therefore worried that Yugoslav officials or, worse
yet,
Pratt or Wallace, might go public with more revelations, might expose
high-level CARE (and Australian government?) involvement, might talk
about
CARE spying in other countries, and so on. Thus it was crucial
immediately
(on Sunday!) to discredit the arrests and especially the public
confession.
By planting the thought that the confession was made 'under duress' and
'was
lunacy' and that Mrs. Pratt's own statement was unbelievable - the hope
was
to prejudice Western readers against any further revelations from
Belgrade or
Steve and Mavis Pratt.
Honor thy Satellite Phone
Four months later, Yugoslavia released Pratt and Wallace. In a dispatch
at
the time, the Australian news agency, AAP, explained that Yugoslav
border
guards had found:
...detailed maps, a satellite telephone and a laptop computer in their
car
when Pratt and Wallace tried to cross into Croatia.
Shouldn't this information have been presented as top news in April? It
was
not. Instead the media engaged in more preventive damage control.
Consider
this from the AAP on April 15th:
CARE Australia worker Steve Pratt, who is being held as a spy in
Yugoslavia,
would have collected some military information, his former boss said
today.
But it would only have been to help CARE's planning and would not have
been
given to any outside body, Tony McGee said...
Mind boggling, isn't this? Why on earth would CARE routinely gather
military
information? The article goes on:
Mr. McGee, like Mr. Pratt a former Australian army officer, said he
never
took any interest in military installations or troop movements except to
the
extent that they might affect CARE's safety and operations.
Are all these guys ex-Army officers? Doesn't CARE recruit any regular
folks?
And what about McGee's suggestion that by recruiting (supposedly) former
Army
officers CARE insures its employees will take no "interest in military
installations or troop movements except to the extent that they might
affect
CARE's safety and operations."
In case people are not convinced that military men would never take an
interest in military matters, Mr. McGee adds:
In any event, satellites could provide much better information than
anything
aid workers on the ground could gather.
So Pratt was certainly no spy because former military officers just
don't
have the military curiosity needed for spying and even if he was a spy
the
information he would gather would be of minor use. Doesn't this sound
more
and more like a) Pratt was a spy and b) all these guys knew it?
What is the point of McGee's statement? The only explanation I can
suggest
is: CARE officials knew Pratt was carrying incriminating equipment and
descriptions of troop movements when he was arrested; there was a danger
the
Yugoslavs would make this incriminating evidence public; McGee was
trying to
immunize the public beforehand. And once again, the media provided a
willing
PR forum.
Pratt, Critic of NATO (?)
Here's an AAP headline from April 12th:
Ex Army Major no spy say CARE colleagues
This article tells Pratt's life story, official version. We are told he
spent
years in the army where he worked in supply until at the request of
former
Australian Prime Minister and CARE Chairman Malcolm Fraser, he joined
CARE.
He what?
How comes an ordinary Army major to be recruited by a Prime Minister?
Isn't
this in itself a bit suspicious?
The AAP asks no embarrassing questions.
The article goes on to claim that Pratt:
also criticized the NATO bombing, and publicly attacked the destruction
of a
CARE-run refugee camp which killed nine people.
This is intended to prove Pratt's even-handedness. See? He criticizes
NATO.
(More evidence of his innocence.)
But consider Pratt's actual comments, recorded on March 29 in an AAP
Internet
Bulletin. He's talking about the NATO bombing of refugees who were
living in
abandoned Army barracks:
"I suspect the centers had been located very close to military targets.
The
report that I am getting that they have probably been caught up in some
sort
of collateral thing," Mr. Pratt said. The refugees killed were believed
to
include women and children who were ethnic Serb refugees who fled Bosnia
during the 1995 conflict.
"They were not directly hit, they don't seem to have been deliberately
targeted."...He said the center where eight refugees were confirmed
killed
had been located 60km southwest of the city of Nis in an old army
barracks
consisting of barracks of wooden huts. But two of the nine buildings had
been
damaged, including one which was burned down, when NATO hit a warehouse
about
100 meters away. "I believe (the damage) was accidental..."
Another refugee had been confirmed killed in Kosovo's capital of
Pristina in
a refugee center close to police headquarters. "Again this was a refugee
center too close to a NATO target. I suppose this is the way things are
in
war but it is extremely sad," he said.
Is Pratt "publicly attacking" NATO for the "destruction of a CARE-run
refugee
camp?" Or is he in fact excusing NATO of any criminal responsibility?
Why do you say 'Preposterous' Mr. Downer?
Two days after Pratt confessed on Yugoslav TV, The Guardian (London)
reported
that:
The Serbian government's claim that two Australian aid workers missing
for 14
days were gathering intelligence has been dismissed as 'preposterous' by
the
Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer. (The Guardian(London)
April
13, 1999)
Imagine you told your neighbor your wooden house was on fire and he
replied:
"Preposterous!"
Of course, you could be wrong - but preposterous?
How could Downer possibly be sure?
Australian Foreign Minister Downer's statement demonstrates his desire,
in
the absence of supporting evidence, to prove Pratt was innocent. This
puts
Downer in good company: Tapp, McGee, Doolan the AP, the AAP and the mass
media in general were all trying to convince the public that Pratt was
innocent. The Guardian could have contributed to news gathering by
questioning Downer: "How can you be sure? Why is everyone so anxious to
prove
the Yugoslavs are lying? Could this be a pre-emptive strike aimed at
preventing people from believing future Yugoslav revelations about
CARE's
involvement in spying?"
But the Guardian asked no such questions. Apparently they wanted to
prove
Pratt was innocent too.
Dishonor Thy Mother Some More
While most of the world had no idea Major Pratt's mother had nailed him
in
the Sunday Telegraph, the word got around in Australia. Hence the
following
bit of damage control published by the AAP on April 12th:
CARE Australia emergency coordinator Brian Doolan personally guaranteed
Mr.
Pratt was not spying when they worked together in Iraq from 1993 to
1995. Mr.
Doolan criticized Sydney's Sunday Telegraph reporters for speaking to
Mr.
Pratt's mother, Mavis Pratt, who told the newspaper: "He was letting the
UN
know what Iraq was doing, he was observing, so Iraq put a price on his
head
and they had to get him out of there quickly."
The newspaper's story was groundless, Mr. Doolan said. The elderly Mrs.
Pratt
was confronted through the fly-screen door by two young women saying
they
wanted to help her son, he said.
"They (the reporters) seemed to have spun a bit of line and she's given
them
bits of information, potted information, that she knows about Steve's
experience overseas," he said.
Huh? Has Downer actually proven anything here?
Forget Thy Mother and Ditto Thy Satellite Phone!
Apparently this was sufficient to eliminate mom because by April 26, in
a
story on the Pratt/Wallace affair (the news stories generally left out
Mr.
Jelen since he was only a Yugoslav) Time actually printed the following
sentence:
How the two aid workers came to be accused of spying has mystified their
families and friends.
Isn't this amazing?
Yes, one might argue, but perhaps 'Time' didn't know about the Mrs.
Pratt's
statement...
I find that hard to believe. Since they were writing a story about
Australians accused of spying, wouldn't the 'Time" reporters read what
the
Australian press (not the mention the AP) had published concerning the
arrests? How could they not know about Mavis Pratt's statement?
But let us concede, for the sake of argument, that Time didn't know.
The AAP certainly did know. After Pratt and Wallace were released in
September, the AAP published a story that tried to explain the
supposedly
irrational Yugoslav conviction that the men were spies. In it, the AAP
admitted that:
Serb authorities had intercepted Pratt's reports on troop movements,
but added that these reports:
were designed to help Aid agencies, not NATO's air strikes.
How could anyone think otherwise? the Yugoslav authorities must be
paranoid.
AAP adds:
There were other allegations that Pratt spied on Iraq for the United
Nations
while he was working there for CARE Australia.
These "other allegations" were the ones raised by Mrs. Pratt. Does the
AAP
see fit to mention her name? It does not. Instead it goes on to answer
the
anonymous allegations:
...the Army said Pratt had never undertaken intelligence work during his
military career...
Do you find this convincing? If Pratt was a spy would you expect the
Australian Army to admit it?
Arguments like this have no merit as arguments. If you isolate them from
the
larger text, they look ridiculous. But within the context of a barrage
of
propaganda, they do have an effect. Here's how it works:
The AAP and other Western media take meaningless statements that sound
like
arguments. They put this empty babble in the appropriate place for real
arguments. They string several such arguments together and they do this
over
and over again and in this way, by heaping one pro-establishment
pseudo-argument on top of another (though never offering real evidence)
the
reader is trained into a sort of glaze, thought dissipates, the proper
impression is planted and lingers.
Filing for ethical bankruptcy
The AAP story closes with an amazing statement. Referring to Peter
Wallace,
who had just been released along with Steve Pratt, the article states
that:
His family, like Pratt's, were shocked when he was accused of being a
spy.
(Our emphasis. AAP General News, Sept. 2, 1999)
Is it unreasonable to suggest that CARE, the mass media and the
Australian
government had fashioned a convenient cover story and Mrs. Pratt
statement
did not fit, so it was edited out?
Here is the hyperlink to the SBS TV show:
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/transcript.html
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---
> STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
>
> World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
> The CARE-OSCE connection in Kosovo
> New information on the case of two jailed Australian aid workers
> By Mike Head
> 9 February 2000
> A current affairs program on the Australian government's Special
> Broadcasting Services television network last week shed some further
> light on Yugoslavia's detention of two CARE aid workers last year. Steve
> Pratt and Peter Wallace were arrested with two carloads of computer
> files, a satellite telephone and other communications equipment when
> they tried to cross into Croatia from Serbia last March 31—just seven
> days after the US-NATO bombing of the country began.
> The SBS Dateline program belatedly disclosed two pieces of new
> information. The first was that CARE had a contract with the government
> of Canada, a NATO member, to recruit a team of monitors in Kosovo before
> the bombing. Under the arrangement, CARE Canada received $A32.2 million
> from CIDA, Canada's official aid agency, to select and put in place 60
> members of an Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
> monitoring force. CARE paid the observers and provided them with
> orientation briefings, medical services and administrative backup.
> Strictly speaking, the contract was with CARE Canada, but CARE
> Australia, as CARE's lead agency in Yugoslavia, approved it. In fact,
> Pratt, who was CARE International's country director in the former
> Yugoslavia, personally helped set up the operation. He accompanied CARE
> Canada's chief John Watson on a week-long tour when Watson arrived to
> establish the operation.
> Dateline cited an unnamed OSCE source stating that the data collected by
> the monitors was supplied to NATO, but not, as was supposed to happen,
> to Yugoslavia. The program also interviewed CARE Canada's chief John
> Watson and Stephen Wallace from CIDA who admitted that ex-military
> people and others "with experience in combat zones" were recruited for
> the operation. In other words, Pratt was directly linked to a network
> full of ex-military personnel sending reports to NATO.
> The second revelation came in an interview with CARE Australia chairman
> Malcolm Fraser, a former prime minister. Fraser admitted that the
> material that the two CARE workers tried to take across the border
> contained information on troop movements, tank positions and minefields.
> Fraser confirmed that the documents included "situation reports" written
> by Pratt in "military language".
> When the CARE workers were detained, on suspicion of spying or passing
> on information that aided the NATO bombing, the Australian government,
> opposition politicians and the media denounced the arrests as an
> "outrage" and condemned the Yugoslav regime of Slobodan Milosevic. For
> weeks on end, headlines and editorials accused the Belgrade
> administration of using innocent humanitarian workers as political
> pawns.
> As CARE's chief spokesman, Fraser was at the centre of the campaign. He
> loudly protested the complete innocence of the CARE staff, enlisting the
> support of dignitaries from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to South
> African President Nelson Mandela. Fraser was appointed a Special Envoy
> of the Howard government and eventually travelled to Belgrade to seek
> the prisoners' release.
> The propaganda campaign only intensified when it was revealed that Pratt
> had been a Major in the Australian army, as well as a one-time election
> candidate for the conservative Liberal Party. It also emerged that he
> had previously worked for CARE in such sensitive locations as Rwanda and
> had apparently been forced to flee Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, as a
> suspected spy. The media barrage continued unabated even when the
> Yugoslav court decided not to rely upon Pratt's televised confession,
> broadcast on Yugoslav TV, that he had "performed some intelligence tasks
> in this country, using the cover of CARE Australia". The court
> ultimately dismissed the spying charges but convicted the pair of lesser
> offences of passing information to a foreign organisation.
> Now Fraser has admitted that he and other CARE officials knew all along
> of highly incriminating evidence. Fraser claimed that he was not told
> about the Canadian contract until after Pratt and Wallace were detained.
> Nevertheless, as soon as he found out he insisted that the media
> suppress all mention of it. Dateline itself acknowledged that it had
> known of the Canadian contract since last June but did not report the
> information for seven months at Fraser's request.
> The significance of the Canadian contract can only be understood by
> examining the true role of the OSCE monitoring operation. The Dateline
> program depicted it as a "peace-monitoring" effort that had been agreed
> to by the Yugoslav authorities. In fact, the Milosevic regime was forced
> to allow the OSCE to send 2,000 civilian monitors under the direct
> threat of NATO bombing, as well as crippling economic sanctions. Under
> an agreement imposed by US diplomat Richard Holbrooke on October 20,
> 1998, Milosevic pledged to withdraw Yugoslav security forces from
> Kosovo, where they had been sent earlier in 1998 to combat units of the
> Albanian separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
> The monitors had nothing to do with peace. They were to be deployed to
> police Yugoslavia's compliance with the agreement, backed by NATO
> surveillance flights. A NATO rapid reaction force was to be assembled to
> intervene in the event of a breach by Serbia.
> Given the circumstances, it is inconceivable that the monitors did not
> include intelligence officers and agents. To the Serbian authorities
> this was obvious. Interviewed by Dateline, Deputy Information Minister
> Miodrag Popovic stated: "We knew all along about their intelligence
> activities. We knew all along about the real purpose of the OSCE mission
> and that was to justify later NATO aggression."
> Appointed to head the OSCE force was William Walker, a US diplomat who
> was previously implicated in the Nicaraguan Contra affair in the 1980s.
> As a deputy to the Reagan administration's Assistant Secretary of State
> Elliott Abrams, Walker was involved in illegally supplying weapons to
> the Contras who were seeking to overthrow the Sandinista government.
> The Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement provided the conditions for similar
> "dirty tricks" activity in Kosovo. The KLA, which had been suffering
> heavy losses at the hands of the Yugoslav army, was given the
> opportunity it needed to regroup, obtain fresh military equipment and
> step up its campaign to drive all Serbs from Kosovo.
> As fighting flared between Serbian and KLA units, the OSCE monitors
> claimed to have evidence of widespread Serbian atrocities. Walker was at
> the centre of the main incident used to trigger the NATO bombing—the
> alleged killings of 45 Kosovar peasants by Serbian forces in the village
> of Racak on January 15, 1999. When the bodies were discovered, Walker
> was the first observer on the scene and immediately declared that there
> had been a Serbian massacre. On-the-spot reports in the French press,
> however, suggested that the 45 could have been KLA fighters killed in
> violent clashes with Serb units near the village the day before.
> Racak, and the subsequent withdrawal of OSCE observers, provided the
> pretext for the Paris and Rambouillet conferences of February and March
> 1999 where the "Contact Group" of six nations demanded that Milosevic
> sign an Accord granting autonomy to Kosovo. Appendix B of the Accord
> required a full NATO occupation of Yugoslavia, also in the name of
> ensuring compliance. Milosevic refused to sign, objecting to the blanket
> infringement of Yugoslav's sovereignty, and the NATO bombing commenced
> just six days later.
> In his interview, Fraser defended the OSCE operation but said that "with
> hindsight" it was a mistake for CARE to have participated in it,
> blurring CARE's humanitarian mission. In another part of the interview,
> which has received no comment in the media, he said the Rambouillet
> conference was used to prepare for war. "It was the West's decision to
> go to war, not Yugoslavia's and when I say the West's decision, there is
> a great deal of evidence to say that Rambouillet was organised to
> provide an excuse to go to war and I say that quite clearly and
> deliberately," he said.
> Fraser's remarks provoked something of a storm within CARE. At one
> point, CARE's publicity manager Antony Funnell interrupted Fraser's
> interview, insisting that the CARE contract was with CIDA, not the
> Canadian government. Fraser responded furiously with a string of
> rebukes. "Do not interrupt when I am being interviewed and do not ever
> interrupt again," he thundered at one point. "Do you understand?"
> Canadian CARE's John Watson told Dateline that Fraser's objections
> flowed from a "traditional" view of aid activity, whereas CARE Canada
> had "a more progressive view of humanitarian work". When Fraser
> criticised CARE Australia's national director Charles Tapp for not
> objecting to the Canadian contract, Tapp responded by saying there were
> similar Australian government contracts with many aid organisations in
> Bougainville, East Timor and Indonesia.
> Aid agencies are used for such intelligence-gathering activities because
> they can place personnel on the ground in volatile areas where other
> observers would be under suspicion and scrutiny. As Pratt's record
> shows, their staffs often feature seasoned military operatives. Direct
> state funding of aid agencies to undertake such activities is a growing
> trend, as is overall dependence on government coffers. The Australian
> Council for Overseas Aid estimates that in 1998 government sources
> provided one-third of the $218 million raised by its affiliates.
> As limited as the SBS material was, it pointed to a number of unanswered
> questions about the CARE affair. Why was CARE asked to set up part of
> the OSCE monitoring force? What data did the OSCE compile and how was it
> used in the lead-up to the NATO bombing? What information did Pratt and
> his colleagues collate and to whom was it sent? Did their reports
> continue during the first week of the NATO onslaught?
> This week, Four Corners, a flagship current affairs program on the other
> government-funded TV network, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
> attempted to divert public attention away from the SBS revelations.
> Instead of a serious investigative examination of the new evidence, it
> devoted its weekly timeslot to lengthy, uncritical and sympathetic
> interviews with Pratt and Wallace. Every effort was made to pull on
> viewers' heartstrings. With a tender and commiserating expression,
> interviewer Liz Jackson dwelt on their traumatic experiences in
> detention, and their personal feelings. The SBS material was barely
> mentioned, and only at the end of the 45-minute program.
> Jackson did not ask either Pratt or Wallace any of the obvious
> questions. Exactly what part did Pratt play in setting up and running
> the Canadian contingent of the OSCE operation? Why did Pratt keep
> detailed records of military movements? Why did he and Wallace stay in
> Yugoslavia after the bombing commenced and then seek to leave Serbia
> with two carloads of extremely sensitive material, including reports
> associated with the OSCE operation?
> One new piece of information emerged showing that Pratt was no ordinary
> ex-army officer. Among the documents found in his possession was his
> military record of service between 1969 and 1992, revealing that before
> he left the army he had been appointed second-in-command of the United
> Nations Military Observer Team, on standby to deploy to the former
> Yugoslavia.
> Rather than report and examine the documents carried by Pratt and
> Wallace, which have never been released to the public, Four Corners
> quoted just three snippets. In one, Pratt reported that "fighting
> continues in the strategically important area of Podujevo". In a
> situation report, he wrote: "Significant government forces, backed by
> about 12 VJ (army) heavy tanks and armoured cars, launched operations
> against known KLA strong points recently established in Podujevo." Both
> clearly relate to military operations, not aid work.
> The third report, dated March 27, 1999, indicates that Pratt continued
> to send information to NATO-linked sources throughout the first week of
> bombing. "People are regularly moving into and out of air-raid shelters
> in the late afternoons and nights" in Belgrade, he reported, describing
> the tension in the city as "very high".
> In his interview, Wallace claimed not to have known that Pratt had these
> reports with him when they tried to leave the country. "What we should
> have done before we'd gone out was sanitise the files, that is, to take
> out anything that might be provocative," he suggested. The information,
> he admitted, "wasn't strictly relevant to a humanitarian operation and
> our need to know where the security risks were".
> Asked why he thought the material was there, Wallace paused awkwardly
> before saying: "Er, oh well, it's, um, just Steve's mistake". Suddenly
> the interview switched back to Pratt, who blithely declared that he was
> "comfortable" with the reports he had compiled.
> Much remains hidden about the Pratt-Wallace affair, and not just in
> Australia. Nothing has appeared in the Canadian press about the
> CARE-OSCE connection. In both countries, and elsewhere around the world,
> aid agencies such as CARE continue to attract donations and support,
> mounting considerable advertising campaigns to portray themselves as
> purely humanitarian organisations.
> Having had unwelcome attention drawn to the links between aid agencies
> and the intelligence services, considerable official and media effort is
> being made to prevent serious questions being asked. But what has
> emerged already is a high-level coverup, led by Fraser and the
> Australian government, assisted by the media, to suppress the facts
> about the use of CARE for intelligence gathering in the Balkans.
>
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
NELL'ORGANIZZAZIONE "UMANITARIA" CARE
Nelle scorse settimane sono emersi approcci tra la sezione australiana
della ONG transnazionale "CARE" ed i servizi segreti militari canadesi
(il Canada e' membro della NATO), questi ultimi interessati ad inserirsi
nelle operazioni di CARE nella RF di Jugoslavia.
Queste rivelazioni fanno seguito ad altre vicende squallide che hanno
coinvolto CARE in passato: citiamo ad esempio i legami tra la missione
CARE in Somalia ed i marines USA presenti nella citta' di Baidoa alla
fine del 1992; l'arresto al confine jugoslavo di alcuni membri di CARE
Australia (uno dei quali reo confesso) accusati di lavorare per la NATO
durante i bombardamenti del 1999; nonche' gli strani rapporti tra CARE e
la OSCE-na missione dell'OSCE nella provincia jugoslava del Kosmet, con
la quale venne preparato il terreno ai suddetti bombardamenti...
(Le altre ONG ed organizzazioni "Umanitarie" da noi analizzate in
passato: Medici senza Frontiere; Human Rights Watch)
---
HUMANITARIAN SPIES
by Jared Israel
WWW.TENC.NET (or WWW.EMPERORS-CLOTHES.COM)
It appears there are two types of Humanitarian Aid organizations in the
New
World Order: Them That Steals and Them That Spies. For the thieves, see
Soiled Rainbow at www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/martinez/soiled.htm
. If
you are interested in spies and the liars who cover up their work, stay
here.
I have been doing research on the CARE spy scandal for several days. It
is a
Labor of Sisyphus. No sooner does one think one has dug up all there is
to
dig then one encounters (if you will pardon the mixed metaphor) more
dirt
rolling down the hill. CARE has been compromised by this mess, but not
only
CARE. Also the Australian government, the US government, the OSCE
(Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the Western
mass
media. Perhaps the Western mass media worst of all.
On Nov 2, SBS TV in Australia revealed that CARE Canada had been
recruiting
what amounted to spies for NATO in Yugoslavia.
I've posted the hyperlink to the SBS CARE story below. It's worth
reading.
But before you look at the transcript, I suggest you read the background
material because in some ways it's more revealing than the TV show, more
damning. As happens often, when Western journalists uncovered this
cover-up,
they didn't uncover it all.
Spies or Victimized Aid Workers?
On March 31, 1999, three employees of CARE Australia, Steve Pratt, an
Australian who headed the Yugoslav operation, Peter Wallace, another
Australian, and Branko Jelen, a Yugoslav, were arrested at the
Serbian-Croatian border. Yugoslavia charged them with using CARE as a
cover
to spy for NATO.
CARE Australia officials ridiculed the charges, claiming CARE was
completely
neutral and that the confession of Steve Pratt, aired on Serbian TV,
could
only have resulted from coercion. Western mass media supported CARE,
presenting the men as Good Samaritans whose only crime was being in the
wrong
place at the wrong time and falling victim to Serbian paranoia and war
propaganda. CARE had clean hands...
Or did it?
Now comes a TV show, broadcast Nov. 2 by SBS in Australia. It reveals
that
CARE recruited and paid OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation
in
Europe) Verifiers in Kosovo from Oct. 1998 to March 1999. That much is
uncontested.
As you will see when you read the transcript, some CARE people justify
the
OSCE recruiting program on the grounds that the Verifiers were
legitimate
peacemakers. Alas, this simply does not wash.
Goals of the Kosovo Verification Mission
'Negotiated' (that is, 'coerced') under threat of NATO bombing last
October,
the Verification agreement let the OSCE send unarmed mediators into
Kosovo,
supposedly to help defuse tensions. However everything about the
Verification
mission suggests military intelligence, not mediation.
It was run by William Walker. Walker had no background as a mediator. He
wasn't even an expert in Balkans history or current politics. What he
did
know about was counter-insurgency and black ops. His role in Iran-Contra
and
his achievements in apologizing for the murderous El Salvador death
squads
all but prove he is a high-placed intelligence operative. (A factual
account
of Mr. Walker's work in Central America will be posted on
Emperors-Clothes as
soon as possible. In the absence of that account, which we have not had
time
yet to lay out, let me say these facts are uncontested. Period.)
The U.S. verification team was composed of employees of Dyncorp, a
Virginia
company that has grown rich off Government work. At the 1992 Senate
hearings
on R. James Woolsey's appointment as head of the CIA, Woolsey commented:
"I
own less than one-quarter of one percent of the -- diluted shares of a
company named Dyncorp here in the Washington, D.C. area. And the
corporation
has, from time to time, had a handful of very small contracts with the
Central Intelligence Agency." Ahh, sweet understatement. Dyncorp's "very
small contracts" have included covert work in Columbia and Peru. (Facts
on
this will be posted shortly on Emperors-clothes. Again, it is all
documented). In the case of Dyncorp's work in Columbia, the Clinton
administration was accused of using Dyncorp to circumvent human rights
restrictions on US aid to the death-squad-ridden Colombian military.
So what do we have? We have the head of the Verification mission and his
American team linked to covert operations and death squad activities in
Latin
America. Other than that, they have no qualifications for their work in
Kosovo.
Given this command structure, doesn't it stand to reason that the
Western
(i.e., U.S.) goal was a) to gather military intelligence and b) to
establish
command-relations with the Kosovo Liberation Army, an outfit whose
activities
- killing ethnic Serbian civilians and ethnic Albanian "collaborators"
as
well as employees of the Serbian state such as policemen, power line
repairmen, school officials, Yugoslav troops and even state-employed
wood
gatherers - whose activities are very much like those of Latin American
death
squads?
Indeed, isn't it reasonable to guess that the tactical similarity
between the
KLA and the Latin American death squads may result from their having had
the
same (US) advisors?
In any case this was the Verification Mission for which CARE Canada was
recruiting. Not only recruiting, but also apparently paying the
recruits'
salaries.
Even the Western press has virtually admitted that Walker & Co. were
spies.
Consider the following from the LA Times:
His [i.e., William Walker's] postings include a stint in Honduras from
1980
to 1982, when the Central American country was Washington's secret
conduit
for weapons and other support to right-wing Contras fighting to
overthrow the
Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua.
He also served as chief of the U.S. Embassy's political section in El
Salvador, another Central American hot spot, from 1974 to 1977, and
later as
the country's U.S. ambassador from 1988 to 1992. As a diplomat in
countries
so high on Washington's national security agenda, Walker couldn't help
knowing something about spying, said John Pike, a defense analyst at
Washington's Federation of American Scientists. "Those are front-line
postings where he would have unavoidably developed an acquaintance with
the
capabilities and limitations of intelligence sources and methods," Pike
said
from Washington. And it would be surprising if Walker's team of
ex-military
and other experts came to verify Kosovo's cease-fire without equipment
to
listen in on radio communications, Pike said. "Put it this way: They
would be
idiots if they weren't doing that," he added. "What are they going to
do,
read about it in the paper the next day?"( LA Times, Jan. 20, 1999, our
emphasis)
The Amazing Story of Mr. Pratt, Mr. Wallace and Mr. Jelen
So we had a neutral, Humanitarian Aid organization (CARE) recruiting
Verifiers, that is spies, for a Kosovo Mission run by CIA types. Shortly
after the Mission ended and NATO began bombing Yugoslavia, three of the
Humanitarian CARE employees were arrested for spying.
That was on March 31. At first CARE officials claimed they were not sure
of
the three men's whereabouts. Then, on April 11, Steve Pratt appeared on
Serbian Television, RTS. Here's the actual text of the RTS broadcast, as
transcribed by the BBC:
[Announcer] Through coordinated action, the security bodies of the
Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia have smashed a network of agents headed by Major
Steve
Pratt. The named person had been gathering intelligence on the movement
of
our military and police forces under the cover of the Care International
humanitarian organization before the aggression on our country, and,
during
the aggression, on the effects of the bombing.
[Pratt, recording in English with passage by passage Serbo-Croatian
translation] My name is Steve Pratt. I was born in 1949. I was born in
Australia and I am the citizen of Australia. Before I came to
Yugoslavia, I
worked in northern Iraq, Yemen, Zaire, Rwanda, and Kenya for the
humanitarian
organization Care of Australia.
When I came to Yugoslavia, I performed some intelligence tasks in this
country by using the cover of Care Australia. My concentration was on
Kosovo
and some effects of the bombing. I misused my Yugoslavian citizen staff
for
the acquisition of information. I realize that damage was done this
country
by these actions, for which I am greatly sorry. I always did and still
do
condemn the bombing of this country.
[Television footage shows Pratt sitting in a chair and making the
statement;
TV also shows Pratt's passport; there are no visible signs of physical
mistreatment of Pratt] (BBC, April 13, 1999)
The Western media presented a negative view of the RTS broadcast. One AP
report April 12th was headlined, "TV pictures of aid worker's spy
confession
fuzzy: Tapp". In the story Australian CARE chief Charles Tapp dismissed
the
RTS broadcast because Pratt was shown in profile, because it was
impossible
to see his eyes and because his confession was not very specific. (He
said
"confession" should be put in "immense inverted commas".) An Agence
France
Presse story on the 12th was headlined "Yugoslavs forced our man to
confess
to spying."
Amidst this reporting, which amounted to anti-Yugoslav propaganda, the
real
story was simply ignored by most of the media; where it was covered it
was
scornfully dismissed.
That story, which broke April 11th in the Australian Sunday Telegraph,
quoted
Steve Pratt's mother, Mrs. Mavis Pratt, concerning Pratt's past
activities. I
have not been able to see a copy of the Sunday Telegraph story.
Fortunately a
few sentences are quoted in a few places. One is an AP dispatch issued
hours
after the Sunday Telegraph report. According to the AP, Mrs. Pratt told
the
Telegraph that her son had worked for CARE in Iraq:
''He was letting the U.N. know what Iraq was doing, he was observing, so
Iraq
put a price on his head and they had to get him out of there quickly.''
In other words, he had been a spy.
Dishonor Thy Mother
How might one expect CARE executives to have responded to Pratt's
confession
and Mrs. Pratt's statement?
CARE presents itself as a politically neutral, humanitarian
organization.
Doesn't that suggest CARE leaders should have adopted a cautious,
neutral
approach? Perhaps said they have nothing but respect for the arrested
men and
established a fund legal expenses? Wouldn't any other approach
compromise
their neutrality and raise questions about their motives?
And what about the mass media? Since governments do employ spies, since
to be
effective, spies have to have some kind of cover, wouldn't it make sense
to
present the story in a factual manner and not use journalistic
techniques to
sway public opinion?
CARE and the media lash out at Yugoslavia
Let's look at the April 11 AP story, starting with the headline. The
headline
may be the only thing one reads and even if one reads further, the
headline
colors one's view of the rest.
What sort of headline would logically go with this story? Maybe
something
like:
Mom Says Arrested CARE worker Spied Before
Instead, AP chose:
CARE says Serbian spying 'confession' obtained under duress
This is a very strong statement. By making it the headline, AP lent it
credibility. Did it deserve such credibility?
The RTS broadcast with Pratt's confession had just been aired. What
could
Charles Tapp or anyone else at CARE actually have known about this case?
If Pratt had told them he was a spy, they would know. But if Pratt was a
spy
and told nobody, how could they have known?
Therefore Tapp's denial is either a) a lie (because he knew Pratt was a
spy
and therefore denied it) or b) pure speculation (because he had no way
of
knowing whether Pratt was innocent or guilty.)
So what's the point of the headline? By using the phrase "obtained under
duress" the headline creates a picture in the reader's mind - of threats
and
torture. Though the body of the article offers no factual basis for this
charge, the headline has a powerful impact.
Note that 'CARE' is not a person but an organization; how can CARE 'say'
anything? By quoting 'CARE' instead of a CARE executive, the AP story
capitalizes on Westerners' impression of CARE, the organization:
neutral,
selfless, honorable. A CARE spokesman might lie - but 'CARE' itself?
Never.
Compounding the Question
Note that by jumping to the question of how the confession was obtained
(supposedly 'under duress') the AP story gives the (false) impression
that
Pratt's innocence is an established fact.
The sleight of hand technique used here is similar to the compound
question.
A familiar example: "Do you still beat your wife?" The use of the very
aggressive "do you still" obscures the fact that the main charge is
unproven:
we have not been shown that you ever beat your wife. Similarly here, by
stressing the manner in which the (allegedly) false confession was
obtained
(that is, "under duress") the headline obscures the fact that we have
been
shown no evidence the confession was false.
Let's move onto the first paragraph in the article:
The aid agency CARE Australia on Monday said its field worker Steve
Pratt's
alleged spying confession broadcast by Serbian television was made under
duress.
This is just a repeat of the headline. Bad journalism, unless they want
us to
learn this statement by rote. Will there be a quiz?
Here's paragraph two:
CARE and the Australian government demanded immediate access to Pratt
and his
colleague, Peter Wallace, who were detained by Yugoslav authorities
March 31
after they left Belgrade for Montenegro to help refugees.
Still not quoting actual people, the AP adds a second institution, the
Australian government, by way of additional confirmation. The Yugoslav
offense is so great, all institutions are speaking out.
Moreover, by telling us these institutions have "demanded immediate
access to
Pratt" and Wallace, the article suggests Yugoslavia is denying such
access.
This in turn suggests the Yugoslavs must have something to hide - such
as
evidence that Pratt has been beaten. Note that there is no effort, here
or
elsewhere in the article, to discuss the normal procedure for allowing
access
to men accused of spying for a group of nations who are, in grave
violation
of international law, bombing your country.
The paragraph also includes the statement that the arrested man had been
arrested after they:
left Belgrade for Montenegro to help refugees. (My emphasis)
How could the AP possibly know why Pratt, Wallace and Jelen had left
Belgrade? Couldn't they have left to spy elsewhere? Or to escape
detection?
By asserting their humanitarian motives without evidence, the article
strengthens the reader's impression that the men are innocent.
A little further down, a CARE official is cited by name for the first
time:
CARE Australia's emergency coordinator, Brian Doolan, said threats may
have
been made against local staff or against Wallace to extract the
confession.
(My emphasis)
'May have been made.' Two thoughts on this: a) Doesn't the use of 'may'
completely contradict the headline and first paragraph, which have
'CARE'
(speaking as if it were a person) saying the confession WAS obtained
under
duress and b) isn't it true that it is always possible that a confession
'may' have been extracted based on threats?
Since by this point we've been told several times that Pratt was forced
to
confess, I would bet many readers wouldn't notice the use of "may".
The article continues as follows:
Doolan said the claims made against Pratt were ''absolute lunacy.''
If Pratt "may" (which suggests 'may not') have confessed under duress,
why is
Doolan sure the charges are lunacy? The AP ignores this obvious
contradiction. Nor does it try to bring some balance to the story by
talking
to someone from the Yugoslav side, for example a Yugoslav security
official.
Such a person might ask: "Since it's obvious that Mr. Pratt could be a
spy
without Mr. Doolan knowing, how can Mr. Doolan be so sure the charges
are
lunacy?"
And so the article continues for eight (8) more paragraphs,
strengthening the
impression that Pratt must be innocent until we get to the end, where
Mrs.
Pratt is quoted. But readers are not permitted to judge Mrs. Pratt's
words
for themselves; they are given a good deal of help by CARE Australia
chief
executive Charles Tapp who is quoted before and after Mrs. Pratt who
attacks
the charge that Pratt had previously spied against Iraq, attacks the
newspaper that covered it, and even tries to discredit Mrs. Pratt (her
sin is
being old). Here's how it reads:
...[CARE chief executive Tapp] rejected the suggestion that they [i.e.
the
arrested CARE workers] were acting for any other organization in any
capacity.
Speaking from the Yugoslavia-Croatia border, Tapp also slammed a
newspaper
report in which Pratt's mother, Mavis Pratt, was quoted as saying her
son had
supplied information about Iraqi forces to the United Nations during the
Gulf
War.
''He was letting the U.N. know what Iraq was doing, he was observing, so
Iraq
put a price on his head and they had to get him out of there quickly,''
she
[Mrs. Pratt] was quoted as saying.
Tapp said Mrs. Pratt was elderly and added, ''Frankly, I consider this
to be
extremely poor journalism.'' (AP Worldstream April 11, 1999; Sunday
22:06
Eastern Time )
When you think of it, the quote from Mrs. Pratt is the only news in this
entire news story. The rest is intended to give us a proper news
orientation.
The AP is evidently anxious to guarantee that readers approach the
arrests
with the preconception that Pratt and the others are innocent. Why?
As for CARE officials - their statements are suggestive. Consider: Pratt
confessed on April 11th. The Sunday Telegraph printed Mrs. Pratt's
statement
the next day and within hours AP broadcast furious denials from CARE
officials. How could these officials be so sure so fast? Why would they
react
without taking time to investigate and discuss the matter, including
privately with Yugoslav officials? Doesn't such a hasty and violent
response
suggest that:
Pratt et al were indeed spies;
Tapp and Doolan were fully aware that Pratt, Wallace and Jelen were
spies
because they were themselves involved in organizing such spying;
CARE officials were therefore worried that Yugoslav officials or, worse
yet,
Pratt or Wallace, might go public with more revelations, might expose
high-level CARE (and Australian government?) involvement, might talk
about
CARE spying in other countries, and so on. Thus it was crucial
immediately
(on Sunday!) to discredit the arrests and especially the public
confession.
By planting the thought that the confession was made 'under duress' and
'was
lunacy' and that Mrs. Pratt's own statement was unbelievable - the hope
was
to prejudice Western readers against any further revelations from
Belgrade or
Steve and Mavis Pratt.
Honor thy Satellite Phone
Four months later, Yugoslavia released Pratt and Wallace. In a dispatch
at
the time, the Australian news agency, AAP, explained that Yugoslav
border
guards had found:
...detailed maps, a satellite telephone and a laptop computer in their
car
when Pratt and Wallace tried to cross into Croatia.
Shouldn't this information have been presented as top news in April? It
was
not. Instead the media engaged in more preventive damage control.
Consider
this from the AAP on April 15th:
CARE Australia worker Steve Pratt, who is being held as a spy in
Yugoslavia,
would have collected some military information, his former boss said
today.
But it would only have been to help CARE's planning and would not have
been
given to any outside body, Tony McGee said...
Mind boggling, isn't this? Why on earth would CARE routinely gather
military
information? The article goes on:
Mr. McGee, like Mr. Pratt a former Australian army officer, said he
never
took any interest in military installations or troop movements except to
the
extent that they might affect CARE's safety and operations.
Are all these guys ex-Army officers? Doesn't CARE recruit any regular
folks?
And what about McGee's suggestion that by recruiting (supposedly) former
Army
officers CARE insures its employees will take no "interest in military
installations or troop movements except to the extent that they might
affect
CARE's safety and operations."
In case people are not convinced that military men would never take an
interest in military matters, Mr. McGee adds:
In any event, satellites could provide much better information than
anything
aid workers on the ground could gather.
So Pratt was certainly no spy because former military officers just
don't
have the military curiosity needed for spying and even if he was a spy
the
information he would gather would be of minor use. Doesn't this sound
more
and more like a) Pratt was a spy and b) all these guys knew it?
What is the point of McGee's statement? The only explanation I can
suggest
is: CARE officials knew Pratt was carrying incriminating equipment and
descriptions of troop movements when he was arrested; there was a danger
the
Yugoslavs would make this incriminating evidence public; McGee was
trying to
immunize the public beforehand. And once again, the media provided a
willing
PR forum.
Pratt, Critic of NATO (?)
Here's an AAP headline from April 12th:
Ex Army Major no spy say CARE colleagues
This article tells Pratt's life story, official version. We are told he
spent
years in the army where he worked in supply until at the request of
former
Australian Prime Minister and CARE Chairman Malcolm Fraser, he joined
CARE.
He what?
How comes an ordinary Army major to be recruited by a Prime Minister?
Isn't
this in itself a bit suspicious?
The AAP asks no embarrassing questions.
The article goes on to claim that Pratt:
also criticized the NATO bombing, and publicly attacked the destruction
of a
CARE-run refugee camp which killed nine people.
This is intended to prove Pratt's even-handedness. See? He criticizes
NATO.
(More evidence of his innocence.)
But consider Pratt's actual comments, recorded on March 29 in an AAP
Internet
Bulletin. He's talking about the NATO bombing of refugees who were
living in
abandoned Army barracks:
"I suspect the centers had been located very close to military targets.
The
report that I am getting that they have probably been caught up in some
sort
of collateral thing," Mr. Pratt said. The refugees killed were believed
to
include women and children who were ethnic Serb refugees who fled Bosnia
during the 1995 conflict.
"They were not directly hit, they don't seem to have been deliberately
targeted."...He said the center where eight refugees were confirmed
killed
had been located 60km southwest of the city of Nis in an old army
barracks
consisting of barracks of wooden huts. But two of the nine buildings had
been
damaged, including one which was burned down, when NATO hit a warehouse
about
100 meters away. "I believe (the damage) was accidental..."
Another refugee had been confirmed killed in Kosovo's capital of
Pristina in
a refugee center close to police headquarters. "Again this was a refugee
center too close to a NATO target. I suppose this is the way things are
in
war but it is extremely sad," he said.
Is Pratt "publicly attacking" NATO for the "destruction of a CARE-run
refugee
camp?" Or is he in fact excusing NATO of any criminal responsibility?
Why do you say 'Preposterous' Mr. Downer?
Two days after Pratt confessed on Yugoslav TV, The Guardian (London)
reported
that:
The Serbian government's claim that two Australian aid workers missing
for 14
days were gathering intelligence has been dismissed as 'preposterous' by
the
Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer. (The Guardian(London)
April
13, 1999)
Imagine you told your neighbor your wooden house was on fire and he
replied:
"Preposterous!"
Of course, you could be wrong - but preposterous?
How could Downer possibly be sure?
Australian Foreign Minister Downer's statement demonstrates his desire,
in
the absence of supporting evidence, to prove Pratt was innocent. This
puts
Downer in good company: Tapp, McGee, Doolan the AP, the AAP and the mass
media in general were all trying to convince the public that Pratt was
innocent. The Guardian could have contributed to news gathering by
questioning Downer: "How can you be sure? Why is everyone so anxious to
prove
the Yugoslavs are lying? Could this be a pre-emptive strike aimed at
preventing people from believing future Yugoslav revelations about
CARE's
involvement in spying?"
But the Guardian asked no such questions. Apparently they wanted to
prove
Pratt was innocent too.
Dishonor Thy Mother Some More
While most of the world had no idea Major Pratt's mother had nailed him
in
the Sunday Telegraph, the word got around in Australia. Hence the
following
bit of damage control published by the AAP on April 12th:
CARE Australia emergency coordinator Brian Doolan personally guaranteed
Mr.
Pratt was not spying when they worked together in Iraq from 1993 to
1995. Mr.
Doolan criticized Sydney's Sunday Telegraph reporters for speaking to
Mr.
Pratt's mother, Mavis Pratt, who told the newspaper: "He was letting the
UN
know what Iraq was doing, he was observing, so Iraq put a price on his
head
and they had to get him out of there quickly."
The newspaper's story was groundless, Mr. Doolan said. The elderly Mrs.
Pratt
was confronted through the fly-screen door by two young women saying
they
wanted to help her son, he said.
"They (the reporters) seemed to have spun a bit of line and she's given
them
bits of information, potted information, that she knows about Steve's
experience overseas," he said.
Huh? Has Downer actually proven anything here?
Forget Thy Mother and Ditto Thy Satellite Phone!
Apparently this was sufficient to eliminate mom because by April 26, in
a
story on the Pratt/Wallace affair (the news stories generally left out
Mr.
Jelen since he was only a Yugoslav) Time actually printed the following
sentence:
How the two aid workers came to be accused of spying has mystified their
families and friends.
Isn't this amazing?
Yes, one might argue, but perhaps 'Time' didn't know about the Mrs.
Pratt's
statement...
I find that hard to believe. Since they were writing a story about
Australians accused of spying, wouldn't the 'Time" reporters read what
the
Australian press (not the mention the AP) had published concerning the
arrests? How could they not know about Mavis Pratt's statement?
But let us concede, for the sake of argument, that Time didn't know.
The AAP certainly did know. After Pratt and Wallace were released in
September, the AAP published a story that tried to explain the
supposedly
irrational Yugoslav conviction that the men were spies. In it, the AAP
admitted that:
Serb authorities had intercepted Pratt's reports on troop movements,
but added that these reports:
were designed to help Aid agencies, not NATO's air strikes.
How could anyone think otherwise? the Yugoslav authorities must be
paranoid.
AAP adds:
There were other allegations that Pratt spied on Iraq for the United
Nations
while he was working there for CARE Australia.
These "other allegations" were the ones raised by Mrs. Pratt. Does the
AAP
see fit to mention her name? It does not. Instead it goes on to answer
the
anonymous allegations:
...the Army said Pratt had never undertaken intelligence work during his
military career...
Do you find this convincing? If Pratt was a spy would you expect the
Australian Army to admit it?
Arguments like this have no merit as arguments. If you isolate them from
the
larger text, they look ridiculous. But within the context of a barrage
of
propaganda, they do have an effect. Here's how it works:
The AAP and other Western media take meaningless statements that sound
like
arguments. They put this empty babble in the appropriate place for real
arguments. They string several such arguments together and they do this
over
and over again and in this way, by heaping one pro-establishment
pseudo-argument on top of another (though never offering real evidence)
the
reader is trained into a sort of glaze, thought dissipates, the proper
impression is planted and lingers.
Filing for ethical bankruptcy
The AAP story closes with an amazing statement. Referring to Peter
Wallace,
who had just been released along with Steve Pratt, the article states
that:
His family, like Pratt's, were shocked when he was accused of being a
spy.
(Our emphasis. AAP General News, Sept. 2, 1999)
Is it unreasonable to suggest that CARE, the mass media and the
Australian
government had fashioned a convenient cover story and Mrs. Pratt
statement
did not fit, so it was edited out?
Here is the hyperlink to the SBS TV show:
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/transcript.html
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---
> STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
>
> World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
> The CARE-OSCE connection in Kosovo
> New information on the case of two jailed Australian aid workers
> By Mike Head
> 9 February 2000
> A current affairs program on the Australian government's Special
> Broadcasting Services television network last week shed some further
> light on Yugoslavia's detention of two CARE aid workers last year. Steve
> Pratt and Peter Wallace were arrested with two carloads of computer
> files, a satellite telephone and other communications equipment when
> they tried to cross into Croatia from Serbia last March 31—just seven
> days after the US-NATO bombing of the country began.
> The SBS Dateline program belatedly disclosed two pieces of new
> information. The first was that CARE had a contract with the government
> of Canada, a NATO member, to recruit a team of monitors in Kosovo before
> the bombing. Under the arrangement, CARE Canada received $A32.2 million
> from CIDA, Canada's official aid agency, to select and put in place 60
> members of an Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
> monitoring force. CARE paid the observers and provided them with
> orientation briefings, medical services and administrative backup.
> Strictly speaking, the contract was with CARE Canada, but CARE
> Australia, as CARE's lead agency in Yugoslavia, approved it. In fact,
> Pratt, who was CARE International's country director in the former
> Yugoslavia, personally helped set up the operation. He accompanied CARE
> Canada's chief John Watson on a week-long tour when Watson arrived to
> establish the operation.
> Dateline cited an unnamed OSCE source stating that the data collected by
> the monitors was supplied to NATO, but not, as was supposed to happen,
> to Yugoslavia. The program also interviewed CARE Canada's chief John
> Watson and Stephen Wallace from CIDA who admitted that ex-military
> people and others "with experience in combat zones" were recruited for
> the operation. In other words, Pratt was directly linked to a network
> full of ex-military personnel sending reports to NATO.
> The second revelation came in an interview with CARE Australia chairman
> Malcolm Fraser, a former prime minister. Fraser admitted that the
> material that the two CARE workers tried to take across the border
> contained information on troop movements, tank positions and minefields.
> Fraser confirmed that the documents included "situation reports" written
> by Pratt in "military language".
> When the CARE workers were detained, on suspicion of spying or passing
> on information that aided the NATO bombing, the Australian government,
> opposition politicians and the media denounced the arrests as an
> "outrage" and condemned the Yugoslav regime of Slobodan Milosevic. For
> weeks on end, headlines and editorials accused the Belgrade
> administration of using innocent humanitarian workers as political
> pawns.
> As CARE's chief spokesman, Fraser was at the centre of the campaign. He
> loudly protested the complete innocence of the CARE staff, enlisting the
> support of dignitaries from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to South
> African President Nelson Mandela. Fraser was appointed a Special Envoy
> of the Howard government and eventually travelled to Belgrade to seek
> the prisoners' release.
> The propaganda campaign only intensified when it was revealed that Pratt
> had been a Major in the Australian army, as well as a one-time election
> candidate for the conservative Liberal Party. It also emerged that he
> had previously worked for CARE in such sensitive locations as Rwanda and
> had apparently been forced to flee Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, as a
> suspected spy. The media barrage continued unabated even when the
> Yugoslav court decided not to rely upon Pratt's televised confession,
> broadcast on Yugoslav TV, that he had "performed some intelligence tasks
> in this country, using the cover of CARE Australia". The court
> ultimately dismissed the spying charges but convicted the pair of lesser
> offences of passing information to a foreign organisation.
> Now Fraser has admitted that he and other CARE officials knew all along
> of highly incriminating evidence. Fraser claimed that he was not told
> about the Canadian contract until after Pratt and Wallace were detained.
> Nevertheless, as soon as he found out he insisted that the media
> suppress all mention of it. Dateline itself acknowledged that it had
> known of the Canadian contract since last June but did not report the
> information for seven months at Fraser's request.
> The significance of the Canadian contract can only be understood by
> examining the true role of the OSCE monitoring operation. The Dateline
> program depicted it as a "peace-monitoring" effort that had been agreed
> to by the Yugoslav authorities. In fact, the Milosevic regime was forced
> to allow the OSCE to send 2,000 civilian monitors under the direct
> threat of NATO bombing, as well as crippling economic sanctions. Under
> an agreement imposed by US diplomat Richard Holbrooke on October 20,
> 1998, Milosevic pledged to withdraw Yugoslav security forces from
> Kosovo, where they had been sent earlier in 1998 to combat units of the
> Albanian separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
> The monitors had nothing to do with peace. They were to be deployed to
> police Yugoslavia's compliance with the agreement, backed by NATO
> surveillance flights. A NATO rapid reaction force was to be assembled to
> intervene in the event of a breach by Serbia.
> Given the circumstances, it is inconceivable that the monitors did not
> include intelligence officers and agents. To the Serbian authorities
> this was obvious. Interviewed by Dateline, Deputy Information Minister
> Miodrag Popovic stated: "We knew all along about their intelligence
> activities. We knew all along about the real purpose of the OSCE mission
> and that was to justify later NATO aggression."
> Appointed to head the OSCE force was William Walker, a US diplomat who
> was previously implicated in the Nicaraguan Contra affair in the 1980s.
> As a deputy to the Reagan administration's Assistant Secretary of State
> Elliott Abrams, Walker was involved in illegally supplying weapons to
> the Contras who were seeking to overthrow the Sandinista government.
> The Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement provided the conditions for similar
> "dirty tricks" activity in Kosovo. The KLA, which had been suffering
> heavy losses at the hands of the Yugoslav army, was given the
> opportunity it needed to regroup, obtain fresh military equipment and
> step up its campaign to drive all Serbs from Kosovo.
> As fighting flared between Serbian and KLA units, the OSCE monitors
> claimed to have evidence of widespread Serbian atrocities. Walker was at
> the centre of the main incident used to trigger the NATO bombing—the
> alleged killings of 45 Kosovar peasants by Serbian forces in the village
> of Racak on January 15, 1999. When the bodies were discovered, Walker
> was the first observer on the scene and immediately declared that there
> had been a Serbian massacre. On-the-spot reports in the French press,
> however, suggested that the 45 could have been KLA fighters killed in
> violent clashes with Serb units near the village the day before.
> Racak, and the subsequent withdrawal of OSCE observers, provided the
> pretext for the Paris and Rambouillet conferences of February and March
> 1999 where the "Contact Group" of six nations demanded that Milosevic
> sign an Accord granting autonomy to Kosovo. Appendix B of the Accord
> required a full NATO occupation of Yugoslavia, also in the name of
> ensuring compliance. Milosevic refused to sign, objecting to the blanket
> infringement of Yugoslav's sovereignty, and the NATO bombing commenced
> just six days later.
> In his interview, Fraser defended the OSCE operation but said that "with
> hindsight" it was a mistake for CARE to have participated in it,
> blurring CARE's humanitarian mission. In another part of the interview,
> which has received no comment in the media, he said the Rambouillet
> conference was used to prepare for war. "It was the West's decision to
> go to war, not Yugoslavia's and when I say the West's decision, there is
> a great deal of evidence to say that Rambouillet was organised to
> provide an excuse to go to war and I say that quite clearly and
> deliberately," he said.
> Fraser's remarks provoked something of a storm within CARE. At one
> point, CARE's publicity manager Antony Funnell interrupted Fraser's
> interview, insisting that the CARE contract was with CIDA, not the
> Canadian government. Fraser responded furiously with a string of
> rebukes. "Do not interrupt when I am being interviewed and do not ever
> interrupt again," he thundered at one point. "Do you understand?"
> Canadian CARE's John Watson told Dateline that Fraser's objections
> flowed from a "traditional" view of aid activity, whereas CARE Canada
> had "a more progressive view of humanitarian work". When Fraser
> criticised CARE Australia's national director Charles Tapp for not
> objecting to the Canadian contract, Tapp responded by saying there were
> similar Australian government contracts with many aid organisations in
> Bougainville, East Timor and Indonesia.
> Aid agencies are used for such intelligence-gathering activities because
> they can place personnel on the ground in volatile areas where other
> observers would be under suspicion and scrutiny. As Pratt's record
> shows, their staffs often feature seasoned military operatives. Direct
> state funding of aid agencies to undertake such activities is a growing
> trend, as is overall dependence on government coffers. The Australian
> Council for Overseas Aid estimates that in 1998 government sources
> provided one-third of the $218 million raised by its affiliates.
> As limited as the SBS material was, it pointed to a number of unanswered
> questions about the CARE affair. Why was CARE asked to set up part of
> the OSCE monitoring force? What data did the OSCE compile and how was it
> used in the lead-up to the NATO bombing? What information did Pratt and
> his colleagues collate and to whom was it sent? Did their reports
> continue during the first week of the NATO onslaught?
> This week, Four Corners, a flagship current affairs program on the other
> government-funded TV network, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
> attempted to divert public attention away from the SBS revelations.
> Instead of a serious investigative examination of the new evidence, it
> devoted its weekly timeslot to lengthy, uncritical and sympathetic
> interviews with Pratt and Wallace. Every effort was made to pull on
> viewers' heartstrings. With a tender and commiserating expression,
> interviewer Liz Jackson dwelt on their traumatic experiences in
> detention, and their personal feelings. The SBS material was barely
> mentioned, and only at the end of the 45-minute program.
> Jackson did not ask either Pratt or Wallace any of the obvious
> questions. Exactly what part did Pratt play in setting up and running
> the Canadian contingent of the OSCE operation? Why did Pratt keep
> detailed records of military movements? Why did he and Wallace stay in
> Yugoslavia after the bombing commenced and then seek to leave Serbia
> with two carloads of extremely sensitive material, including reports
> associated with the OSCE operation?
> One new piece of information emerged showing that Pratt was no ordinary
> ex-army officer. Among the documents found in his possession was his
> military record of service between 1969 and 1992, revealing that before
> he left the army he had been appointed second-in-command of the United
> Nations Military Observer Team, on standby to deploy to the former
> Yugoslavia.
> Rather than report and examine the documents carried by Pratt and
> Wallace, which have never been released to the public, Four Corners
> quoted just three snippets. In one, Pratt reported that "fighting
> continues in the strategically important area of Podujevo". In a
> situation report, he wrote: "Significant government forces, backed by
> about 12 VJ (army) heavy tanks and armoured cars, launched operations
> against known KLA strong points recently established in Podujevo." Both
> clearly relate to military operations, not aid work.
> The third report, dated March 27, 1999, indicates that Pratt continued
> to send information to NATO-linked sources throughout the first week of
> bombing. "People are regularly moving into and out of air-raid shelters
> in the late afternoons and nights" in Belgrade, he reported, describing
> the tension in the city as "very high".
> In his interview, Wallace claimed not to have known that Pratt had these
> reports with him when they tried to leave the country. "What we should
> have done before we'd gone out was sanitise the files, that is, to take
> out anything that might be provocative," he suggested. The information,
> he admitted, "wasn't strictly relevant to a humanitarian operation and
> our need to know where the security risks were".
> Asked why he thought the material was there, Wallace paused awkwardly
> before saying: "Er, oh well, it's, um, just Steve's mistake". Suddenly
> the interview switched back to Pratt, who blithely declared that he was
> "comfortable" with the reports he had compiled.
> Much remains hidden about the Pratt-Wallace affair, and not just in
> Australia. Nothing has appeared in the Canadian press about the
> CARE-OSCE connection. In both countries, and elsewhere around the world,
> aid agencies such as CARE continue to attract donations and support,
> mounting considerable advertising campaigns to portray themselves as
> purely humanitarian organisations.
> Having had unwelcome attention drawn to the links between aid agencies
> and the intelligence services, considerable official and media effort is
> being made to prevent serious questions being asked. But what has
> emerged already is a high-level coverup, led by Fraser and the
> Australian government, assisted by the media, to suppress the facts
> about the use of CARE for intelligence gathering in the Balkans.
>
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
>
> TRIBUNALE ITALIANO CONTRO I CRIMINI DELLA NATO IN JUGOSLAVIA
> SEDUTA INAUGURALE
>
> LA VIOLAZIONE DEL DIRITTO INTERNAZIONALE E DELLA COSTITUZIONE E DELLE LEGGI
> ITALIANE.
>
> ROMA - 25 FEBBRAIO 2000
> LIBRERIA DE IL MANIFESTO - ORE 17.00
> VIA TOMACELLI
>
> INTERVENGONO
> RANIERO LA VALLE - COMITATO DIFESA DELLA DEMOCRAZIA INTERNAZIONALE
> GABRIELE CERMINARA - MAGISTRATO
> GIUSEPPE MATTINA - AVVOCATO
> PASQUALE VILARDO - AVVOCATO
> ALDO BERNARDINI - DOCENTE UNIVERSITARIO DIRITTO
> INTERNAZIONALE
> PER INFORMAZIONI : s.deangelis@... pona@...
--
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
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http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
> TRIBUNALE ITALIANO CONTRO I CRIMINI DELLA NATO IN JUGOSLAVIA
> SEDUTA INAUGURALE
>
> LA VIOLAZIONE DEL DIRITTO INTERNAZIONALE E DELLA COSTITUZIONE E DELLE LEGGI
> ITALIANE.
>
> ROMA - 25 FEBBRAIO 2000
> LIBRERIA DE IL MANIFESTO - ORE 17.00
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--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
REUTERS 20/2/2000 ------------------------------------------
AEREI NATO VIOLANO LO SPAZIO AEREO JUGOSLAVO SUL MONTENEGRO?
NATO Denies Role In Yugoslav Airspace Mystery, Near-Miss With Slovenian
Plane
BRUSSELS, Feb 20, 2000 -- (Reuters) NATO on Friday denied charges by
Belgrade that alliance military aircraft violated Yugoslav air space
twice in the past week and put civilian airliners at risk over
Montenegro's Adriatic coast.
"On those dates and at these times there were no NATO aircraft in that
area. There were no near-misses and there was no NATO air exercise,"
spokesman Lee McClenny said.
McClenny said officials at NATO southern command in Naples had carefully
examined the detailed charges and established NATO was not in any way
involved in the alleged incidents.
Yugoslav Transport Minister Dejan Drobnjakovic said on Wednesday illegal
NATO air activity forced it to close Tivat airport on the Adriatic coast
of the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro.
The closure raised fears in pro-Western Montenegro of a fresh
confrontation over airport control, as happened last December when
federal troops loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic faced off
with Montenegrin police.
Tivat was closed again on Friday. Yugoslav officials said it was due to
high winds - a frequent local problem in winter.
CYPRUS, SLOVENIA
FLIGHTS CITED
Drobnjakovic said NATO had caused a "classic near-miss" with an airliner
of Slovenian carrier Adria Airways on February 10 as it flew over the
area on a journey from Ljubljana to Tirana.
On February 14, he said, a Cyprus Airlines flight from London to Larnaca
reported unidentified aircraft in its vicinity. In Nicosia, Cyprus
Airways told Reuters its crew had reported unidentified aircraft, but no
safety hazards. Radar readings showed them about 300 meters (1,000 feet)
below the airliner's altitude, and on the limits of its radar range.
In Ljubljana, an Adria Airways spokeswoman said captain Andrej Travnik
reported that he was informed by air traffic control of another aircraft
flying below 9,000 meters (29,700 feet) in his vicinity on the flight to
Tirana.
PLANE NOT IN SIGHT
Travnik, however, said the plane was not visible and the crew had no
idea whether it was military or not.
Military sources said they could think of a few possible explanations
for the mystery encounters above Montenegro. There could be confusion
between air controllers in the area, which includes Croatia, Montenegro,
Belgrade and Bosnia. Or there was the possibility that military aircraft
were indeed operating in the space - in a secret Yugoslav Air Force
exercise which required the closure of Tivat airport under some other
pretext. Yugoslav flight control director Miodrag Hadzic told Reuters in
Belgrade on Wednesday that NATO had broken a fundamental rule of
aviation by not reporting its activities 48 hours in advance in a
so-called NOTAM, or Notification to Airman.
Belgrade authorities insisted they told the International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO) in Paris of the complaints. ICAO could not be
immediately contacted for comment
B92 19/2/2000 ---------------------------------
L'OPPOSIZIONE FILO-OCCIDENTALE SERBA A ZAGABRIA
INCONTRA LA ALBRIGHT, FISCHER E LA NUOVA DIRIGENZA CROATA
Opposition holds successful talks in Zagreb
CROATIA, Saturday - Serbian opposition representatives, in Zagreb for
the
inauguration of President Stipe Mesic, met American State Secretary
Madeleine
Albright and German Foreign Minister Joscha Fischer yesterday.
Opposition
representative Zarko Korac told B2 92 that they had discussed the
further
lifting of sanctions on Serbia and that the opposition had been invited
to
attend the next meeting of European Ministers scheduled to take place in
Lisbon at the beginning of March.
The Serbian opposition also met new Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan
and
talks were reported to be friendly. The main subject on the agenda was
the
return of Serbian refugees to Croatia.
ANCORA DUE PERSONE UCCISE IN KOSOVO DA ESTREMISTI PAN-ALBANESI
Two Serb males killed in Gornja Gusterica
KOSOVO, Saturday -- Two Serb males, Zoran Zivic and Radojica Trajkovic,
were
killed last night near the village of Gornja Gusterica in Kosovo, radio
amateurs report today. According to the same resource, UNMIK
representatives
did not allow local Serbs to approach the scene of the crime. After the
bodies were handed over, the families of the victims said that the men
had
been shot in the back while chopping wood.
KFOR spokesman Philip Anido today confirmed two Serb killings in Gornja
Gusterica and reported a further murder in Podujevo. Anido did not
release
the identity of the victims but reported that ten Albanians had been
arrested
in connection with the murders in Gornja Gusterica.
SOTTO INCHIESTA IL SOLDATO USA PER STUPRO ED OMICIDIO
Rangy hearing resumes today
KOSOVO, Saturday - The hearing in connection with the case of the
American
KFOR soldier, Frank Rangy will resume today in the American military
camp
near the town of Urosevac. Rangy has been charged with the rape and
murder of
an eleven-year-old Albanian girl. His lawyers told the press today that
the
evidence so far does not point to premeditated murder.
A ZAGABRIA LA ALBRIGHT INCONTRA I SECESSIONISTI
MONTENEGRINI E PROMETTE AIUTO
Albright: The security of Montenegro is in the interests of the US
CROATIA, Saturday - The security of Montenegro is in the interests of
the US,
American State Secretary Madeleine Albright told the press in Zagreb
after
meeting the Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic today. Vujanovic
said
that they had discussed the current state of relations between Serbia
and
Montenegro and Albright had agreed that Montenegro should act with
caution so
as to avoid provoking any conflict with Serbia. Vujanovic added that
Albright
had also expressed the intention of the US to provide Montenegro with
financial aid on the same level as last year and to back democratic
changes,
reforms and the integration of the republic into the international
community.
B92 18/2/2000 -------------------------
ANCORA TENSIONE ALL'AEREOPORTO DI TIVAT
PER GLI SCONFINAMENTI DEGLI AEREI NATO
Belgrade closes Montenegrin airport again
PODGORICA, Friday - The airport in the Montenegrin coastal town of Tivat
was
closed again yesterday after being opened only fifteen hours earlier.
Air
traffic control supervisor Mijat Petric told B292 that the airport had
been
closed because of poor weather conditions. Earlier in the week Yugoslav
air
traffic control was quoted as saying that the airport would close for
two
days because traffic was endangered by NATO aircraft over the Adriatic.
Petric told B292 today that the federal flight control had announced
that it
would close the airport in future as and when it needed to.
L'OPPOSIZIONE SERBA A LEZIONE DI DEMOCRAZIA IN CROAZIA
Serbian opposition in Zagreb
ZAGREB, Friday - A number of representatives of the Serbian opposition
are
this evening holding discussions with US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright and German Foreign Minister Joscha Fischer in Zagreb. The
opposition
leaders, who were in Zagreb today for the inauguration of President
Stipe
Mesic, are also expected to meet Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan.
They
are expected to discuss the effects of the abolition of sanctions with
Albright and Fischer.
TOLTO L'EMBARGO SUI VOLI CIVILI
JAT back in the air
BELGRADE, Friday - The Yugoslav national airline, JAT, is to return to
the
European skies on February 22. A ban on JAT landings in European
airports was
lifted this week along with the air traffic embargo on Yugoslavia. The
company announced today that it will begin flying to Zurich five times a
week
from next Tuesday. Flights to other European destinations are expected
to
follow in the near future.
ANCORA IN SCIOPERO GLI INSEGNANTI SERBI PER
OTTENERE UN AUMENTO DEL SALARIO
Teachers refuse pay offer, continue industrial action
BELGRADE, Friday - The Serbian Education Union today declined an offer
from
the Serbian government and announced it would continue industrial
action.
Education Minister Jovo Todorovic offered a basic pay rate for teachers
of
305 dinars - below the union's demands. Union President Branislav
Pavlovic
told media today that if agreement were not reached the union would call
a
total strike.
CLARK: "LA NATO NON SI MUOVERA' DAI BALCANI FINCHE' C'E' MILOSEVIC"
US and NATO to stay while Milosevic in power: Clark
WASHINGTON, Thursday - US and NATO troops in Bosnia and Kosovo would
probably
stay as long as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic remained in power,
NATO
European Commander Wesley Clark said today. Clark emphasised that it was
crucial that economic measures against Yugoslavia be targeted carefully
at
Milosevic and his authorities, not ordinary Serbs. "NATO has never been
against Serbs. We're against Milosevic," Clark told the US Congress
Committee
for Military Affairs. Clark was replying to members of the committee who
had
expressed dissatisfaction over slow progress by the international
community
in Kosovo and Bosnia.
IVANOVIC: "GLI ALBANESI-KOSOVARI STANNO PREPARANDO FUTURI ATTACCHI"
Albanians planning major attacks in Kosovo: Ivanovic
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Friday - Albanians in the southern part of the
divided
town of Kosovska Mitrovica are visibly arming themselves and regrouping
in
preparation for attacks, the president of the local Serb National
Council,
Oliver Ivanovic, warned today. Ivanovic told media in Bosnia that
serious
attacks on the northern, Serbian, zone of Mitrovica could be expected
soon.
The Mitrovica Serb leader added that he hoped that the international
community and KFOR would react in time to prevent such attacks. In any
case,
said Ivanovic, Serbs would not sit in the northern zone and wait for
Albanians to come and slaughter them.
IWPR #117, 18/2/2000 ------------------------------
MILOSEVIC STA AGGIRANDO L'EMBARGO ATTRAVERSO L'IRAQ
MILOSEVIC BREAKS FINANCIAL BLOCKADE
Western counties are undermining their own efforts to starve Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic of cash.
By Laura Rozen
Western countries seeking to deprive Slobodan Milosevic of hard currency
are
sanctioning multi-million dollar trade deals between Yugoslavia and
Iraq.
The United States, Britain and France, which are supposed to be trying
to
limit Milosevic's access to foreign capital, are represented on a UN
committee which has allowed him to earn millions of US dollars in trade
with
Baghdad.
The revelation comes as the European Union is considering ways of
tightening
so-called "smart-sanctions" aimed at hurting leading members of the
Belgrade
regime.
Milosevic is profiting from the UN's Oil-for-Food programme, which
enables
Iraq to sell oil on the open market and use the proceeds to buy
UN-approved
supplies in order to alleviate the humanitarian problems caused by years
of
economic sanctions.
The UN's 661 committee, which overseas the Oil-for-Food programme, has
over
the past few years approved several lucrative deals between the Yugoslav
government-owned company the Federal Directorate of Supply and
Procurement
(FDSP), known in Serbia as Yugoimport, and the Iraqi authorities. Any
member
of the UN committee can veto these contracts.
The UN approved two FDSP deals with Baghdad in 1998 worth $3.8 million
and
$18.3 million, respectively, the latter given the go-ahead just as NATO
threatened to intervene to thwart a Yugoslav military onslaught in
Kosovo.
Last month Yugoimport announced it had received permission for a $20
million
contract - and boasted its value would increase to $100 million by
year's
end.
The UN said no FDSP contracts had been approved this year. "It could
well be
that Yugoimport has signed a contract for further sale of wheat, but we
cannot confirm that they have submitted a contract to the UN for
approval,"
a UN spokesman said. "The other two contracts were approved quickly."
The 661 committee has put on hold three other contract applications
filed by
Yugoslav companies in 1999, to sell pitch, hydrocortisone, tyres tubes
and
flaps under Oil-for-Food. The US has faced criticism from Baghdad
officials
in the past month for blocking several other Iraqi contracts The
apparent
clampdown on Yugoslav-Iraq business may well have been prompted by
concerns
over the UN loophole in the financial sanctions regime against Belgrade.
There are some suggestions that it may also have come about as a result
of
fears that Milosevic is using the Oil-for Food programme as a front to
provide military support for Iraq. The 661 committee is obliged to block
any
deal that it suspects involves the sale to Baghdad of dual-use
technology
which might be used to enable Saddam Hussein to build weapons of mass
destruction. Although there is no direct evidence, there's mounting
suspicion that Yugoimport may be involved in such trade.
FDSP's own literature suggests that it might be in a position to help
Baghdad with its military goals. The company's website says that it
alone
accounts for just over 10 per cent of Yugoslav's exports and that its
activities include trade in defence equipment, technology transfer, and
the
construction of fortifications for military bases and airports.
Yugoimport's
military and economic role was underlined when it was targeted during
the
NATO bombardment of Belgrade last year.
In the past, Yugoslav companies have been instrumental in building much
of
Iraq's military infrastructure, according to William Arkin, a consultant
to
the arms division of campaign group Human Rights Watch. And recent
high-level discussions between Belgrade and Baghdad officials have
stressed
the importance of Iraqi security.
Following a meeting between Serbian interior ministry officials and the
Iraqi ambassador to Yugoslavia, Sami Sadun, the Yugoslav news agency,
Tanjug, reported that Sadun had said the preservation of economic
stability
and security in the country were priorities.
Laura Rozen, a regular contributor to IWPR, is a journalist specialising
in
the Balkans.
B92 17/2/2000 -----------------------------------
IL PORTAVOCE NATO CHIEDE SCUSA PER I SUOI ECCESSI
DI CATTIVO GUSTO SUI "DANNI COLLATERALI", NON PER
LE OPERAZIONI DI CARATTERE GENOCIDA CONTRO IL
PETROLCHIMICO DI PANCEVO...
Shea regrets using "collateral damage"
BONN, Thursday - NATO spokesman Jamie Shea told a German magazine today
that
he regretted using the term "collateral damage" during the NATO
intervention
in Yugoslavia. Shea told Stern that the euphemism for civilian
casualties was
"a really bad syntagm". The term was voted the ugliest word of 1999 by
German
linguists who explained it as NATO wanting to present the death of
civilians
as an unwanted side effect.
Shea also said today that he had never announced something deliberately
untrue during the war, adding that his denial of a NATO attack on a
civilian
convoy had been "a true mistake".
LE RICHIESTE DEL SINDACATO DEGLI INSEGNANTI IN SERBIA
Teacher's union in final demand
BELGRADE, Thursday - The president of the Serbian Education Union,
Branislav
Pavlovic announced today that the union would propose a minimum
teachers'
salary rise of 44 per cent, which would bring the average salary in
schools
to 1,800 dinars or about 90 DM. Pavlovic announced that the teachers'
industrial action would continue, saying that he was sceptical about the
government accepting the pay demand. Teachers in about 870 schools in
Serbia
are currently reducing class times from 45 to 30 minutes in support of
their
claims.
IMPORTAZIONE DI FARMACI DALLA CINA PER AGGIRARE L'EMBARGO:
IL PARTITO DEMOCRATICO DI DJINDJIC SI OPPONE
Chinese drug warning: Democratic Party
BELGRADE, Thursday - The Democratic Party has reacted with a warning to
yesterday's announcement that Serbia and China are about to reach
agreement
on import of pharmaceutical products to ease Serbia's acute shortage of
medicines. A statement from the party today said that the drugs from
China
were of questionable quality and carried no certificates of analysis. A
particular danger lay in the repackaging of drugs, the party warned.
Deputy Serbian Prime Minister Milovan Bojic yesterday told media that
the
deal on medicines from China would be completed within days and that the
crisis in Serbia's pharmacies would be solved very soon..
ANCORA BOMBE A MITROVICA CONTRO LE ABITAZIONI DEL SETTORE NORD
Bombs, no casualties in Mitrovica
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Thursday - Grenades were thrown in two separate
incidents
in the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica. KFOR announced today that a
grenade
landed on a house occupied by a Serb family failed to explode. Another
Serb
family in the northern part of the town escaped injury in an explosion
when
their house was hit by a grenade.
B92 18/2/2000 -------------------------
AEREI NATO NELLO SPAZIO AEREO JUGOSLAVO
NATO aircraft in Yugoslav air space
BELGRADE, Wednesday - The airport in the Montenegrin coastal resort of
Tivat
has been closed for two days this week because international pilots
reported
seeing NATO aircraft in the area, Belgrade daily Glas javnosti writes
today.
According to the report, Belgrade air traffic control closed the airport
after pilots from Adria and British Airways reported the sightings,
because
the NATO aircraft could have endangered civilian flights. According to
sources quoted by Glas, NATO was probably using traffic zones they
themselves
had proclaimed without asking permission for the flights.
NATO yesterday denied having asked Belgrade to clear air space so that
it
could hold military manoeuvres after state radio in Montenegro reported
that
the closure had been agreed to by Belgrade flight control for that
reason.
IN ARRIVO / DALLA CINA / MARMELLATE / ED ASPIRINA...
Jam - and aspirin - tomorrow
BELGRADE, Wednesday - Serbia's acute shortage of medicines will be
solved
soon by imports from China, Deputy Serbian Prime Minister Milovan Bojic
promised today. Bojic told selected media today that the government had
struck a major deal with the Chinese pharmaceutical industry and it was
now
only a matter of days before supplies began arriving. The deputy prime
minister also said that an investigation was underway to discover who
was
responsible for the drug shortage and that nobody would escape
responsibility. When the investigation bore results the public would be
notified, said Bojic, at a press conference which Radio B292 was barred
from
attending.
SERBO ASSASSINATO A GNJILANE
Serb killed in Gnjilane
PRISTINA, Wednesday - A sixty-year-old Serb man was killed yesterday
when an
unknown gunman opened fire on a house in Gnjilane, a KFOR spokesman said
today. Although KFOR troops arrived quickly at the scene, the assailant
escaped capture.
REUTERS 17/2/2000 ---------------------------
TRUPPE GRECHE PER FRONTEGGIARE GLI ESTREMISTI
PAN-ALBANESI A MITROVICA
Greek troops reinforce French soldiers in Kosovo
ATHENS, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Greek troops from the NATO-led
peacekeeping force in Kosovo have been sent to reinforce French
soldiers in the volatile city of Mitrovica, a Greek official said
on Thursday.
"After orders from (the peacekeeping force) KFOR and its commander
General (Klaus) Reinhardt, a Greek company, consisting of about 100
men, has been sent to Mitrovica to temporarily reinforce French
forces in the region," the Greek foreign ministry official said.
The official said there was no special significance behind the
decision to send Greek troops to the northern city, where ethnic
violence between Serbs and Albanians has been rising.
Many within the minority Serb population, traditionally close to
fellow Orthodox Greeks, say they have been terrorised by extremist
elements of the Albanian majority in Kosovo.
"We urge the Albanian-speaking leadership in Kosovo to isolate all
terrorist units. The future of Kosovo lies within the democratic
republic of Yugoslavia, with a respect for human and minority rights,
and for the Serbian people in Kosovo," the Greek official added.
REUTERS 17/2/2000 ---------------------
LA NATO VIOLA LO SPAZIO AEREO JUGOSLAVO
http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/newsphp3?=135475
YUGOSLAVIA NEWS
Yugoslavia Says NATO Planes Violated Its Airspace
BELGRADE, Feb 17, 2000 -- (Reuters) Yugoslavia accused
NATO on Wednesday of violating its airspace twice this
month, prompting it to temporarily close a Montenegrin
airport.
Yugoslav Transport Minister Dejan Drobnjakovic said
alliance planes had been spotted on February 10 and
February 14.
Yugoslav flight control closed the Tivat airport in
southern Montenegro on Monday, the day of the second
sighting, out of concern about safety. Montenegro and
Serbia together form Yugoslavia.
The airport was reopened on Wednesday, Drobnjakovic
told a news conference.
"On February 10, a pilot of Adria Airways flying from
Ljubljana to Tirana reported a presence of another
aircraft at a height of 8,200 metres in the zone of
Budva, Montenegro. That was NATO's plane. It was a
classic near-miss," he said.
"That was a flagrant violation of regulations and of
Yugoslavia's territory, endangering the safety of
Montenegro."
"On February 14, a pilot of Cyprus Airlines, flying
from London to Larnaca reported a presence of several
unknown aircraft around the point KONU, covering the
area between Dubrovnik (in Croatia) and Herceg Novi
(in Montenegro)."
Drobnjakovic said Croatian flight control had
confirmed the aircraft reported were NATO planes.
He said the decision to reopen the airport was based
on a response from the International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO), which he said had contacted NATO
on the issue.
Montenegrin state radio reported on Tuesday that
Yugoslav flight control had closed the airport after
NATO asked it to do so because of planned exercises.
A NATO spokesman in Brussels denied on Tuesday that
any such exercises were being held in the region.
A Yugoslav flight control official said the airport
had been closed because of NATO activity, but added
that the alliance had not informed Belgrade about its
plans.
"According to civil aviation rules, NATO was obliged
to report its activities 48 hours before their start
in the form of a NOTAM - notification to airman. They
never sent a NOTAM," flight control director Miodrag
Hadzic told Reuters.
He said the civilian planes that had reported the
incidents had the evidence recorded on a tape.
REUTERS 16/2/2000 ------------------------------
I BATTELLIERI RUMENI FARANNO CAUSA ALLA NATO ED
AL PROPRIO GOVERNO PER AVERE UCCISO OGNI SCAMBIO
COMMERCIALE VIA DANUBIO
http://www.centraleurope.com/news.php?id=134927
Romania Danube Shippers To Sue Government, NATO
BUCHAREST, Feb 16, 2000 -- (Reuters) The association
of Romanian river shippers said on Tuesday it would
sue the Romanian government and NATO over a total
estimated loss of $90 million because of the Kosovo
conflict.
Association president Mircea Toader said the losses
had been caused by the embargo on Yugoslavia after the
Kosovo war and by the blockage of the Danube.
Toader, who was speaking at the end of a meeting in
the Danube port town of Galati, said the association -
representing 95 percent of Romania's river shippers -
voted to ask the Romanian state for damages worth $5.4
million for lost crude oil transport contracts during
the embargo.
The association also announced plans to sue the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization over alleged losses
indirectly caused by the bombing of Yugoslav bridges.
River traffic on the Danube is running at less than 25
percent of its full capacity at present, latest
association data showed.
YDS 15/2/2000 --------------------------
NIKITA MIKHALKOV IN VISITA IN JUGOSLAVIA
PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC RECEIVES MIKHALKOV AND BURLYAYEV
BELGRADE, February 14 (Tanjug) - President Slobodan Milosevic received
on
Monday the famous Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov and the famous actor
Nikolai Burlyayev, who have arrived for a visit to Yugoslavia.
Greeting one of the greatest world directors, Mikhalkov, and Burlyayev,
as
great friends of Yugoslavia, President Milosevic stressed the huge
importance of artistic creation and the affirmation of the highest human
values, in what the efforts of Mikhalkov have universal importance.
In a cordial and friendly conversation was expressed a high level of
proximity of views about developments in Yugoslavia and in Russia,
Europe
and the world, politics and culture.
The interest of the Yugoslav public and the reception reserved for films
directed by Mikhalkov in Yugoslavia demonstrate the identity of cultural
points of view that exist in the publics of the two countries.
The famous Russian artists expressed admiration for the struggle of the
Yugoslav peoples for their freedom and independence and expressed
sincere
support for their goals.
The reception was attended also by Serbian Minister of Culture Zeljko
Simic, and Jakov Gerasimov, Russian Embassy Charge d'Affaires in
Yugoslavia.
SOSPESO L'EMBARGO SUI VOLI DA E PER LA JUGOSLAVIA
EUROPE - YUGOSLAVIA - SANCTIONS
E.U. SUSPENDS EMBARGO ON AIR LINKS WITH YUGOSLAVIA
BRUSSELS, February 14 (Tanjug) - The E.U. Council decided on Monday to
suspend for six months the ban on air links with Yugoslavia including
international flights by national carrier JAT, Portuguese Foreign
Minister
Jaim Gama said on Monday.
The E.U. Foreign Ministers also agreed to set up temporary military and
political organs of the European Rapid Reaction Force.
Last year in Helsinki it was concluded that the European Corps should
consist of 50,000 - 60,000 troops.
YUGOSLAV AIRLINES JAT READY FOR EUROPEAN FLIGHTS
BELGRADE, February 14 (Tanjug) - Today's decision by European Union
(E.U.)
Ministers to suspend the ban on international air traffic with
Yugoslavia
is merely a realization of their political decision of July last year,
Yugoslav Airlines JAT Director General Zika Petrovic said on Monday.
In a statement to Tanjug, Petrovic said JAT expected the official
announcement of this decision in the E.U. official gazette, which will
precisely define all the conditions of the suspension.
It is still not clear if the sanctions are lifted automatically for all
European countries, or if the E.U. states will each do so individually,
Petrovic said.
Petrovic said JAT was ready immediately to join European international
flights.
BELGRADE AIRPORT COMPLETELY READY
BELGRADE, February 14 (Tanjug) - Belgrade Airport is completely ready to
take on major international traffic, as it has been modernized with a
new
automatic system for passenger registration, airport Director General
Ljubomir Acimovic said on Monday.
Acimovic said Yugoslav Airlines JAT would most probably start flying to
certain European destinations already in the second half of February,
and
that interested European Union airlines should start flying to Belgrade
in
about 10 days. "We expect our national airline will soon fly to Germany,
Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Italy," he said.
The first foreign aircrafts to arrive in Belgrade should be from
Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic, and in March from Italy and
some other European countries, he said.
Acimovic said certain other European airlines would be arriving in
Belgrade as of March 26, when the international flights timetable will
be
ready.
Until March 21 last year, in addition to Aeroflot of Russia, 11 foreign
airlines used Belgrade Airport, he said.
Acimovic said today's decision by European Union Ministers to suspend
the
flights ban on Yugoslavia was an implementation of their decision of
July
19 last year, which had been blocked by political reasons.
CONTRASTI TRA KOUCHNER ED IL GOVERNO FRANCESE
MINISTER CHEVENEMENT CONTRADICTS KOUCHNER
PARIS, February 15 (Tanjug)- French Interior Minister Jean-Pierre
Chevenement on Monday countered the criticism of head of the U.N. Civil
Mission in Kosovo and Metohija Bernard Kouchner that not enough French
policemen have been sent to Serbia's southern province.
"When soldiers are shot at," the sending of more policemen "cannot be a
solution," Chevenment said during a visit to the National Police School
in
Roubaix.
"When our soldiers are being fired at, I am not sure that the sending of
a
number of more policemen, who are more useful here in Roubaix, would be
a
solution," he specified.
Ethnic-Albanian sniper shooters fired at French KFOR troops in the town
of
Kosovska Mitrovica on Sunday, wounding two.
In statements made to the French press of late, Kouchner has criticized
France for having only about 30 policemen, instead of 80, in Kosovo and
Metohija. Minister Chevenement specified that there were 37 French
policemen in the Province, who he said were training the local police.
GRAVE INQUINAMENTO DEL DANUBIO PROVENIENTE DALLA ROMANIA
SERBIA - TISZA RIVER - POLLUTION
BAN ON USE OF WATER, FISH FROM DANUBE RIVER
BELGRADE, February 14 (Tanjug) - Pollution which reached the Danube from
the Tisza peaked at 8 p.m. on February 13, and cyanide was still above
permitted levels along the Danube's left bank in Zemun and Pancevo on
February 14, the Serbian Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water
Resources said on Monday. The Ministry warned all those along the Danube
east of Belgrade not to use its waters. The Ministry banned fishing and
sales of fish in the territory of Serbia, with the exception of products
of
fisheries, the statement said.
Fish died on a smaller scale in Pancevo and Smederevo. Measures have
been
taken to collect and remove the dead fish.
According to the latest results, cyanide content in the Tisza is below
permitted levels, the Ministry statement said.
ROMANIA MINIMIZES POLLUTION OF SOMES AND TISZA
BUCAREST, February 14 (Tanjug) - Romania deployed on Monday near
Djerdap,
at the entrance of the Danube into its territory, teams of experts for
measuring water pollution, because also expected to reach there is a
part
of the cyanide that spilled over from the waste material reservoir of
the
gold mine in Transylvania.
Hungary and Romania plan to demand aid from the European Union to remove
the consequences of the damages caused by the spilling of the poison
into
the river Somes, a tributary of Tisza, that carried the cyanide also
into
the Danube. Besides Romania, also affected by the pollution are Hungary
and
Yugoslavia, through which Tisza flows along some one hundred kilometres
and
then, at Slankamen, into the Danube.
Official Bucarest kept silent for almost two weeks about the incident
that
only last week-end Premier Mugur Isaresku demanded that an investigation
into the causes of the pollution which has acquired the proportions of
an
ecological disaster.
The disaster occurred when, because of melting snow, the reservoir of
the
gold mine in Transylvania near Baia Mare spilled over its banks. Around
100,000 cubic meters of water polluted with cyanide then spilled over
into
the stream Lapos, and then into the river Somes.
The owner of the mine is the company Aurel, which was formed last year
by
the Romanian firm Remin and the Australian company Esmeralda.
The Romanian press ignored the incident, only electronic media carried
reports of foreign news agencies, including the Yugoslav news agency
Tanjug, and showed footage of Hungarian television.
CNN: FROM ROMANIA - ECOLOGICAL DISASTER
NEW YORK, February 14 (Tanjug) - From Romania has originated an
ecological
disaster which has caused unforeseeable consequences for plants and
animals
along the Tisza river (Tisa in Yugoslavia), all the way to the Danube,
said
on Monday the U.S. TV network CNN that gave wide coverage to the tragedy
caused by the spillage of cyanide from the Romanian mine near Baia Mare
in
Transylvania.
CNN has been repeating for several days reports about dead fish in Tisa,
in Yugoslavia, and about the efforts of Yugoslav officials and
ecologists
to stop and cleanse the polluted water.
Carried was the statement of the Serbian Minister for the Protection of
the Environment, Bratislav Blazic, who described the situation as a big
ecological disaster and that Yugoslavia will demand from the
international
court in The Hague to punish the perpetrators who must compensate for
the
damages.
Yugoslav officials are taking measures to destroy the poisoned fish and
also by other measures reduce the consequences, CNN said.
CNN carried also Hungarian statements and assessments that the cyanide
concentration in the Tisa river was the worst ecological disaster since
Chernobil.
U.S. media reports, however, ignore the fact that also responsible for
the
tragedy is an Australian company from Perth - Esmeralda Exploitation
which
is a co-owner of the Romania company from whose waste material spilled
cyanide, used in the process of separating gold from the ore.
The Australian firm claims that its experts are investigating the
pollution of the river into which the poison spilled because of apparent
carelessness and regulation breaches, and that the results of the
investigation will be known next week.
B92 15/2/2000 -------------------------------
DOPO L'ASSASSINIO BULATOVIC, NUOVO MINISTRO E
NUOVO CAPO DI STATO MAGGIORE DELL'ESERCITO
Army chief appointed defence minister
BELGRADE, Tuesday - The head of the Yugoslav Army Headquarters, General
Dragoljub Ojdanic was today appointed Federal Defence Minister, the post
left
vacant after the murder of Pavle Bulatovic earlier this month. The
commander
of the Third Yugoslav Army, Lieutenant General Nebojsa Pavkovic was
appointed
to replace Ojdanic at the helm of the Yugoslav Army.
Military political analyst Ljubodrag Stojadinovic told B292 today that
both
decisions were predictable, adding that Pavkovic had long been seen as a
future army chief because of his enormous popularity and the confidence
placed in him by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Milosevic today met Ojdanic, and senior military commanders to discuss
the
current political situation of the army and its combat readiness.
Federal
Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic and Serbian President Milan Milutinovic
were
also present at the meeting.
YDS 13/2/2000 ----------------------------------
LETTERA DEL GOVERNO JUGOSLAVO ALL'ONU
SULLE CONTINUE VIOLAZIONI DELLA RISOLUZIONE 1244
SERBIAN PROVINCE OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
YUGOSLAV GOVERNMENT LETTER TO THE U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL
REGARDING VIOLATIONS OF RESOLUTION 1244
NEW YORK, February 13 (Tanjug) - The international community is well
aware
that the grave situation in Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province is a
consequence of the failure of the local United Nations mission, since
facts
which indicate this are more than obvious.
Consequently, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has yet again reacted
by
pointing out who is violating Resolution 1244, and how.
The latest government letter to the U.N. Security Council lists
precisely
and with irrefutable arguments all the resolution points which have been
violated most grossly.
The letter was sent by head of the Yugoslav Permanent Mission to the
U.N.,
Ambassador Vladislav Jovanovic, to U.N. Security Council President
Arnoldo
Listre and Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Saturday.
It unequivocally states that leading figures of the U.N. mission are
responsible for the chaos in this southern Serbian province, in
particular
the Secretary-General's High Representative Bernard Kouchner.
Point by point, the letter shows the disastrous steps taken by the
international community which have led into chaos - from failing to meet
its obligation to disarm the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, to the
complete failure to establish a secure environment for all Kosovo
citizens.
"As a result, terrorism in the province has escalated at an
unprecedented
pace, so that the number of terrorist attacks since the arrival of KFOR
and
UNMIK increased 11-fold. 4,249 terrorist attacks, mainly against Serbs
and
other non-Albanians have been committed in the period since June 12,
1999
to date, in which 889 persons have been killed, 784 wounded and 834
abducted," said the letter.
The letter gives details and facts about brutal terrorist attacks in the
latest period when they have launched a new wave of terror.
By turning a blind eye to everything the terrorists did and are doing in
Kosovo and Metohija, the international security and civilian missions
have
not escaped responsibility. On the contrary, such actions have
contributed
to the expulsion of 350,000 Serbs, Montenegrins, Romanies, Muslims,
ethnic
Turks, Goranians, and other non-Albanians from the province.
The letter proceeds to give a long list of mistakes made by Kouchner and
descriptions of his unprecedented actions, showing that the mission head
is
the most responsible for developments in the province.
The series of so-called regulations which he has imposed are aimed at
separating Kosovo and Metohija from the constitutional, legal, economic,
customs, monetary, and banking systems of Yugoslavia and Serbia.
Kouchner
has thus acted contrary to the stand clearly taken by U.N. Security
Council
members - to preserve and respect the sovereignty and territorial
integrity
of Yugoslavia.
By constructing military bases and conducting military exercises in the
sovereign territory of Yugoslavia without the consent of the Yugoslav
government, the KFOR is in flagrant violation of the relevant resolution
and provides support to Kosovo terrorists and separatists, destabilizing
in
that way the entire region, the letter said.
ATTACCATE ABITAZIONI SERBE NEL SETTORE NORD DI MITROVICA
ETHNIC ALBANIANS ATTACKED SERB HOUSES
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, February 12 (Tanjug) - Ethnic Albanian extremists
attacked Serb houses in northern Kosovska Mitrovica during curfew late
on Friday.
Two bombs were thrown at the Milutinovic family home in the Bosnjacka
Mahala district at midnight, and automatic fire riddled their windows.
None
of the occupants were injured in this terrorist attack.
Terrorists also showered the house of Serb Dragi Jovanovic with rocks
and
stones in another district, near the hospital.
Dragica Jerotijevic, a Serb woman, was stoned at 4.30 p.m. Friday in the
Bosnjacka Mahala district, where only four Serb houses remain.
The perpetrators of these terrorist attacks have not been caught, even
though strong forces of the KFOR and UNMIK police have been protecting
the
Bosnjacka Mahala district round the clock, not just during curfew, since
it
was introduced on February 4.
NUOVE MISURE DI SICUREZZA A MITROVICA
NEW SECURITY MEASURES IN KOSOVSKA MITROVICA
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, February 12 (Tanjug) - UNMIK head Bernard Kouchner
has
decided about new security measures in Kosovska Mitrovica which will
take
effect next week.
A statement distributed to Serb reporters late on Saturday said that the
number of international police would be doubled. Three hundred new
policemen will be deployed within the six municipalities of this region,
the statement said.
Most policemen will be stationed in Kosovska Mitrovica itself. The first
100 policemen will arrive next week. They will cooperate closely with
KFOR
troops, the statement said.
The security zone established on both sides of the bridge over the Ibar
River will be expanded. The established checkpoints on both sides and
mobile police teams will be manned by KFOR troops as well - French,
Danish,
German and English.
Among the new measures which should contribute to a calming of the
situation in this town in Kosovo and Metohija province is the
proclamation
of a no-demonstrations zone.
The monitoring and control of the administrative border with Serbia
proper
will also be stepped up, the statement said.
SERBI SOTTO ATTACCO AD OBILIC
ETHNIC ALBANIAN TERRORISTS ATTACKED SERBS IN OBILIC
OBILIC, February 13 (Tanjug) - A Serb-populated district of Obilic was
attacked with automatic firearms late on Friday, but there were no
casualties, radio amateurs reported from this part of Serbia's southern
Kosovo and Metohija province.
The attack went on for 20 minutes, resulting in shattered windows and
riddled walls. International force KFOR troops simply observed the
brutal
attack on the remaining Serbs in this district.
The Obilic KFOR command said it was continuing an intense search for the
perpetrators and that it believed, on the grounds of certain
intelligence,
that the perpetrators are from the territory of Obilic.
VOCI CONTRO L'EMBARGO ALLA RFJ DALLA REPUBBLICA CECA
ANTI-YUGOSLAV SANCTIONS - INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS
TV SHOW PARTICIPANTS CALL FOR LIFTING OF ANTI-YUGOSLAV SANCTIONS
PRAGUE, February 12 (Tanjug) - Participants in a popular Czech TV show,
Kotel (The Cauldron), have urged the soonest possible help for Yugoslav
citizens and the Czech government's contribution to this as a call for
the
lifting of the sanctions against Yugoslavia.
The demand voiced by ruling Social Democrat MP Jaroslav Foldina was
welcomed with loud applause from the audience.
Foldina asked Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kavan, another guest on the
show
of the private TV station Nova, to urge such actions with the
government,
since "it is not democratic to bomb someone, starve them, or make them
freeze to death". Yugoslavia and its citizens need immediate help,
Foldina
said.
SUMMIT BALCANICO A BUCAREST CON L'ESCLUSIONE DELLA RFJ
THE BALKANS - REGIONAL COOPERATION
SOUTHEASTERN EUROPEAN SUMMIT WITHOUT YUGOSLAVIA
BUCHAREST, February 12 (Tanjug) - Government representatives of several
southeastern European countries signed a Charter on good-neighborly
relations, regional stability, security and cooperation in Bucharest on
Saturday, showing open awareness that these plans cannot be realized
without the participation of Yugoslavia.
At the third top-level meeting within the process of cooperation of
southeastern European countries, the Yugoslav flag was displayed at the
conference table, but the chairs for a Yugoslav delegation remained
vacant.
Opening the meeting, Romanian President Emil Constantinescu said
Yugoslav
representatives were absent because of restrictions enforced by the
European Union, practically confirming that he had yielded to the
interests
of extra-regional factors, and accepted interference in what are
exclusive
affairs of the regional countries.
And yet, Constantinescu had to face reality. He said no concrete
structures could be set up in the region without the participation of
the
Serbian people.
Today's one-day meeting was attended by prime ministers Costas Simitis
of
Greece, Ivan Kostov of Bulgaria, Ljupco Georgijevski of Macedonia,
Bulent
Ecevit of Turkey, Ilir Meta of Albania, and the Romanian head of state.
DOPO TRE ANNI LIBERATO IN CECENIA UNO JUGOSLAVO RAPITO A MOSCA
F.R. YUGOSLAVIA - CHECHNYA
RUSSIAN SPECIAL TROOPS LIBERATED A YUGOSLAV HELD CAPTIVE IN CHECHNYA
MOSCOW, February 13 (Tanjug) - Members of Russian special police units
for
fighting organized crime have liberated Yugoslav citizen Stanimir
Petrovic
from captivity in Chechnya, it was announced in Moscow on Sunday.
Petrovic worked in Moscow for the German firm Albana Export Import, and
was abducted together with his boss Rudolph Klaus Schmidt on August 2,
1997. They were intercepted at Slepcoski Airport in Ingushetia by armed
attackers and taken in an unknown direction.
No details about Petrovic's liberation were revealed, but it is known
that
no ransom has been paid and that the action was carried out by special
police units from the northern Caucasus regional administration for
combatting organized crime.
YDS 11/2/2000 -----------------------------------------------
ANCHE DALLA SLOVACCHIA VOCI CONTRARIE ALLA POLITICA CRIMINALE
DELLA NATO NEI CONFRONTI DELLA RF DI JUGOSLAVIA
F.R.YUGOSLAVIA - SLOVAKIA
NATO CONTINUES AGGRESSION IN EFFORT TO BREAK UP YUGOSLAVIA
BRATISLAVA, February. 11 (Tanjug)- Yugoslav ambassador to Slovakia
Veljko
Curcic has set out that, although morally defeated, the NATO countries
which had participated in the March-June, 1999 aggression on Yugoslavia
were still trying to achieve their goal -- to break up Yugoslavia --
through efforts "illegitimately to change the authorities in
Yugoslavia."
"The pressures continue in the period of Yugoslavia's reconstruction
above
all through the imposition of unjust economic and other sanctions. The
unscrupulous pressures are designed to prevent the reconstruction and
development of Yugoslavia, which they have devastated with their rockets
and bombs," ambassador Curcic said in an interview to the Slovak daily
Novy
Den.
When the policy of open aggression failed, aggression continued through
sanctions, blackmail, and the granting of more dollars for continued
efforts to topple the authorities in Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav ambassador
specified.
The Slovak daily said that Serbia's southern province of Kosovo and
Metohija was being ethnically cleansed by ethnic-Albanian terrorists and
separatists under the "patronage" of NATO troops.
It set out that the ethnic cleansing did not imply just the elimination
of
Serbs and their expulsion from the "heart" of Yugoslavia but also the
elimination of any trace of Serbs and Christians in general.
Ambassador Curcic said that the expulsion of Serbs, Montenegrins and
other
non-Albanians from the province, with the tacit consent of the KFOR and
UNMIK, was organized ethnic cleansing.
LA KFOR NON VEDE LA PULIZIA ETNICA IN ATTO NEL KOSMET?
KFOR OVERLOOKS ETHNIC CLEANSING OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
BONN, February. 11 (Tanjug)- The Berlin Junge Welt Friday carried an
article written by British Member of Parliament Alice Mahon, a
Labourite,
in which she said that Yugoslavia had a genuinely multi-ethnic society,
and
a large-scale operation of ethnic cleansing in Serbia's southern
province
of Kosovo and Metohija by ethnic-Albanian terrorists and separatists was
being overlooked by the KFOR international peace force.
Mahon, who chairs the British Parliament's Committee for the Balkans,
visited Kosovo and Metohija last autumn as a member of the so-called
North
Atlantic Assembly, an institution which is to exercise parliamentary
control of NATO.
Mahon said in the article that it did not take her long to realize what
was happening and subsequent reports of the OSCE and international human
rights organizations, including Amnesty International, had confirmed
that
Serbia's southern province was being ethnically cleansed by the KLA
while
the U.N. mission (UNMIK) and the KFOR did not show the slightest
readiness
to take legal action against them.
The British politician said that Serbs, Slavs of Muslim faith
(Goranacs),
Romanies, ethnic Turks and other non-Albanians were victims of daily
harassments, intimidation, abductions and torching.
Mahon cited the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry figures that 350,000 people
have
been forced to leave Kosovo and Metohija since the KFOR deployment in
June
last year.
MANIFESTAZIONE DEI SERBI-KOSOVARI A ZVECAN PRESSO PRISTINA
PROTEST RALLY IN ZVECAN
ZVECAN, February. 11 (Tanjug) - Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija are the
teachers of patriotism and united they can realize their joint goal -
survival and preservation of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia and
Serbia
within its southern province, is the message of several thousand Serbs
gathered at a protest rally on Friday in Zvecan, close to Pristina.
The president of the Serbian National Forum of Zvecan, Dragisa Milovic,
said that Kosovo and Metohija "is a blot in the heart of Europe because
is
it rife with chaos, anarchy, violence, arms trading and white slavery
carried out by the masters (UNMIK head Bernard) Kouchner and (Hashim)
Thaqi."
"We only want to live in peace and in dignity and we demand security for
ourselves and our children, the return of the displaced and of our army
and
police," Milovic stated.
The speakers at the rally, often interrupted by shouts "Long Live
Serbia"
and "Long Live Yugoslavia", called for "all Serbs in these hard times to
form one party."
"We will not allow Kouchner to create another Albanian state based on
the
misfortune of the Serb people, nor will a single Serb enter his and
Thaqi's
government," the protesters said.
Deputy director of the hospital in Kosovska Mitrovica, Dr. Milan
Ivanovic,
stated that "the Serbs would prevent Kouchner from carrying out
experiments
on them 'in vivo', just those performed by Nazi doctor Mengele."
"Kouchner cannot chose a Serb who is convenient for his government
because
we will chose our own representative if the conditions for this arise,"
Ivanovic set out.
ANCHE L'ITALIANO "PANORAMA" RICONOSCE CHE IN KOSOVO COMANDA L'UCK
KLA, NOT KFOR, IS IN COMMAND IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA, ITALIAN PANORAMA
ROME, February. 11 (Tanjug)- The so-called ethnic-Albanian KLA is in
command in Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia's southern province, despite the
presence of the KFOR international forces, the Italian weekly Panorama
said
Friday, commenting the continued violence against the non-Albanian
population in the province.
Citing the OSCE report for December, Panorama said the violence was
organized by militant KLA separatists.
"The doubtful guerrilla movement has been accused also of cooperating
with
the Kosovo and Metohija mafia," the Milan weekly set out.
The Human Rights Watch shares the opinion that orders for the violence
in
Serbia's southern province come from the militant KLA and KLA members
are
the perpetrators of the most brutal crimes there.
"The anti-democratic and violent KLA, which is now unpopular among
Kosovo
and Metohija Albanians, themselves, is stronger than ever before," the
weekly Panorama said.
B92 11/2/2000 ------------------------------
SEMPRE PIU' VICINE LE MANOVRE NATO IN KOSMET
No reaction to NATO "provocation": Yugoslav Army
BELGRADE, Friday - The head of the Third Yugoslav Army, Vladimir
Lazarevic,
said today that the Army would not react to NATO military manoeuvres
planned
for Kosovo next month. Lazarevic, speaking to Belgrade news magazine
NIN,
said that the manoeuvres could represent an attempt by NATO to provoke
the
Yugoslav army.
YDS 10/2/2000 -----------
L'ASSASSINIO DI BULATOVIC
FR YUGOSLAVIA - TRAGIC DEATH OF DEFENCE MINISTER
ZIZIC: MONSTROUS SHOTS FIRED ON BULATOVIC WERE AN ATTACK ON YUGOSLAVIA
PODGORICA, February 9 (Tanjug) - Montenegro's Socialist People's Party
(SNP) held a commemoration meeting late on Wednesday in the presence of
more than 1,000 people following the assassination of Yugoslav Defence
Minister and top SNP official Pavle Bulatovic late on Monday.
The commemoration, held at the Yugoslav Army club, was attended by
Bulatovic's family and relatives as well as top SNP officials including
Momir Bulatovic, Srdja Bozovic, Predrag Bulatovic and Zoran Zizic,
Yugoslav
government ministers, representatives of the Yugoslav Second Army
command,
other party leaders and officials of various organisations and
associations.
Addressing those attending the commemoration, Zizic, SNP Vice-President,
said that the monstrous shots fired on Bulatovic were an attack on the
country, the SNP and the Yugoslav people's unwavering determination to
be
their own masters.
"Animosity towards our people and state and the atmosphere created by
those who spread hatred and divisions, in any case that what is terrible
and fatal for Montenegro, have caused the death of innocent Pavle
Bulatovic," he said.
Bulatovic's sudden and tragic death is a great loss for the SNP but it
also puts a major obligation before the party to continue his commitment
to
brotherly ties between Montenegro and Serbia, he said.
Thousands of people from all over Montenegro paid their last respects to
Bulatovic at the chapel at the Podgorica cemetery on Wednesday.
MONTENEGRIN PRESIDENT OFFERED CONDOLENCES TO MINISTER BULATOVIC'S FAMILY
PODGORICA, February 10 (Tanjug) - President of the Yugoslav republic of
Montenegro Milo Djukanovic on Wednesday offered condolences to the
family
of assassinated Yugoslav Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic, the
Presidential
Cabinet said late on Wednesday.
MINISTER MATIC: MURDER OF BULATOVIC IS PART OF ORGANISED TERRORISM
ORCHESTRATED FROM ABROAD
BELGRADE, February 9 (Tanjug) - Yugoslav Information Minister Goran
Matic
said on Wednesday that the assassination of Yugoslav Defence Minister
Pavle
Bulatovic was a part of the chain of organised terrorism orchestrated
from
abroad, and that the security of state officials in no way differed from
the security of other citizens.
Matic told the Belgrade 'Danas' newspaper that the state would do all
within its power to find murderers in each and every case and that state
authorities would put an end to terrorism and crime that were being used
as
an instrument for destabilising the country.
Matic had stated that a chain of subversive and terrorist actions was
being planned abroad and stimulated from abroad also at a session of the
Yugoslav Left (JUL) Directorate's Information Committee last October.
He had warned that subversive and terrorist actions were being planned
abroad in order to destabilise and destroy the country's political and
economic system.
He had also said that, after all its defeats, Washington's policy was
increasingly nearing actions based on subversive and destructive illegal
activities and military provocations and relying on a real network of
secret agents.
SULLE RELAZIONI TRA RFJ E ROMANIA
F.R. YUGOSLAVIA - ROMANIA
DEVELOPMENT OF COOPERATION BETWEEN YUGOSLAVIA AND ROMANIA
BUCHAREST, February 10 (Tanjug) - An international symposium on the
development and reconstruction of the Romania/Banat-Yugoslavia region
was
held in Timisoara, Romania, on Wednesday.
The symposium was organised by Pro Liberts Co. of Timisoara and
Germany's
Ostimpex of Hanau, one of Europe's biggest manufacturers of gas
installations equipment.
The Yugoslav side was represented by Termoelektro of Belgrade and
Inzenjering Biro of Novi Sad, as well as by designers of gas
installations.
Also attending were 30 or so Romanian businessmen.
Yugoslav businessmen had highly profitable talks with the Ostimpex
representatives, with both sides expressing a willingness to set up a
joint
venture in Timisoara.
==================================================================
NOTA DEL CRJ: Le notizie in lingua straniera sono introdotte da un
nostro titolo in italiano per facilitarne la consultazione.
La nostra selezione di notizie contiene brani da fonti diverse:
YDS - e' la "Yugoslav Daily Survey" del Ministero degli Esteri della
RFJ (cfr. http://www.mfa.gov.yu/ ).
B92 - sono le notizie che provengono dalla mailing list di RadioB2-92,
di orientamento antigovernativo e filo-occidentale:
> freeb92-e is an open mailing list for distribution of news by Radio
> B2-92. News bulletins are updated at 19.00 CET Monday to Friday and
> at 23.00 CET on Saturday and Sunday.
> For more information on FreeB92 and Radio B2-92, visit:
> http://www.freeb92.net/
REUTERS - sono i dispacci della omonima agenzia di informazione
IWPR - e' il bollettino dell'Institute for War & Peace Reporting
<info@...>
> Balkan Crisis Report is supported by the Department for International
> Development, European Commission, Swedish International Development and
> Cooperation Agency, MacArthur Foundation, Press Now and the Carnegie
> Corporation. IWPR also acknowledges general support from the Ford
Foundation.
> *** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net ***
Tanjug - e' l'agenzia di stampa jugoslava: http://www.tanjug.co.yu
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
AEREI NATO VIOLANO LO SPAZIO AEREO JUGOSLAVO SUL MONTENEGRO?
NATO Denies Role In Yugoslav Airspace Mystery, Near-Miss With Slovenian
Plane
BRUSSELS, Feb 20, 2000 -- (Reuters) NATO on Friday denied charges by
Belgrade that alliance military aircraft violated Yugoslav air space
twice in the past week and put civilian airliners at risk over
Montenegro's Adriatic coast.
"On those dates and at these times there were no NATO aircraft in that
area. There were no near-misses and there was no NATO air exercise,"
spokesman Lee McClenny said.
McClenny said officials at NATO southern command in Naples had carefully
examined the detailed charges and established NATO was not in any way
involved in the alleged incidents.
Yugoslav Transport Minister Dejan Drobnjakovic said on Wednesday illegal
NATO air activity forced it to close Tivat airport on the Adriatic coast
of the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro.
The closure raised fears in pro-Western Montenegro of a fresh
confrontation over airport control, as happened last December when
federal troops loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic faced off
with Montenegrin police.
Tivat was closed again on Friday. Yugoslav officials said it was due to
high winds - a frequent local problem in winter.
CYPRUS, SLOVENIA
FLIGHTS CITED
Drobnjakovic said NATO had caused a "classic near-miss" with an airliner
of Slovenian carrier Adria Airways on February 10 as it flew over the
area on a journey from Ljubljana to Tirana.
On February 14, he said, a Cyprus Airlines flight from London to Larnaca
reported unidentified aircraft in its vicinity. In Nicosia, Cyprus
Airways told Reuters its crew had reported unidentified aircraft, but no
safety hazards. Radar readings showed them about 300 meters (1,000 feet)
below the airliner's altitude, and on the limits of its radar range.
In Ljubljana, an Adria Airways spokeswoman said captain Andrej Travnik
reported that he was informed by air traffic control of another aircraft
flying below 9,000 meters (29,700 feet) in his vicinity on the flight to
Tirana.
PLANE NOT IN SIGHT
Travnik, however, said the plane was not visible and the crew had no
idea whether it was military or not.
Military sources said they could think of a few possible explanations
for the mystery encounters above Montenegro. There could be confusion
between air controllers in the area, which includes Croatia, Montenegro,
Belgrade and Bosnia. Or there was the possibility that military aircraft
were indeed operating in the space - in a secret Yugoslav Air Force
exercise which required the closure of Tivat airport under some other
pretext. Yugoslav flight control director Miodrag Hadzic told Reuters in
Belgrade on Wednesday that NATO had broken a fundamental rule of
aviation by not reporting its activities 48 hours in advance in a
so-called NOTAM, or Notification to Airman.
Belgrade authorities insisted they told the International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO) in Paris of the complaints. ICAO could not be
immediately contacted for comment
B92 19/2/2000 ---------------------------------
L'OPPOSIZIONE FILO-OCCIDENTALE SERBA A ZAGABRIA
INCONTRA LA ALBRIGHT, FISCHER E LA NUOVA DIRIGENZA CROATA
Opposition holds successful talks in Zagreb
CROATIA, Saturday - Serbian opposition representatives, in Zagreb for
the
inauguration of President Stipe Mesic, met American State Secretary
Madeleine
Albright and German Foreign Minister Joscha Fischer yesterday.
Opposition
representative Zarko Korac told B2 92 that they had discussed the
further
lifting of sanctions on Serbia and that the opposition had been invited
to
attend the next meeting of European Ministers scheduled to take place in
Lisbon at the beginning of March.
The Serbian opposition also met new Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan
and
talks were reported to be friendly. The main subject on the agenda was
the
return of Serbian refugees to Croatia.
ANCORA DUE PERSONE UCCISE IN KOSOVO DA ESTREMISTI PAN-ALBANESI
Two Serb males killed in Gornja Gusterica
KOSOVO, Saturday -- Two Serb males, Zoran Zivic and Radojica Trajkovic,
were
killed last night near the village of Gornja Gusterica in Kosovo, radio
amateurs report today. According to the same resource, UNMIK
representatives
did not allow local Serbs to approach the scene of the crime. After the
bodies were handed over, the families of the victims said that the men
had
been shot in the back while chopping wood.
KFOR spokesman Philip Anido today confirmed two Serb killings in Gornja
Gusterica and reported a further murder in Podujevo. Anido did not
release
the identity of the victims but reported that ten Albanians had been
arrested
in connection with the murders in Gornja Gusterica.
SOTTO INCHIESTA IL SOLDATO USA PER STUPRO ED OMICIDIO
Rangy hearing resumes today
KOSOVO, Saturday - The hearing in connection with the case of the
American
KFOR soldier, Frank Rangy will resume today in the American military
camp
near the town of Urosevac. Rangy has been charged with the rape and
murder of
an eleven-year-old Albanian girl. His lawyers told the press today that
the
evidence so far does not point to premeditated murder.
A ZAGABRIA LA ALBRIGHT INCONTRA I SECESSIONISTI
MONTENEGRINI E PROMETTE AIUTO
Albright: The security of Montenegro is in the interests of the US
CROATIA, Saturday - The security of Montenegro is in the interests of
the US,
American State Secretary Madeleine Albright told the press in Zagreb
after
meeting the Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic today. Vujanovic
said
that they had discussed the current state of relations between Serbia
and
Montenegro and Albright had agreed that Montenegro should act with
caution so
as to avoid provoking any conflict with Serbia. Vujanovic added that
Albright
had also expressed the intention of the US to provide Montenegro with
financial aid on the same level as last year and to back democratic
changes,
reforms and the integration of the republic into the international
community.
B92 18/2/2000 -------------------------
ANCORA TENSIONE ALL'AEREOPORTO DI TIVAT
PER GLI SCONFINAMENTI DEGLI AEREI NATO
Belgrade closes Montenegrin airport again
PODGORICA, Friday - The airport in the Montenegrin coastal town of Tivat
was
closed again yesterday after being opened only fifteen hours earlier.
Air
traffic control supervisor Mijat Petric told B292 that the airport had
been
closed because of poor weather conditions. Earlier in the week Yugoslav
air
traffic control was quoted as saying that the airport would close for
two
days because traffic was endangered by NATO aircraft over the Adriatic.
Petric told B292 today that the federal flight control had announced
that it
would close the airport in future as and when it needed to.
L'OPPOSIZIONE SERBA A LEZIONE DI DEMOCRAZIA IN CROAZIA
Serbian opposition in Zagreb
ZAGREB, Friday - A number of representatives of the Serbian opposition
are
this evening holding discussions with US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright and German Foreign Minister Joscha Fischer in Zagreb. The
opposition
leaders, who were in Zagreb today for the inauguration of President
Stipe
Mesic, are also expected to meet Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan.
They
are expected to discuss the effects of the abolition of sanctions with
Albright and Fischer.
TOLTO L'EMBARGO SUI VOLI CIVILI
JAT back in the air
BELGRADE, Friday - The Yugoslav national airline, JAT, is to return to
the
European skies on February 22. A ban on JAT landings in European
airports was
lifted this week along with the air traffic embargo on Yugoslavia. The
company announced today that it will begin flying to Zurich five times a
week
from next Tuesday. Flights to other European destinations are expected
to
follow in the near future.
ANCORA IN SCIOPERO GLI INSEGNANTI SERBI PER
OTTENERE UN AUMENTO DEL SALARIO
Teachers refuse pay offer, continue industrial action
BELGRADE, Friday - The Serbian Education Union today declined an offer
from
the Serbian government and announced it would continue industrial
action.
Education Minister Jovo Todorovic offered a basic pay rate for teachers
of
305 dinars - below the union's demands. Union President Branislav
Pavlovic
told media today that if agreement were not reached the union would call
a
total strike.
CLARK: "LA NATO NON SI MUOVERA' DAI BALCANI FINCHE' C'E' MILOSEVIC"
US and NATO to stay while Milosevic in power: Clark
WASHINGTON, Thursday - US and NATO troops in Bosnia and Kosovo would
probably
stay as long as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic remained in power,
NATO
European Commander Wesley Clark said today. Clark emphasised that it was
crucial that economic measures against Yugoslavia be targeted carefully
at
Milosevic and his authorities, not ordinary Serbs. "NATO has never been
against Serbs. We're against Milosevic," Clark told the US Congress
Committee
for Military Affairs. Clark was replying to members of the committee who
had
expressed dissatisfaction over slow progress by the international
community
in Kosovo and Bosnia.
IVANOVIC: "GLI ALBANESI-KOSOVARI STANNO PREPARANDO FUTURI ATTACCHI"
Albanians planning major attacks in Kosovo: Ivanovic
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Friday - Albanians in the southern part of the
divided
town of Kosovska Mitrovica are visibly arming themselves and regrouping
in
preparation for attacks, the president of the local Serb National
Council,
Oliver Ivanovic, warned today. Ivanovic told media in Bosnia that
serious
attacks on the northern, Serbian, zone of Mitrovica could be expected
soon.
The Mitrovica Serb leader added that he hoped that the international
community and KFOR would react in time to prevent such attacks. In any
case,
said Ivanovic, Serbs would not sit in the northern zone and wait for
Albanians to come and slaughter them.
IWPR #117, 18/2/2000 ------------------------------
MILOSEVIC STA AGGIRANDO L'EMBARGO ATTRAVERSO L'IRAQ
MILOSEVIC BREAKS FINANCIAL BLOCKADE
Western counties are undermining their own efforts to starve Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic of cash.
By Laura Rozen
Western countries seeking to deprive Slobodan Milosevic of hard currency
are
sanctioning multi-million dollar trade deals between Yugoslavia and
Iraq.
The United States, Britain and France, which are supposed to be trying
to
limit Milosevic's access to foreign capital, are represented on a UN
committee which has allowed him to earn millions of US dollars in trade
with
Baghdad.
The revelation comes as the European Union is considering ways of
tightening
so-called "smart-sanctions" aimed at hurting leading members of the
Belgrade
regime.
Milosevic is profiting from the UN's Oil-for-Food programme, which
enables
Iraq to sell oil on the open market and use the proceeds to buy
UN-approved
supplies in order to alleviate the humanitarian problems caused by years
of
economic sanctions.
The UN's 661 committee, which overseas the Oil-for-Food programme, has
over
the past few years approved several lucrative deals between the Yugoslav
government-owned company the Federal Directorate of Supply and
Procurement
(FDSP), known in Serbia as Yugoimport, and the Iraqi authorities. Any
member
of the UN committee can veto these contracts.
The UN approved two FDSP deals with Baghdad in 1998 worth $3.8 million
and
$18.3 million, respectively, the latter given the go-ahead just as NATO
threatened to intervene to thwart a Yugoslav military onslaught in
Kosovo.
Last month Yugoimport announced it had received permission for a $20
million
contract - and boasted its value would increase to $100 million by
year's
end.
The UN said no FDSP contracts had been approved this year. "It could
well be
that Yugoimport has signed a contract for further sale of wheat, but we
cannot confirm that they have submitted a contract to the UN for
approval,"
a UN spokesman said. "The other two contracts were approved quickly."
The 661 committee has put on hold three other contract applications
filed by
Yugoslav companies in 1999, to sell pitch, hydrocortisone, tyres tubes
and
flaps under Oil-for-Food. The US has faced criticism from Baghdad
officials
in the past month for blocking several other Iraqi contracts The
apparent
clampdown on Yugoslav-Iraq business may well have been prompted by
concerns
over the UN loophole in the financial sanctions regime against Belgrade.
There are some suggestions that it may also have come about as a result
of
fears that Milosevic is using the Oil-for Food programme as a front to
provide military support for Iraq. The 661 committee is obliged to block
any
deal that it suspects involves the sale to Baghdad of dual-use
technology
which might be used to enable Saddam Hussein to build weapons of mass
destruction. Although there is no direct evidence, there's mounting
suspicion that Yugoimport may be involved in such trade.
FDSP's own literature suggests that it might be in a position to help
Baghdad with its military goals. The company's website says that it
alone
accounts for just over 10 per cent of Yugoslav's exports and that its
activities include trade in defence equipment, technology transfer, and
the
construction of fortifications for military bases and airports.
Yugoimport's
military and economic role was underlined when it was targeted during
the
NATO bombardment of Belgrade last year.
In the past, Yugoslav companies have been instrumental in building much
of
Iraq's military infrastructure, according to William Arkin, a consultant
to
the arms division of campaign group Human Rights Watch. And recent
high-level discussions between Belgrade and Baghdad officials have
stressed
the importance of Iraqi security.
Following a meeting between Serbian interior ministry officials and the
Iraqi ambassador to Yugoslavia, Sami Sadun, the Yugoslav news agency,
Tanjug, reported that Sadun had said the preservation of economic
stability
and security in the country were priorities.
Laura Rozen, a regular contributor to IWPR, is a journalist specialising
in
the Balkans.
B92 17/2/2000 -----------------------------------
IL PORTAVOCE NATO CHIEDE SCUSA PER I SUOI ECCESSI
DI CATTIVO GUSTO SUI "DANNI COLLATERALI", NON PER
LE OPERAZIONI DI CARATTERE GENOCIDA CONTRO IL
PETROLCHIMICO DI PANCEVO...
Shea regrets using "collateral damage"
BONN, Thursday - NATO spokesman Jamie Shea told a German magazine today
that
he regretted using the term "collateral damage" during the NATO
intervention
in Yugoslavia. Shea told Stern that the euphemism for civilian
casualties was
"a really bad syntagm". The term was voted the ugliest word of 1999 by
German
linguists who explained it as NATO wanting to present the death of
civilians
as an unwanted side effect.
Shea also said today that he had never announced something deliberately
untrue during the war, adding that his denial of a NATO attack on a
civilian
convoy had been "a true mistake".
LE RICHIESTE DEL SINDACATO DEGLI INSEGNANTI IN SERBIA
Teacher's union in final demand
BELGRADE, Thursday - The president of the Serbian Education Union,
Branislav
Pavlovic announced today that the union would propose a minimum
teachers'
salary rise of 44 per cent, which would bring the average salary in
schools
to 1,800 dinars or about 90 DM. Pavlovic announced that the teachers'
industrial action would continue, saying that he was sceptical about the
government accepting the pay demand. Teachers in about 870 schools in
Serbia
are currently reducing class times from 45 to 30 minutes in support of
their
claims.
IMPORTAZIONE DI FARMACI DALLA CINA PER AGGIRARE L'EMBARGO:
IL PARTITO DEMOCRATICO DI DJINDJIC SI OPPONE
Chinese drug warning: Democratic Party
BELGRADE, Thursday - The Democratic Party has reacted with a warning to
yesterday's announcement that Serbia and China are about to reach
agreement
on import of pharmaceutical products to ease Serbia's acute shortage of
medicines. A statement from the party today said that the drugs from
China
were of questionable quality and carried no certificates of analysis. A
particular danger lay in the repackaging of drugs, the party warned.
Deputy Serbian Prime Minister Milovan Bojic yesterday told media that
the
deal on medicines from China would be completed within days and that the
crisis in Serbia's pharmacies would be solved very soon..
ANCORA BOMBE A MITROVICA CONTRO LE ABITAZIONI DEL SETTORE NORD
Bombs, no casualties in Mitrovica
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Thursday - Grenades were thrown in two separate
incidents
in the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica. KFOR announced today that a
grenade
landed on a house occupied by a Serb family failed to explode. Another
Serb
family in the northern part of the town escaped injury in an explosion
when
their house was hit by a grenade.
B92 18/2/2000 -------------------------
AEREI NATO NELLO SPAZIO AEREO JUGOSLAVO
NATO aircraft in Yugoslav air space
BELGRADE, Wednesday - The airport in the Montenegrin coastal resort of
Tivat
has been closed for two days this week because international pilots
reported
seeing NATO aircraft in the area, Belgrade daily Glas javnosti writes
today.
According to the report, Belgrade air traffic control closed the airport
after pilots from Adria and British Airways reported the sightings,
because
the NATO aircraft could have endangered civilian flights. According to
sources quoted by Glas, NATO was probably using traffic zones they
themselves
had proclaimed without asking permission for the flights.
NATO yesterday denied having asked Belgrade to clear air space so that
it
could hold military manoeuvres after state radio in Montenegro reported
that
the closure had been agreed to by Belgrade flight control for that
reason.
IN ARRIVO / DALLA CINA / MARMELLATE / ED ASPIRINA...
Jam - and aspirin - tomorrow
BELGRADE, Wednesday - Serbia's acute shortage of medicines will be
solved
soon by imports from China, Deputy Serbian Prime Minister Milovan Bojic
promised today. Bojic told selected media today that the government had
struck a major deal with the Chinese pharmaceutical industry and it was
now
only a matter of days before supplies began arriving. The deputy prime
minister also said that an investigation was underway to discover who
was
responsible for the drug shortage and that nobody would escape
responsibility. When the investigation bore results the public would be
notified, said Bojic, at a press conference which Radio B292 was barred
from
attending.
SERBO ASSASSINATO A GNJILANE
Serb killed in Gnjilane
PRISTINA, Wednesday - A sixty-year-old Serb man was killed yesterday
when an
unknown gunman opened fire on a house in Gnjilane, a KFOR spokesman said
today. Although KFOR troops arrived quickly at the scene, the assailant
escaped capture.
REUTERS 17/2/2000 ---------------------------
TRUPPE GRECHE PER FRONTEGGIARE GLI ESTREMISTI
PAN-ALBANESI A MITROVICA
Greek troops reinforce French soldiers in Kosovo
ATHENS, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Greek troops from the NATO-led
peacekeeping force in Kosovo have been sent to reinforce French
soldiers in the volatile city of Mitrovica, a Greek official said
on Thursday.
"After orders from (the peacekeeping force) KFOR and its commander
General (Klaus) Reinhardt, a Greek company, consisting of about 100
men, has been sent to Mitrovica to temporarily reinforce French
forces in the region," the Greek foreign ministry official said.
The official said there was no special significance behind the
decision to send Greek troops to the northern city, where ethnic
violence between Serbs and Albanians has been rising.
Many within the minority Serb population, traditionally close to
fellow Orthodox Greeks, say they have been terrorised by extremist
elements of the Albanian majority in Kosovo.
"We urge the Albanian-speaking leadership in Kosovo to isolate all
terrorist units. The future of Kosovo lies within the democratic
republic of Yugoslavia, with a respect for human and minority rights,
and for the Serbian people in Kosovo," the Greek official added.
REUTERS 17/2/2000 ---------------------
LA NATO VIOLA LO SPAZIO AEREO JUGOSLAVO
http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/newsphp3?=135475
YUGOSLAVIA NEWS
Yugoslavia Says NATO Planes Violated Its Airspace
BELGRADE, Feb 17, 2000 -- (Reuters) Yugoslavia accused
NATO on Wednesday of violating its airspace twice this
month, prompting it to temporarily close a Montenegrin
airport.
Yugoslav Transport Minister Dejan Drobnjakovic said
alliance planes had been spotted on February 10 and
February 14.
Yugoslav flight control closed the Tivat airport in
southern Montenegro on Monday, the day of the second
sighting, out of concern about safety. Montenegro and
Serbia together form Yugoslavia.
The airport was reopened on Wednesday, Drobnjakovic
told a news conference.
"On February 10, a pilot of Adria Airways flying from
Ljubljana to Tirana reported a presence of another
aircraft at a height of 8,200 metres in the zone of
Budva, Montenegro. That was NATO's plane. It was a
classic near-miss," he said.
"That was a flagrant violation of regulations and of
Yugoslavia's territory, endangering the safety of
Montenegro."
"On February 14, a pilot of Cyprus Airlines, flying
from London to Larnaca reported a presence of several
unknown aircraft around the point KONU, covering the
area between Dubrovnik (in Croatia) and Herceg Novi
(in Montenegro)."
Drobnjakovic said Croatian flight control had
confirmed the aircraft reported were NATO planes.
He said the decision to reopen the airport was based
on a response from the International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO), which he said had contacted NATO
on the issue.
Montenegrin state radio reported on Tuesday that
Yugoslav flight control had closed the airport after
NATO asked it to do so because of planned exercises.
A NATO spokesman in Brussels denied on Tuesday that
any such exercises were being held in the region.
A Yugoslav flight control official said the airport
had been closed because of NATO activity, but added
that the alliance had not informed Belgrade about its
plans.
"According to civil aviation rules, NATO was obliged
to report its activities 48 hours before their start
in the form of a NOTAM - notification to airman. They
never sent a NOTAM," flight control director Miodrag
Hadzic told Reuters.
He said the civilian planes that had reported the
incidents had the evidence recorded on a tape.
REUTERS 16/2/2000 ------------------------------
I BATTELLIERI RUMENI FARANNO CAUSA ALLA NATO ED
AL PROPRIO GOVERNO PER AVERE UCCISO OGNI SCAMBIO
COMMERCIALE VIA DANUBIO
http://www.centraleurope.com/news.php?id=134927
Romania Danube Shippers To Sue Government, NATO
BUCHAREST, Feb 16, 2000 -- (Reuters) The association
of Romanian river shippers said on Tuesday it would
sue the Romanian government and NATO over a total
estimated loss of $90 million because of the Kosovo
conflict.
Association president Mircea Toader said the losses
had been caused by the embargo on Yugoslavia after the
Kosovo war and by the blockage of the Danube.
Toader, who was speaking at the end of a meeting in
the Danube port town of Galati, said the association -
representing 95 percent of Romania's river shippers -
voted to ask the Romanian state for damages worth $5.4
million for lost crude oil transport contracts during
the embargo.
The association also announced plans to sue the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization over alleged losses
indirectly caused by the bombing of Yugoslav bridges.
River traffic on the Danube is running at less than 25
percent of its full capacity at present, latest
association data showed.
YDS 15/2/2000 --------------------------
NIKITA MIKHALKOV IN VISITA IN JUGOSLAVIA
PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC RECEIVES MIKHALKOV AND BURLYAYEV
BELGRADE, February 14 (Tanjug) - President Slobodan Milosevic received
on
Monday the famous Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov and the famous actor
Nikolai Burlyayev, who have arrived for a visit to Yugoslavia.
Greeting one of the greatest world directors, Mikhalkov, and Burlyayev,
as
great friends of Yugoslavia, President Milosevic stressed the huge
importance of artistic creation and the affirmation of the highest human
values, in what the efforts of Mikhalkov have universal importance.
In a cordial and friendly conversation was expressed a high level of
proximity of views about developments in Yugoslavia and in Russia,
Europe
and the world, politics and culture.
The interest of the Yugoslav public and the reception reserved for films
directed by Mikhalkov in Yugoslavia demonstrate the identity of cultural
points of view that exist in the publics of the two countries.
The famous Russian artists expressed admiration for the struggle of the
Yugoslav peoples for their freedom and independence and expressed
sincere
support for their goals.
The reception was attended also by Serbian Minister of Culture Zeljko
Simic, and Jakov Gerasimov, Russian Embassy Charge d'Affaires in
Yugoslavia.
SOSPESO L'EMBARGO SUI VOLI DA E PER LA JUGOSLAVIA
EUROPE - YUGOSLAVIA - SANCTIONS
E.U. SUSPENDS EMBARGO ON AIR LINKS WITH YUGOSLAVIA
BRUSSELS, February 14 (Tanjug) - The E.U. Council decided on Monday to
suspend for six months the ban on air links with Yugoslavia including
international flights by national carrier JAT, Portuguese Foreign
Minister
Jaim Gama said on Monday.
The E.U. Foreign Ministers also agreed to set up temporary military and
political organs of the European Rapid Reaction Force.
Last year in Helsinki it was concluded that the European Corps should
consist of 50,000 - 60,000 troops.
YUGOSLAV AIRLINES JAT READY FOR EUROPEAN FLIGHTS
BELGRADE, February 14 (Tanjug) - Today's decision by European Union
(E.U.)
Ministers to suspend the ban on international air traffic with
Yugoslavia
is merely a realization of their political decision of July last year,
Yugoslav Airlines JAT Director General Zika Petrovic said on Monday.
In a statement to Tanjug, Petrovic said JAT expected the official
announcement of this decision in the E.U. official gazette, which will
precisely define all the conditions of the suspension.
It is still not clear if the sanctions are lifted automatically for all
European countries, or if the E.U. states will each do so individually,
Petrovic said.
Petrovic said JAT was ready immediately to join European international
flights.
BELGRADE AIRPORT COMPLETELY READY
BELGRADE, February 14 (Tanjug) - Belgrade Airport is completely ready to
take on major international traffic, as it has been modernized with a
new
automatic system for passenger registration, airport Director General
Ljubomir Acimovic said on Monday.
Acimovic said Yugoslav Airlines JAT would most probably start flying to
certain European destinations already in the second half of February,
and
that interested European Union airlines should start flying to Belgrade
in
about 10 days. "We expect our national airline will soon fly to Germany,
Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Italy," he said.
The first foreign aircrafts to arrive in Belgrade should be from
Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic, and in March from Italy and
some other European countries, he said.
Acimovic said certain other European airlines would be arriving in
Belgrade as of March 26, when the international flights timetable will
be
ready.
Until March 21 last year, in addition to Aeroflot of Russia, 11 foreign
airlines used Belgrade Airport, he said.
Acimovic said today's decision by European Union Ministers to suspend
the
flights ban on Yugoslavia was an implementation of their decision of
July
19 last year, which had been blocked by political reasons.
CONTRASTI TRA KOUCHNER ED IL GOVERNO FRANCESE
MINISTER CHEVENEMENT CONTRADICTS KOUCHNER
PARIS, February 15 (Tanjug)- French Interior Minister Jean-Pierre
Chevenement on Monday countered the criticism of head of the U.N. Civil
Mission in Kosovo and Metohija Bernard Kouchner that not enough French
policemen have been sent to Serbia's southern province.
"When soldiers are shot at," the sending of more policemen "cannot be a
solution," Chevenment said during a visit to the National Police School
in
Roubaix.
"When our soldiers are being fired at, I am not sure that the sending of
a
number of more policemen, who are more useful here in Roubaix, would be
a
solution," he specified.
Ethnic-Albanian sniper shooters fired at French KFOR troops in the town
of
Kosovska Mitrovica on Sunday, wounding two.
In statements made to the French press of late, Kouchner has criticized
France for having only about 30 policemen, instead of 80, in Kosovo and
Metohija. Minister Chevenement specified that there were 37 French
policemen in the Province, who he said were training the local police.
GRAVE INQUINAMENTO DEL DANUBIO PROVENIENTE DALLA ROMANIA
SERBIA - TISZA RIVER - POLLUTION
BAN ON USE OF WATER, FISH FROM DANUBE RIVER
BELGRADE, February 14 (Tanjug) - Pollution which reached the Danube from
the Tisza peaked at 8 p.m. on February 13, and cyanide was still above
permitted levels along the Danube's left bank in Zemun and Pancevo on
February 14, the Serbian Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water
Resources said on Monday. The Ministry warned all those along the Danube
east of Belgrade not to use its waters. The Ministry banned fishing and
sales of fish in the territory of Serbia, with the exception of products
of
fisheries, the statement said.
Fish died on a smaller scale in Pancevo and Smederevo. Measures have
been
taken to collect and remove the dead fish.
According to the latest results, cyanide content in the Tisza is below
permitted levels, the Ministry statement said.
ROMANIA MINIMIZES POLLUTION OF SOMES AND TISZA
BUCAREST, February 14 (Tanjug) - Romania deployed on Monday near
Djerdap,
at the entrance of the Danube into its territory, teams of experts for
measuring water pollution, because also expected to reach there is a
part
of the cyanide that spilled over from the waste material reservoir of
the
gold mine in Transylvania.
Hungary and Romania plan to demand aid from the European Union to remove
the consequences of the damages caused by the spilling of the poison
into
the river Somes, a tributary of Tisza, that carried the cyanide also
into
the Danube. Besides Romania, also affected by the pollution are Hungary
and
Yugoslavia, through which Tisza flows along some one hundred kilometres
and
then, at Slankamen, into the Danube.
Official Bucarest kept silent for almost two weeks about the incident
that
only last week-end Premier Mugur Isaresku demanded that an investigation
into the causes of the pollution which has acquired the proportions of
an
ecological disaster.
The disaster occurred when, because of melting snow, the reservoir of
the
gold mine in Transylvania near Baia Mare spilled over its banks. Around
100,000 cubic meters of water polluted with cyanide then spilled over
into
the stream Lapos, and then into the river Somes.
The owner of the mine is the company Aurel, which was formed last year
by
the Romanian firm Remin and the Australian company Esmeralda.
The Romanian press ignored the incident, only electronic media carried
reports of foreign news agencies, including the Yugoslav news agency
Tanjug, and showed footage of Hungarian television.
CNN: FROM ROMANIA - ECOLOGICAL DISASTER
NEW YORK, February 14 (Tanjug) - From Romania has originated an
ecological
disaster which has caused unforeseeable consequences for plants and
animals
along the Tisza river (Tisa in Yugoslavia), all the way to the Danube,
said
on Monday the U.S. TV network CNN that gave wide coverage to the tragedy
caused by the spillage of cyanide from the Romanian mine near Baia Mare
in
Transylvania.
CNN has been repeating for several days reports about dead fish in Tisa,
in Yugoslavia, and about the efforts of Yugoslav officials and
ecologists
to stop and cleanse the polluted water.
Carried was the statement of the Serbian Minister for the Protection of
the Environment, Bratislav Blazic, who described the situation as a big
ecological disaster and that Yugoslavia will demand from the
international
court in The Hague to punish the perpetrators who must compensate for
the
damages.
Yugoslav officials are taking measures to destroy the poisoned fish and
also by other measures reduce the consequences, CNN said.
CNN carried also Hungarian statements and assessments that the cyanide
concentration in the Tisa river was the worst ecological disaster since
Chernobil.
U.S. media reports, however, ignore the fact that also responsible for
the
tragedy is an Australian company from Perth - Esmeralda Exploitation
which
is a co-owner of the Romania company from whose waste material spilled
cyanide, used in the process of separating gold from the ore.
The Australian firm claims that its experts are investigating the
pollution of the river into which the poison spilled because of apparent
carelessness and regulation breaches, and that the results of the
investigation will be known next week.
B92 15/2/2000 -------------------------------
DOPO L'ASSASSINIO BULATOVIC, NUOVO MINISTRO E
NUOVO CAPO DI STATO MAGGIORE DELL'ESERCITO
Army chief appointed defence minister
BELGRADE, Tuesday - The head of the Yugoslav Army Headquarters, General
Dragoljub Ojdanic was today appointed Federal Defence Minister, the post
left
vacant after the murder of Pavle Bulatovic earlier this month. The
commander
of the Third Yugoslav Army, Lieutenant General Nebojsa Pavkovic was
appointed
to replace Ojdanic at the helm of the Yugoslav Army.
Military political analyst Ljubodrag Stojadinovic told B292 today that
both
decisions were predictable, adding that Pavkovic had long been seen as a
future army chief because of his enormous popularity and the confidence
placed in him by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Milosevic today met Ojdanic, and senior military commanders to discuss
the
current political situation of the army and its combat readiness.
Federal
Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic and Serbian President Milan Milutinovic
were
also present at the meeting.
YDS 13/2/2000 ----------------------------------
LETTERA DEL GOVERNO JUGOSLAVO ALL'ONU
SULLE CONTINUE VIOLAZIONI DELLA RISOLUZIONE 1244
SERBIAN PROVINCE OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
YUGOSLAV GOVERNMENT LETTER TO THE U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL
REGARDING VIOLATIONS OF RESOLUTION 1244
NEW YORK, February 13 (Tanjug) - The international community is well
aware
that the grave situation in Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province is a
consequence of the failure of the local United Nations mission, since
facts
which indicate this are more than obvious.
Consequently, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has yet again reacted
by
pointing out who is violating Resolution 1244, and how.
The latest government letter to the U.N. Security Council lists
precisely
and with irrefutable arguments all the resolution points which have been
violated most grossly.
The letter was sent by head of the Yugoslav Permanent Mission to the
U.N.,
Ambassador Vladislav Jovanovic, to U.N. Security Council President
Arnoldo
Listre and Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Saturday.
It unequivocally states that leading figures of the U.N. mission are
responsible for the chaos in this southern Serbian province, in
particular
the Secretary-General's High Representative Bernard Kouchner.
Point by point, the letter shows the disastrous steps taken by the
international community which have led into chaos - from failing to meet
its obligation to disarm the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, to the
complete failure to establish a secure environment for all Kosovo
citizens.
"As a result, terrorism in the province has escalated at an
unprecedented
pace, so that the number of terrorist attacks since the arrival of KFOR
and
UNMIK increased 11-fold. 4,249 terrorist attacks, mainly against Serbs
and
other non-Albanians have been committed in the period since June 12,
1999
to date, in which 889 persons have been killed, 784 wounded and 834
abducted," said the letter.
The letter gives details and facts about brutal terrorist attacks in the
latest period when they have launched a new wave of terror.
By turning a blind eye to everything the terrorists did and are doing in
Kosovo and Metohija, the international security and civilian missions
have
not escaped responsibility. On the contrary, such actions have
contributed
to the expulsion of 350,000 Serbs, Montenegrins, Romanies, Muslims,
ethnic
Turks, Goranians, and other non-Albanians from the province.
The letter proceeds to give a long list of mistakes made by Kouchner and
descriptions of his unprecedented actions, showing that the mission head
is
the most responsible for developments in the province.
The series of so-called regulations which he has imposed are aimed at
separating Kosovo and Metohija from the constitutional, legal, economic,
customs, monetary, and banking systems of Yugoslavia and Serbia.
Kouchner
has thus acted contrary to the stand clearly taken by U.N. Security
Council
members - to preserve and respect the sovereignty and territorial
integrity
of Yugoslavia.
By constructing military bases and conducting military exercises in the
sovereign territory of Yugoslavia without the consent of the Yugoslav
government, the KFOR is in flagrant violation of the relevant resolution
and provides support to Kosovo terrorists and separatists, destabilizing
in
that way the entire region, the letter said.
ATTACCATE ABITAZIONI SERBE NEL SETTORE NORD DI MITROVICA
ETHNIC ALBANIANS ATTACKED SERB HOUSES
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, February 12 (Tanjug) - Ethnic Albanian extremists
attacked Serb houses in northern Kosovska Mitrovica during curfew late
on Friday.
Two bombs were thrown at the Milutinovic family home in the Bosnjacka
Mahala district at midnight, and automatic fire riddled their windows.
None
of the occupants were injured in this terrorist attack.
Terrorists also showered the house of Serb Dragi Jovanovic with rocks
and
stones in another district, near the hospital.
Dragica Jerotijevic, a Serb woman, was stoned at 4.30 p.m. Friday in the
Bosnjacka Mahala district, where only four Serb houses remain.
The perpetrators of these terrorist attacks have not been caught, even
though strong forces of the KFOR and UNMIK police have been protecting
the
Bosnjacka Mahala district round the clock, not just during curfew, since
it
was introduced on February 4.
NUOVE MISURE DI SICUREZZA A MITROVICA
NEW SECURITY MEASURES IN KOSOVSKA MITROVICA
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, February 12 (Tanjug) - UNMIK head Bernard Kouchner
has
decided about new security measures in Kosovska Mitrovica which will
take
effect next week.
A statement distributed to Serb reporters late on Saturday said that the
number of international police would be doubled. Three hundred new
policemen will be deployed within the six municipalities of this region,
the statement said.
Most policemen will be stationed in Kosovska Mitrovica itself. The first
100 policemen will arrive next week. They will cooperate closely with
KFOR
troops, the statement said.
The security zone established on both sides of the bridge over the Ibar
River will be expanded. The established checkpoints on both sides and
mobile police teams will be manned by KFOR troops as well - French,
Danish,
German and English.
Among the new measures which should contribute to a calming of the
situation in this town in Kosovo and Metohija province is the
proclamation
of a no-demonstrations zone.
The monitoring and control of the administrative border with Serbia
proper
will also be stepped up, the statement said.
SERBI SOTTO ATTACCO AD OBILIC
ETHNIC ALBANIAN TERRORISTS ATTACKED SERBS IN OBILIC
OBILIC, February 13 (Tanjug) - A Serb-populated district of Obilic was
attacked with automatic firearms late on Friday, but there were no
casualties, radio amateurs reported from this part of Serbia's southern
Kosovo and Metohija province.
The attack went on for 20 minutes, resulting in shattered windows and
riddled walls. International force KFOR troops simply observed the
brutal
attack on the remaining Serbs in this district.
The Obilic KFOR command said it was continuing an intense search for the
perpetrators and that it believed, on the grounds of certain
intelligence,
that the perpetrators are from the territory of Obilic.
VOCI CONTRO L'EMBARGO ALLA RFJ DALLA REPUBBLICA CECA
ANTI-YUGOSLAV SANCTIONS - INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS
TV SHOW PARTICIPANTS CALL FOR LIFTING OF ANTI-YUGOSLAV SANCTIONS
PRAGUE, February 12 (Tanjug) - Participants in a popular Czech TV show,
Kotel (The Cauldron), have urged the soonest possible help for Yugoslav
citizens and the Czech government's contribution to this as a call for
the
lifting of the sanctions against Yugoslavia.
The demand voiced by ruling Social Democrat MP Jaroslav Foldina was
welcomed with loud applause from the audience.
Foldina asked Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kavan, another guest on the
show
of the private TV station Nova, to urge such actions with the
government,
since "it is not democratic to bomb someone, starve them, or make them
freeze to death". Yugoslavia and its citizens need immediate help,
Foldina
said.
SUMMIT BALCANICO A BUCAREST CON L'ESCLUSIONE DELLA RFJ
THE BALKANS - REGIONAL COOPERATION
SOUTHEASTERN EUROPEAN SUMMIT WITHOUT YUGOSLAVIA
BUCHAREST, February 12 (Tanjug) - Government representatives of several
southeastern European countries signed a Charter on good-neighborly
relations, regional stability, security and cooperation in Bucharest on
Saturday, showing open awareness that these plans cannot be realized
without the participation of Yugoslavia.
At the third top-level meeting within the process of cooperation of
southeastern European countries, the Yugoslav flag was displayed at the
conference table, but the chairs for a Yugoslav delegation remained
vacant.
Opening the meeting, Romanian President Emil Constantinescu said
Yugoslav
representatives were absent because of restrictions enforced by the
European Union, practically confirming that he had yielded to the
interests
of extra-regional factors, and accepted interference in what are
exclusive
affairs of the regional countries.
And yet, Constantinescu had to face reality. He said no concrete
structures could be set up in the region without the participation of
the
Serbian people.
Today's one-day meeting was attended by prime ministers Costas Simitis
of
Greece, Ivan Kostov of Bulgaria, Ljupco Georgijevski of Macedonia,
Bulent
Ecevit of Turkey, Ilir Meta of Albania, and the Romanian head of state.
DOPO TRE ANNI LIBERATO IN CECENIA UNO JUGOSLAVO RAPITO A MOSCA
F.R. YUGOSLAVIA - CHECHNYA
RUSSIAN SPECIAL TROOPS LIBERATED A YUGOSLAV HELD CAPTIVE IN CHECHNYA
MOSCOW, February 13 (Tanjug) - Members of Russian special police units
for
fighting organized crime have liberated Yugoslav citizen Stanimir
Petrovic
from captivity in Chechnya, it was announced in Moscow on Sunday.
Petrovic worked in Moscow for the German firm Albana Export Import, and
was abducted together with his boss Rudolph Klaus Schmidt on August 2,
1997. They were intercepted at Slepcoski Airport in Ingushetia by armed
attackers and taken in an unknown direction.
No details about Petrovic's liberation were revealed, but it is known
that
no ransom has been paid and that the action was carried out by special
police units from the northern Caucasus regional administration for
combatting organized crime.
YDS 11/2/2000 -----------------------------------------------
ANCHE DALLA SLOVACCHIA VOCI CONTRARIE ALLA POLITICA CRIMINALE
DELLA NATO NEI CONFRONTI DELLA RF DI JUGOSLAVIA
F.R.YUGOSLAVIA - SLOVAKIA
NATO CONTINUES AGGRESSION IN EFFORT TO BREAK UP YUGOSLAVIA
BRATISLAVA, February. 11 (Tanjug)- Yugoslav ambassador to Slovakia
Veljko
Curcic has set out that, although morally defeated, the NATO countries
which had participated in the March-June, 1999 aggression on Yugoslavia
were still trying to achieve their goal -- to break up Yugoslavia --
through efforts "illegitimately to change the authorities in
Yugoslavia."
"The pressures continue in the period of Yugoslavia's reconstruction
above
all through the imposition of unjust economic and other sanctions. The
unscrupulous pressures are designed to prevent the reconstruction and
development of Yugoslavia, which they have devastated with their rockets
and bombs," ambassador Curcic said in an interview to the Slovak daily
Novy
Den.
When the policy of open aggression failed, aggression continued through
sanctions, blackmail, and the granting of more dollars for continued
efforts to topple the authorities in Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav ambassador
specified.
The Slovak daily said that Serbia's southern province of Kosovo and
Metohija was being ethnically cleansed by ethnic-Albanian terrorists and
separatists under the "patronage" of NATO troops.
It set out that the ethnic cleansing did not imply just the elimination
of
Serbs and their expulsion from the "heart" of Yugoslavia but also the
elimination of any trace of Serbs and Christians in general.
Ambassador Curcic said that the expulsion of Serbs, Montenegrins and
other
non-Albanians from the province, with the tacit consent of the KFOR and
UNMIK, was organized ethnic cleansing.
LA KFOR NON VEDE LA PULIZIA ETNICA IN ATTO NEL KOSMET?
KFOR OVERLOOKS ETHNIC CLEANSING OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
BONN, February. 11 (Tanjug)- The Berlin Junge Welt Friday carried an
article written by British Member of Parliament Alice Mahon, a
Labourite,
in which she said that Yugoslavia had a genuinely multi-ethnic society,
and
a large-scale operation of ethnic cleansing in Serbia's southern
province
of Kosovo and Metohija by ethnic-Albanian terrorists and separatists was
being overlooked by the KFOR international peace force.
Mahon, who chairs the British Parliament's Committee for the Balkans,
visited Kosovo and Metohija last autumn as a member of the so-called
North
Atlantic Assembly, an institution which is to exercise parliamentary
control of NATO.
Mahon said in the article that it did not take her long to realize what
was happening and subsequent reports of the OSCE and international human
rights organizations, including Amnesty International, had confirmed
that
Serbia's southern province was being ethnically cleansed by the KLA
while
the U.N. mission (UNMIK) and the KFOR did not show the slightest
readiness
to take legal action against them.
The British politician said that Serbs, Slavs of Muslim faith
(Goranacs),
Romanies, ethnic Turks and other non-Albanians were victims of daily
harassments, intimidation, abductions and torching.
Mahon cited the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry figures that 350,000 people
have
been forced to leave Kosovo and Metohija since the KFOR deployment in
June
last year.
MANIFESTAZIONE DEI SERBI-KOSOVARI A ZVECAN PRESSO PRISTINA
PROTEST RALLY IN ZVECAN
ZVECAN, February. 11 (Tanjug) - Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija are the
teachers of patriotism and united they can realize their joint goal -
survival and preservation of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia and
Serbia
within its southern province, is the message of several thousand Serbs
gathered at a protest rally on Friday in Zvecan, close to Pristina.
The president of the Serbian National Forum of Zvecan, Dragisa Milovic,
said that Kosovo and Metohija "is a blot in the heart of Europe because
is
it rife with chaos, anarchy, violence, arms trading and white slavery
carried out by the masters (UNMIK head Bernard) Kouchner and (Hashim)
Thaqi."
"We only want to live in peace and in dignity and we demand security for
ourselves and our children, the return of the displaced and of our army
and
police," Milovic stated.
The speakers at the rally, often interrupted by shouts "Long Live
Serbia"
and "Long Live Yugoslavia", called for "all Serbs in these hard times to
form one party."
"We will not allow Kouchner to create another Albanian state based on
the
misfortune of the Serb people, nor will a single Serb enter his and
Thaqi's
government," the protesters said.
Deputy director of the hospital in Kosovska Mitrovica, Dr. Milan
Ivanovic,
stated that "the Serbs would prevent Kouchner from carrying out
experiments
on them 'in vivo', just those performed by Nazi doctor Mengele."
"Kouchner cannot chose a Serb who is convenient for his government
because
we will chose our own representative if the conditions for this arise,"
Ivanovic set out.
ANCHE L'ITALIANO "PANORAMA" RICONOSCE CHE IN KOSOVO COMANDA L'UCK
KLA, NOT KFOR, IS IN COMMAND IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA, ITALIAN PANORAMA
ROME, February. 11 (Tanjug)- The so-called ethnic-Albanian KLA is in
command in Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia's southern province, despite the
presence of the KFOR international forces, the Italian weekly Panorama
said
Friday, commenting the continued violence against the non-Albanian
population in the province.
Citing the OSCE report for December, Panorama said the violence was
organized by militant KLA separatists.
"The doubtful guerrilla movement has been accused also of cooperating
with
the Kosovo and Metohija mafia," the Milan weekly set out.
The Human Rights Watch shares the opinion that orders for the violence
in
Serbia's southern province come from the militant KLA and KLA members
are
the perpetrators of the most brutal crimes there.
"The anti-democratic and violent KLA, which is now unpopular among
Kosovo
and Metohija Albanians, themselves, is stronger than ever before," the
weekly Panorama said.
B92 11/2/2000 ------------------------------
SEMPRE PIU' VICINE LE MANOVRE NATO IN KOSMET
No reaction to NATO "provocation": Yugoslav Army
BELGRADE, Friday - The head of the Third Yugoslav Army, Vladimir
Lazarevic,
said today that the Army would not react to NATO military manoeuvres
planned
for Kosovo next month. Lazarevic, speaking to Belgrade news magazine
NIN,
said that the manoeuvres could represent an attempt by NATO to provoke
the
Yugoslav army.
YDS 10/2/2000 -----------
L'ASSASSINIO DI BULATOVIC
FR YUGOSLAVIA - TRAGIC DEATH OF DEFENCE MINISTER
ZIZIC: MONSTROUS SHOTS FIRED ON BULATOVIC WERE AN ATTACK ON YUGOSLAVIA
PODGORICA, February 9 (Tanjug) - Montenegro's Socialist People's Party
(SNP) held a commemoration meeting late on Wednesday in the presence of
more than 1,000 people following the assassination of Yugoslav Defence
Minister and top SNP official Pavle Bulatovic late on Monday.
The commemoration, held at the Yugoslav Army club, was attended by
Bulatovic's family and relatives as well as top SNP officials including
Momir Bulatovic, Srdja Bozovic, Predrag Bulatovic and Zoran Zizic,
Yugoslav
government ministers, representatives of the Yugoslav Second Army
command,
other party leaders and officials of various organisations and
associations.
Addressing those attending the commemoration, Zizic, SNP Vice-President,
said that the monstrous shots fired on Bulatovic were an attack on the
country, the SNP and the Yugoslav people's unwavering determination to
be
their own masters.
"Animosity towards our people and state and the atmosphere created by
those who spread hatred and divisions, in any case that what is terrible
and fatal for Montenegro, have caused the death of innocent Pavle
Bulatovic," he said.
Bulatovic's sudden and tragic death is a great loss for the SNP but it
also puts a major obligation before the party to continue his commitment
to
brotherly ties between Montenegro and Serbia, he said.
Thousands of people from all over Montenegro paid their last respects to
Bulatovic at the chapel at the Podgorica cemetery on Wednesday.
MONTENEGRIN PRESIDENT OFFERED CONDOLENCES TO MINISTER BULATOVIC'S FAMILY
PODGORICA, February 10 (Tanjug) - President of the Yugoslav republic of
Montenegro Milo Djukanovic on Wednesday offered condolences to the
family
of assassinated Yugoslav Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic, the
Presidential
Cabinet said late on Wednesday.
MINISTER MATIC: MURDER OF BULATOVIC IS PART OF ORGANISED TERRORISM
ORCHESTRATED FROM ABROAD
BELGRADE, February 9 (Tanjug) - Yugoslav Information Minister Goran
Matic
said on Wednesday that the assassination of Yugoslav Defence Minister
Pavle
Bulatovic was a part of the chain of organised terrorism orchestrated
from
abroad, and that the security of state officials in no way differed from
the security of other citizens.
Matic told the Belgrade 'Danas' newspaper that the state would do all
within its power to find murderers in each and every case and that state
authorities would put an end to terrorism and crime that were being used
as
an instrument for destabilising the country.
Matic had stated that a chain of subversive and terrorist actions was
being planned abroad and stimulated from abroad also at a session of the
Yugoslav Left (JUL) Directorate's Information Committee last October.
He had warned that subversive and terrorist actions were being planned
abroad in order to destabilise and destroy the country's political and
economic system.
He had also said that, after all its defeats, Washington's policy was
increasingly nearing actions based on subversive and destructive illegal
activities and military provocations and relying on a real network of
secret agents.
SULLE RELAZIONI TRA RFJ E ROMANIA
F.R. YUGOSLAVIA - ROMANIA
DEVELOPMENT OF COOPERATION BETWEEN YUGOSLAVIA AND ROMANIA
BUCHAREST, February 10 (Tanjug) - An international symposium on the
development and reconstruction of the Romania/Banat-Yugoslavia region
was
held in Timisoara, Romania, on Wednesday.
The symposium was organised by Pro Liberts Co. of Timisoara and
Germany's
Ostimpex of Hanau, one of Europe's biggest manufacturers of gas
installations equipment.
The Yugoslav side was represented by Termoelektro of Belgrade and
Inzenjering Biro of Novi Sad, as well as by designers of gas
installations.
Also attending were 30 or so Romanian businessmen.
Yugoslav businessmen had highly profitable talks with the Ostimpex
representatives, with both sides expressing a willingness to set up a
joint
venture in Timisoara.
==================================================================
NOTA DEL CRJ: Le notizie in lingua straniera sono introdotte da un
nostro titolo in italiano per facilitarne la consultazione.
La nostra selezione di notizie contiene brani da fonti diverse:
YDS - e' la "Yugoslav Daily Survey" del Ministero degli Esteri della
RFJ (cfr. http://www.mfa.gov.yu/ ).
B92 - sono le notizie che provengono dalla mailing list di RadioB2-92,
di orientamento antigovernativo e filo-occidentale:
> freeb92-e is an open mailing list for distribution of news by Radio
> B2-92. News bulletins are updated at 19.00 CET Monday to Friday and
> at 23.00 CET on Saturday and Sunday.
> For more information on FreeB92 and Radio B2-92, visit:
> http://www.freeb92.net/
REUTERS - sono i dispacci della omonima agenzia di informazione
IWPR - e' il bollettino dell'Institute for War & Peace Reporting
<info@...>
> Balkan Crisis Report is supported by the Department for International
> Development, European Commission, Swedish International Development and
> Cooperation Agency, MacArthur Foundation, Press Now and the Carnegie
> Corporation. IWPR also acknowledges general support from the Ford
Foundation.
> *** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net ***
Tanjug - e' l'agenzia di stampa jugoslava: http://www.tanjug.co.yu
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
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