Informazione
IWPR #107, 14/01/2000 -------------------------
ACCUSE DI COLLUSIONE CON IL CRIMINE ORGANIZZATO
PER LA DESTRA DI GOVERNO DELLA MACEDONIA
CRIME AND POLITICS IN MACEDONIA
Opposition politicians and media have intensified accusations of
government
collusion with organised crime in Macedonia following the murder of
three
police officers on routine patrol.
By Zeljko Bajic in Skopje
During a routine patrol January 11, four Macedonian police officers
stopped
three cars in Aracinovo, a mainly ethnic Albanian village. While they
were
checking the first vehicle, the occupants of the other two cars opened
fire
with automatic weapons, killing three of the officers instantly. The
fourth
managed to escape with gunshot wounds.
The police authorities believe the cars were stolen and that the
occupants
were delivering them to Kosovo. The Macedonian media is full of
speculation
that the killers belonged to an Albanian criminal gang. Three ethnic
Albanian suspects have been named as Ibrahim Musa from Aracinovo, Nijazi
N.
from Skopje and Ibrahim N. from Kacanik. The village of Aracinovo has
long
been suspected of housing a roaring trade in smuggled cigarettes,
narcotics,
weapons and cars.
Leading Albanian and Macedonian politicians quickly issued conciliatory
public statements, in light of intensified public fear that the incident
will dramatically worsen the already tense relations between the ethnic
Macedonian and Albanian populations. It is only the latest in a string
of
violent incidents involving the police in which ethnic Albanians have
been
killed.
Arben Xhaferi, leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) and the
dominant force in ethnic Albanian politics, stressed that the killings
should not become a political issue, and that the police should be
allowed
to complete their investigation. This view was re-iterated by Prime
Minister
Ljupco Georgievski, leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary
Organisation-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity
(VMRO-DPMNE),
the leading member of the governing coalition.
Such a common position is notable in Macedonia, especially light of
previous
charges by the DPA that any accusations against Albanians for alleged
mafia
links are motivated by ethnic chauvinism.
The police statement following the incident was also notable.
Previously,
police authorities, which have always been closely tied to the political
interests of the ruling party, have placed blame elsewhere for violent
incidents. The current minister for police, Dosta Dimovska, is a
VMRO-DPMNE
party ideologue, who recently replaced Pavle Trajanov, the only
non-party
official to hold the top police post since Macedonia gained
independence.
Yet in a statement after the incident, the police accepted
responsibility
for the officers' deaths in the bungled raid. Macedonian radio reported
that
there might have been a leak from within the police alerting the
criminals
that a police inspection was imminent.
Nevertheless, politically independent media in Macedonia, such as
Dnevnik
daily, have accused the authorities of creating a party political police
force rather than an independent and professional one.
Other media have seen the Aracinovo case not as a harbinger of worsening
inter-ethnic relations but as proof of a dangerous and growing link
between
crime and politics. The Skopje independent daily Makedonija Denes, which
is
sympathetic to the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, has published a
complex analysis arguing that Macedonia is being increasingly drawn down
criminal paths leading to Kosovo, which it called "a black hole and home
to
the most shady deals in this part of the Balkans".
The paper accused the ruling coalition of controlling the profits and
flow
of money generated by such "shady deals". It alleged that there are
clearly
established rules governing who controls the smuggling of cigarettes,
who
enables narcotics trafficking and who participates in illegal arms
trade.
According to Makedonija Denes, about 70 per cent of illegal trades can
be
ascribed to the DPA, while the rest of the profit go into the pockets of
the
VMRO-DPMNE.
Similar accusations could be heard during the last session of parliament
just before New Year. The opposition Social Democratic Alliance accused
the
ruling coalition of reaching a "gentlemen's-mafia agreement" to prevent
internal, violent feuds. Opposition newspapers such as Start and
Utrinjski
Vesnik claimed that this agreement ensured that where the VMRO-DPMNE
dominated illegal business the DPA would not interfere, and vice-versa.
Opposition parties persistently accuse Georgievski of forming a
coalition
with a party, the DPA, which they allege is financed by the Albanian
mafia.
If it emerges that the mafia is behind the killings of the three police
officers in Aracinovo, such accusations of mafia links could put DPA
leader
Xhaferi in a very tight position. Having smugly declared during the
Kosovo
crisis that it was "keeping the situation under control" - that is,
firmly
monitoring Albanian radicalism and ties to Kosovo - the DPA will have a
difficult time convincing the media and the public that it does not know
what is going on in villages such as Aracinovo now.
Meantime, the lack of an adequate police and judicial system in Kosovo
only
encourages the rising crime rate in Macedonia. Despite the arrival of
KFOR
troops in Kosovo, civilian authority is still not functioning
effectively.
An effective international authority in Kosovo would provide a great
boost
for the Macedonian security services.
As it is, Kosovo remains open for unregulated and illegal business,
while
Macedonia's role as a key organising and transit point for criminal
activity
has grown. Thus, even if the Macedonian police were seriously to take on
the
forces of organised crimes, they are left to their own devices and have
little chance of success.
Zeljko Bajic is a journalist in Skopje.
B92 14/01/2000 ---------------------------
ESTESO IL MANDATO DELLA MISSIONE ONU SULLA
PENISOLA JUGOSLAVA DI PREKLAVA, AL CONFINE
CON LA CROAZIA
Prevlaka mission mandate extended
NEW YORK, Friday - The UN Security Council has extended the mandate of
the UN
monitoring mission on the Prevlaka Peninsula for another six months. The
mission, which monitors the disputed border between Yugoslavia and
Croatia on
the Adriatic Coast will now remain until at least July 15 this year. The
Security Council also called on Croatia and Yugoslavia to urgently
engage in
negotiations to resolve the border dispute.
B92 07/01/2000 ---------------------------
IL MINISTRO DEGLI ESTERI CECO SI CONSIDERA
INNOCENTE PER I CRIMINI DELLA NATO
I don't feel guilty: Czech foreign minister
PRAGUE, Friday - Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kavan told media last night
that
he felt no guilt for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, despite a proposal
by a
group of lawyers to charge 68 world leaders with war crimes over the
intervention. Kavan, who is charged along with Czech President Vaclav
Havel
said that his conscience was clear over all he had done during the
Kosovo
crisis, adding that he did not believe the Hague Tribunal would issue
indictments.
MANCA L'ACQUA IN JUGOSLAVIA
Yugoslavia facing water shortages
BELGRADE, Friday - More than a million people in Yugoslavia could be
without
water in the near future because of water table contamination caused by
NATO
bombing, Serbian Environment Ministry representative Gordana Brun said
today.
Oil released in attacks on storage depots was slowly seeping into the
water
table and could lead to massive contamination, said Brun, adding that
the
danger of contamination was particularly serious in the area of Novi
Sad,
capital of the northern province of Vojvodina.
SCISMA ALL'INCONTRARIO (FILO-VATICANO)
PER LA CHIESA ORTODOSSA MONTENEGRINA
Police ban Montenegrin Church service
PODGORICA, Friday - Police in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica last
night
prevented members of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church from carrying out a
traditional ritual in front of the Court of King Nikola as part of last
night's Orthodox Christmas Eve ceremonies. Police later gave security as
the
reason for the ban, saying that priests and faithful of the majority
Serbian
Orthodox Church were inside the Court Chapel. After failing to persuade
police to allow the ceremony to go ahead, Montenegrin church members
performed the traditional ritual of burning oak branches in front of
police
cordons. Members of the Social Democratic Party, part of the
Montenegro's
governing coalition, attended the ceremony. Party President Zarko
Rakcevic
described the police intervention as a scandal, saying that he would
raise
the matter with the party's central committee.
PROTESTA DEI SERBI IN KOSMET
Serbs protest in Kosovo
PRISTINA, Friday - Angry Serbs from Bresje, near Kosovo Polje, today
threatened to block the main highway between Pristina and Pec. The
villagers
were protesting at an incident last night in which four Albanians gunned
down
local Serb Momcilo Velickovic in the courtyard of his home. Velickovic
was
reported today to be in a critical condition, awaiting transfer to Nis
hospital following surgery in a Russian mobile surgical unit.
Two Serb women were murdered by Albanian extremists in Prizren this
morning,
according to the local Centre for Peace and Tolerance. State media
report
that the two women were killed on their way to Christmas services at a
local
church. They are believed to have been Croatian Serb refugees from
Krajina.
In other incidents in Kosovo, Pristina correspondent Danijel Kovacevic
reports that a 39-year-old Serb woman was killed near Pec, and another
Serb
murdered in Kosovo Polje yesterday. Kovacevic also reports another three
Serbs beaten last night in Lipljane on their way to Christmas Eve
services at
a local church. KFOR reports today that ten people were arrested in
Kosovo
yesterday for illegal possession of weapons.
IL VINCITORE DELLE ELEZIONI CROATE IVICA RACAN
SEGUE LE ORME DEL SUO PREDECESSORE NELLA POLITICA DI
CATTIVO VICINATO CON LE ALTRE REPUBBLICHE EX-FEDERATE
Croatian PM designate against new Balkan federations
ZAGREB, Friday - The man elected to lead Croatia's new government, Ivica
Racan, said today that he would resist the Balkan element in Croatia's
political life. Racan said he would support cooperation and good
relations
with Croatia's neighbours, but was against any new federation of Balkan
countries because Croatia, which was at the same time a Mediterranean,
Middle
European and Balkan state, did not need "that kind of Balkans". The
prime-minister-to-be emphasised that his government was not running away
from
the region but was opposed to any union of a neo-Yugoslav nature.
B92 05/01/2000 --------------------
TRA QUALCHE SETTIMANA IL MONTENEGRO
ABBANDONERA' IL DINARO
Montenegro to drop dinar within weeks
PODGORICA, Wednesday - The Yugoslav dinar will no longer be official
currency
in Montenegro by the end of this month, a member of the Montenegrin
Monetary
Council said today. Dimitrije Vesovic told Podgorica daily "Pobjeda"
that the
withdrawal of the dinar was no longer a political decision but was
dictated
by practice, as there are no longer dinars in circulation in Montenegro
and
the money mass had been reduced to tens of millions of dinars. Vesovic
also
said that draft plans for establishment of the Montenegrin National Bank
were
in preparation and would be tabled in the republic's parliament.
RIPETUTE AZIONI DEI TERRORISTI NATO/UCK
FUORI DAL KOSMET, VERSO LA SERBIA CENTRALE
South Serbia "under attack"
KURSUMLIJA, Wednesday - Villagers from the southern Serbian municipality
of
Kursumlija today announced that they would organise a civil defence
force if
the number of police on the Kosovo border were not increased. Milos
Kujovic,
from the village of Matarovo, told Beta agency that a large group of
Albanians had attacked the village from across the border on December
12.
Kursumlija Municipal President Borivoje Urosevic told media that six
people
from the municipality had been killed in incidents on the Kosovo border,
adding that he had several times warned the Serbian government that
Kursumlija was still at war.
PRESA A BASTONATE ANZIANA SERBA-KOSOVARA
Elderly Serb woman beaten
KOSOVO POLJE - An elderly Serb woman who was beaten by a group of
Albanian
boys in Kosovo Polje did not report the attack to UN police for fear of
reprisals, the local Centre for Peace and Tolerance told media today.
The
centre statement added that a number of attacks, threats and burglaries
in
the area had gone unreported for the same reason.
The head of the United Nations civilian mission in Kosovo, Bernard
Kouchner,
is expected to discuss the security situation in Kosovo this evening
with
Serb leaders at the Gracanica monastery. The agenda will include the
possibility of establishing local self-management of Serb enclaves in
the
province.
YDS 04/01/2000 ----------------------------------
IL MINISTRO PER I PROFUGHI DELLA RFJ: I RIFUGIATI
VERRANNO RIMPATRIATI QUEST'ANNO
MINISTER MORINA: REFUGEES WILL BE REPATRIATED IN 2000
NIS, January 3 (Tanjug) - Yugoslav Minister for Refugee Affairs
expressed
hope on Monday that the political and overall situation in Yugoslavia
and
the region would be stabilised in the year 2000, allowing for the
repatriation of refugees and displaced people.
"I am sure the present dramatic situation in Kosovo and Metohija will
change and the truth and justice prevail, to allow for the return of
around
300,000 displaced people, driven from their ancestral hearths by ethnic
Albanian terrorists and extremists," Minister Bratislava Morina told
TANJUG.
Morina stressed the importance of implementing U.N. Resolution 1244,
which
was being violated precisely by the forces deployed to ensure peace,
security and equality for all ethnic communities in Kosovo and Metohija.
"I expect U.N. civilian mission (UNMIK) chief Bernard Kouchner to be
replaced soon and leave the southern Serbian province, where he has made
chaos and allowed the ethnic Albanian chauvinists to achieve their dream
of
an ethnically pure Kosovo and Metohija," she said.
ODALOVIC: SAREBBE ORA CHE LA COMUNITA' INTERNAZIONALE
FACESSE IL SUO DOVERE IN KOSOVO E METOHIJA
ODALOVIC: INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY MUST DO ITS DUTY IN KOSMET
JAGODINA, January 3 (Tanjug) - A Kosovo and Metohija Serbian assembly
official said on Monday that the international community must in the
year
2000 fully discharge its obligations undertaken in connection with that
U.N.-administered Serbian province.
Veljko Odalovic, who heads the Executive Board of the Serbian National
Assembly for Kosovo and Metohija, was speaking by phone for a local
television station in Jagodina, central Serbia.
Odalovic said the international community must guarantee the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia and Serbia, and make it clear to
ethnic Albanian separatists that they will not be allowed to snatch away
Kosovo and Metohija.
"I hope the international community will realise the madness of its
policy
towards Serbia and Yugoslavia, and especially what is being done in
Kosovo
and Metohija, and that the violence of ethnic Albanian separatists which
has gone on under the wing of the international KFOR force and the U.N.
civilian mission (UNMIK) in the second half of 1999 will stop," he said.
The job the peace mission has done in Kosovo and Metohija so far has
left
the impression that it has been feeding the hope of separatist gangs
that
they can with violence create a state of their own in Kosovo and
Metohija,
according to Odalovic.
Since the U.N. forces' deployment, hundreds of people have been murdered
and abducted, hundreds of thousands have been displaced, tens of
thousands
of homes have been plundered and torched, he said.
This is "the only concrete result achieved by KFOR and UNMIK in Kosovo
and
Metohija," according to Odalovic.
He hoped that "displaced Serbs and other non-Albanians, as well as
displaced ethnic Albanians will this year start back for their homes and
jobs in Kosovo and Metohija, which they have been forced to leave since
mid-June under threat from ethnic Albanian terrorists".
Responsibility for their return should be taken by the U.N. forces which
had been deployed to Kosovo and Metohija with the mandate of providing
security for all living there, he stressed.
DUE MILIONI DI RIFUGIATI IN EUROPA
EUROPE IS FACED WITH TWO MILLION REFUGEES
BELGRADE, January 4 (Tanjug) - Two million refugees and displaced
persons
from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and the Yugoslav republic of Serbia's
Kosovo and Metohija province will spend 2000, the last year of this
century, far from their homes and scattered throughout the states
emerging
from the former Yugoslavia, in the heart of Europe.
Half of the figure are Serb refugees and displaced persons from
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (700,000) and Kosovo and Metohija
(300,000)
who have sought shelter in Yugoslavia which has for years been under the
regime of sanctions imposed by world power-wielders and which was
devastated still further during NATO's 78-day bombing campaign.
Yugoslavia is the only state in Europe where at least 500,000 refugees
have been sheltering at some point or another over the past eight years.
The country was faced with the biggest wave of refugees following the
outbreak of civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992. Between 800,000 and
one million refugees sought shelter in Yugoslavia between early 1992 and
late 1993.
>From that point on, the country has been spending five percent of its
gross domestic product annually to provide refugees with accommodation,
food, clothing, footwear, health care and education.
International humanitarian organisations justified their belated action
by
a media campaign which was aimed at creating the impression that only
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were burdened with refugees and which
ignored those who had sought refuge in Yugoslavia.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the E.U. humanitarian
bureau (ECHO), the World Food Programme and the International Federation
of
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) offered assistance to
refugees
in Yugoslavia as late as late 1993 and 1994. Following a brief lull in
fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993, new clashes between Moslems and
Croats broke out in 1994 but the international community was incapable
of
finding a real solution to stabilise the situation in the former
Yugoslav
republic and the entire region.
Operation Lightning that the Croatian army launched against Western
Slavonia on May 1, 1995, and Operation Storm, launched against Krajina
on
August 5, 1995, triggered another exodus of Serbs, tens of thousands of
them, mainly women, children and the elderly, who were shelled
continually
for seven days while trying to reach safety. Moreover, thousands of
Serbs
were killed during the Croatian army's two military campaigns.
At this point, only several thousand elderly Serbs live in Banija, Lika,
Kordun and northern Dalmatia, while as many as 300,000 Serbs from these
areas have sought shelter in Yugoslavia. More than 2,000 Serbs were
listed
missing during Operation Lightning and Operation Storm.
The exodus of Serbs was not over, however. Peace accords for
Bosnia-Herzegovina signed in Dayton and Paris in 1995 triggered another
wave of refugees from four Sarajevo districts that were given to the
Moslem-Croat federation under the accords.
Fifty thousand Serb refugees sought shelter in Yugoslavia after that,
while about 30,000 Serbs fled Sarajevo for the (Bosnian Serb) Republika
Srpska.
The international community's failure over the years to recognise the
fact
that at least 700,000 refugees and displaced persons are sheltering in
Yugoslavia and its favouring of refugees sheltering in
Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Croatia, prompted Belgrade to request that UNHCR conduct the
registration of refugees sheltering in the country.
The registration, which UNHCR carried out together with the Serbian
Refugee Commissioner in 1996, showed that 617,728 refugees and displaced
persons had regulated their status in Yugoslavia, while another 120,005
persons had applied to be registered as refugees.
Serbs account for nearly 500,000 of the total figure of refugees
sheltering in the country, Croats for 4,000, Moslems for 4,847, those
who
declare themselves as Yugoslavs for 7,900 and others for about 24,000.
The
registration of refugees in Yugoslavia, however, did not lead to bigger
humanitarian assistance. Quite the opposite was the case.
Consequently, in 1996, international humanitarian organisations provided
assistance to only 250,000 refugees in Yugoslavia who were in the most
critical position, including children under 18, people over 65, mothers
with children, chronically-ill and handicapped people and invalids.
According to an analysis by the humanitarian bureau of the Yugoslav Red
Cross, international humanitarian assistance met only the needs of 14.7
percent of the refugees sheltering in Yugoslavia in 1996.
The allegedly peaceful reintegration of Eastern Slavonia into Croatia
and
the end of the U.N. Transitional Administration in Eastern Slavonia
(UNTAES) mission triggered another exodus of about 40,000 Serbs who
sought
shelter in Yugoslavia.
As on previous occasions, world media, however, for the largest part
chose
to disregard this exodus of Serbs.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata said in Brussels in
1997
that it must not be forgotten that Yugoslavia had the highest number of
refugees, declaring 1998 the year of the repatriation of refugees.
Ogata said on that occasion that, under the UNHCR plan, 225,000 refugees
should return to Bosnia-Herzegovina and, of that figure, 20,000 Serbs
and
Croats should return to Sarajevo alone.
This goal was not achieved because both UNHCR and the international
community continued to favour Moslems and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina
and
Croatia, showing much greater understanding for them than for Serbs.
Last year, the hypocrisy and true colours of world power-wielders,
specifically the United States and NATO, were revealed in the most
striking
way. The U.S.-led NATO aggression on Yugoslavia caused more deaths, the
country's destruction and a new exodus of 300,000 Serbs, this time from
Kosovo and Metohija.
In a meeting of the working group for humanitarian affairs of the Peace
Implementation Council in Geneva on December 9, Ogata said that it was
unacceptable that Europe had two million refugees on the eve of the 21st
century.
She said that, in the year 2000, the international community's
imperative
must be to ensure the return of all refugees and displaced persons to
their
homes throughout the former Yugoslavia.
Commenting on humanitarian issues at the end of the century, president
of
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Cornelio Sommaruga
said
that he was shocked by the situation in the field.
Sommaruga said that the critical position of refugees in Europe was the
result of a series of political mistakes and the fiasco of governments
and
their policies as well as religious leaders.
For one million refugees and displaced persons in Yugoslavia the year
2000
will be yet another year of hope that they will return to their homes,
integrate into the Yugoslav society or seek their fortune in third
countries.
B92 03/01/2000 ----------------------
RITROVATO CADAVERE DOPO DUE SETTIMANE
CASA DI SERBI COLPITA DA UNA BOMBA A MANO
News from Kosovo
KOSOVO, Monday - The body of Slavoljub Radunovic who has been missing
since
17th December was found last night by international police near Pec
patriarchate, Beta reports today. One of the priests from the
patriarchate
told AFP news agency that 30-year-old psychiatric patient Radunovic went
missing after leaving the patriarchate for a walk two weeks ago.
Unknown attackers threw a hand grenade at a Serbian house in the village
of
Binca on Saturday night, radio amateurs told Beta today. The grenade
missed
the window and exploded on the terrace. Nobody was injured in the
incident.
ODALOVIC SPERA CHE SI PONGA FINE ALLA VIOLENZA
Odalovic expresses his hopes for an end to the violence in Kosovo
JAGODINA, Monday -- My hope is that the violence against Serbs and other
non
Albanian citizens in Kosovo will come to an end this year, President of
the
Serbian National Parliament of Kosovo, Veljko Odalovic said in an
interview
for TV Palma plus today. Odalovic said that he also hoped that the
international community would come to realise the nonsensical politics
it has
been pursuing regarding Yugoslavia and Kosovo, and that the year 2000
would
be the year when refugees and displaced people would return to there
homes in
Kosovo.
IL DINARO JUGOSLAVO SARA' TOLTO DALLA CIRCOLAZIONE IN MONTENEGRO
Yugoslavian dinar to be taken out of circulation in Montenegro
MONTENEGRO, Monday - The Yugoslavian dinar will be taken out of
circulation
in Montenegro this year, President of the Montenegrin Monetary Council
Bozidar Gazivoda announced today. Gazivoda also said that preparations
for
the establishment of the Montenegrin National Bank are currently
underway as
are preparations for the introduction of the southern republic's own
currency. The replacement of the dinar with a new currency would cost
Montenegro thirty five million German marks.
Commenting on Gazivoda's announcement, Montenegrin President Milo
Djukanovic's advisor Steve Henke said today that Montenegro should avoid
the
establishment of their own national bank since that would involve a
further
burden on the tax payer, one which the population may not be able to
withstand.
YDS 03/01/2000 -----------------------
RITROVATO CADAVERE MUTILATO PRESSO PEC
MUTILATED BODY OF SERB CIVILIAN FOUND IN PEC
PEC, January 3 (Tanjug) - The mutilated body of a Serb civilian, who had
been abducted by ethnic Albanian terrorists on December 17, was found on
Sunday near the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Pec, in the west
of
the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija Province.
The mutilated body of the victim, who had been abducted while doing the
shopping, indicates that he had been tortured before he was murdered,
radio
enthusiasts in Kosovo and Metohija reported.
ANCORA SACCHEGGI NELLE CASE SERBE PRESSO GNJILANE
ETHNIC ALBANIAN TERRORISTS CONTINUE TO PLUNDER SERB HOUSES IN GNJILANE
GNJILANE, January 3 (Tanjug) - Ethnic Albanian terrorists continued to
plunder before and after the New Year houses belonging to Serbs and
other
non-Albanians in Gnjilane, in the east of the Yugoslav Republic of
Serbia's
Kosovo and Metohija Province.
Radio enthusiasts quoted the local church-national board as saying that
ethnic Albanian criminals had stolen the entire furniture from one of
the
Serb houses.
The criminals continued to plunder that house even after troops of the
KFOR had sealed off the street where the house is located, gaining
access
to the house through the yards of ethnic Albanians living in the
neighbourhood.
During the New Year holidays, ethnic Albanian criminals plundered two
other Serb houses in Gnjilane.
Frequent power cuts, lasting even for 20 hours, make it easier for
ethnic
Albanians to plunder houses.
Serb villages near Gnjilane have for days been without power and water.
BOMBA A MANO CONTRO CASA DI SERBI
ETHNIC ALBANIAN TERRORISTS THROW HAND GRENADE AT SERB HOUSE
VITINA, January 3 (Tanjug) - Ethnic Albanian terrorists threw late on
Saturday a hand grenade at a Serb house in the mixedly-populated village
of
Binca at Vitina, in the southeast of the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia's
Kosovo and Metohija Province.
The grenade landed on the balcony of the house so that there were no
casualties, radio enthusiasts reported. The family living in the house
threw themselves on the floor as soon as they heard the grenade hit the
balcony so that shrapnel only shattered the windows.
Troops of the U.N. peacekeeping force KFOR who arrived at the scene only
established that there were no casualties taking no action against local
ethnic Albanian extremists responsible for the incident although their
identity is known to all in the village.
Dissatisfied with KFOR's attitude, Serbs in Vrbovac, the largest Serb
village in the Vitina area, have announced that they will form a Serb
protection corps because they can no longer rely on KFOR to offer them
protection.
FORZE UCK/KFOR IMPEGNATE NELLA INDIMIDAZIONE DEGLI
ESPONENTI DELLA MINORANZA DEI GORANI, IN KOSMET
KOSOVO-METOHIJA ALBANIAN KLA MEMBERS, U.N. POLICE RAID GORANY HOMES
DRAGAS, January 2 (Tanjug) - The ethnic Albanian so-called Kosovo
Liberation army (KLA), supported by U.N. police, raided on Sunday the
home
of a local official in the village of Vraniste outside Dragas in the
south
of U.N.-secured Kosovo-Metohija.
Without a warrant, they confiscated the hunting guns of Gora
Municipality
Secretary Mejdin Selmani, for which he holds a valid permit, a computer
with important files and other classified municipal documents, the
ethnic
Gorany Council said.
This is not the first time that U.N. forces in the Yugoslav Republic of
Serbia's Kosovo-Metohija Province have behaved arrogantly and violently
in
Vraniste, the Gorany Council said.
KLA troopers, escorted by U.N. police, daily raid Gorany homes, seeking
weapons which Goranies have, as agreed, turned
B92 02/01/2000 --------------------------------
BOMBA A MANO CONTRO LA CASA DI UNA FAMIGLIA ROM
A hand grenade was thrown at a Romanie house in Pec
KOSOVO, Sunday - A hand grenade was thrown at a Romanie house injuring
one
person and four Serb houses were burned to the ground in Pec yesterday
morning, KFOR stated today. Both incidents are under investigation.
Serbs from Gorazdevac blocked the road to Pec last night in protest at
an
attack on one Serb woman and her daughter which took place yesterday
afternoon. The woman and her daughter were shot at from a passing car.
Fortunately they were not injured in the incident.
ALAIN RICHARD PASSA IN RASSEGNA LE TRUPPE IN KOSMET
French Defense Minister arrives in Kosovo
KOSOVO, Sunday - French Defense Minister Alain Richard arrived in Kosovo
this
morning to visit French KFOR forces in the province. On arrival, Richard
went
straight to French KFOR headquarters in Pristina where he is due to meet
Head
of the UN Mission in Kosovo Bernard Kouchner and KFOR Commander Klaus
Reinhardt. During his stay in Kosovo, Richard plans to visit one Serb
and two
Albanian villages in the northern part of the province as well as the
town of
Kosovska Mitrovica where he is scheduled to meet with the Commander of
French
forces General Henri Payesa.
KOUCHNER: "IN KOSOVO SI INVESTE TROPPO POCO!"
Kouchner dissatisfied with lack of investment in Kosovo
KOSOVO, Sunday - Lack of funding has resulted in the postponing of
elections
in Kosovo, Head of the UN Mission Bernard Kouchner said today in his
first
interview of the New Year. Kouchner expressed his dissatisfaction with
the
current lack of money being invested in the province saying that UN
members
and European countries in particular should invest more money in Kosovo.
RILASCIATA LA SPIA DELLA ORGANIZZAZIONE "CARE"
Humanitarian worker Branko Jelen released from prison
ATLANTA, Sunday - The Yugoslav Government released CARE humanitarian
worker
Branko Jelen from prison on Friday. Branko Jelen was arrested for spying
during the NATO bombing campaign on Yugoslavia along with two Australian
activists Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace. Wallace and Pratt were given a
pardon by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic three months ago.
President
of CARE Peter Bell expressed his gratitude at Jelen's release at the
same
time emphasising that none of the three who were arrested had ever been
spies.
IL PATRIARCA PAVLE IN TERRA SANTA
Patriarch Pavle leaves for the Holy Land
BELGRADE, Sunday -- Serbian Patriarch Pavle today left for the Holy Land
where he will take part in celebrating 2000 years of Christianity along
with
the heads of all Orthodox Churches, reports Beta. Mass will be said on
Orthodox Christmas day 7th January in Bethlehem. Prime Ministers and
Presidents of all Orthodox countries are expected to attend the
celebrations.
VUJANOVIC: SE IL REGIME NON CAMBIA SPACCHIAMO IL PAESE
Vujanovic: Democratic changes in Serbia will decide the future of the
FRY
MONTENEGRO, Sunday - Democratic changes in Serbia will decide the future
of
the FRY, said Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic in his
interview for
the BBC today. Vujanovic said that Montenegro would wait for the
eventual
formation of a new democratic Serbia to solve the current dispute
between
Montenegro and Serbia.
B92 31/12/1999 -------------------------------------
MILOSEVIC: SUL MONTENEGRO DECIDERANNO I MONTENEGRINI
Milosevic: Montenegro has the right to choose
BELGRADE, Friday - The people of Montenegro have the right to choose
life
outside Yugoslavia if they believe they will be better off, FRY
President
Slobodan Milosevic said in his interview for Belgrade daily Politika
today.
Milosevic also said that nobody could take Kosovo from Yugoslavia and
that
the presence of UN security forces in the province is only temporary and
must
be endured with great patience.
In an interview for B2 92 today, President of the Montenegrin People's
Party
Novak Kilibarda said that he paid no heed to Milosevic's statement
concerning
Montenegro and that if Milosevic was serious, he should distance himself
from
Seselj's fascistic statements regarding the southern republic.
VENTI CASE INCENDIATE IN UN REMOTO VILLAGGIO DEL KOSMET
ALTRE DUE PERSONE TROVATE CADAVERI
Twenty houses burned to the ground in remote village in Kosovo
KOSOVO, Friday - In a remote village under the control of the multi
national
brigade East, twenty houses were burnt to the ground last night, KFOR
announced today. KFOR representatives said that the fire brigade was
unable
to reach the village due to the poor state of the roads in the area.
Two male bodies were found in Trestenik and a further two in Srbica last
night. The bodies have not yet been identified.
DJUKANOVIC: IL MONTENEGRO CONTINUERA' SULLA STRADA DELLA
SVENDITA ALL'IMPERIALISMO OCCIDENTALE
Djukanovic: Montenegro will continue its progress towards
democratisation
MONTENEGRO, Friday - Montenegro will persevere in its aim to develop
democratic institutions, a free market, cooperation with neighbouring
countries and its progress towards European and transatlantic
integration,
Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said in his New Year address on
Montenegrin state television today. Djukanovic said that 1999 had
brought
many problems and difficulties and the self-destructive policies of the
Federal Government had lead Montenegro to the edge of war.
AFP 31/12/1999 -------------
MILOSEVIC ACCUSA L'OCCIDENTE
RFY: Milosevic dénonce la "culpabilité" de l'Occident envers la
Yougoslavie
BELGRADE (AFP) - Ven 31 Déc 99 - 8h33 heure de Paris - Le président
yougoslave Slobodan Milosevic a estimé que l'Occident devait tôt ou
tard reconnaître "sa culpabilité" envers la Yougoslavie, jugeant par
ailleurs que "le nouveau siècle sera plus juste et meilleur".
"L'Occident doit avoir le courage et la force morale d'affronter sa
culpabilité pour les crimes commis lors de l'agression contre la
Yougoslavie", a-t-il déclaré, parlant de la guerre aérienne
menée au début de cette année par l'OTAN dans une interview,
publiée vendredi par le quotidien Politika. "Plus il attendra, plus la
honte sera grande", a ajouté le président yougoslave.
L'opération aérienne de l'OTAN, déclenchée le 24 mars pour le
contraindre à accepter un accord sur le Kosovo et pour mettre fin aux
exactions des forces de Belgrade contre la population albanaise dans la
province, a fait plusieurs milliers de morts et a ravagé
l'infrastructure de la Yougoslavie.
"Au milieu de ce siècle, le fascisme a dû rendre des comptes devant
l'humanité. Je crois que ce monstre néofasciste n'échappera pas au
jugement de son époque, de l'humanité, de l'histoire contemporaine",
a dit M. Milosevic, parlant de l'OTAN.
Quant au 21ème siècle, le président yougoslave estime qu'il sera
"plus juste et meilleur" que le précédent. "Je crois que la tendance
positive qui s'est exprimée au 20ème siècle l'emportera sur la
tendance destructive qui s'est manifestée à un haut degré, surtout
à la fin de ce siècle", a déclaré M. Milosevic.
Bien sûr, "le danger de guerre est présent dans chaque partie de la
planète", et "la peur d'une guerre mondiale est présente à juste
titre parmi la population du globe", a-t-il observé, néanmoins,
continue-t-il, "je suis convaincu que le nouveau siècle sera plus
juste et meilleur".
Interrogé sur ses voeux pour l'an 2000 aux citoyens de la Yougoslavie
qui ont connu en 1999 le conflit entre les Albanais du Kosovo et les
forces de Belgrade, les sanctions occidentales et les bombardements de
l'OTAN, M. Milosevic a répondu: "Je souhaite la paix à notre pays".
"Qu'il se développe librement, rapidement, de manière moderne et
avec succès. Je lui souhaite de coopérer avec le monde entier, de
manière équitable et mutuellement profitable", a-t-il poursuivi. "Je
crois que notre peuple obtiendra au cours du prochain siècle la
tranquillité et le bien-être qu'il a mérités", a-t-il conclu.
© 1999 AFP
==================================================================
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/
AFP - e' l'agenzia di stampa francese France Presse.
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 ***
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
------------------------------------------------------------
ACCUSE DI COLLUSIONE CON IL CRIMINE ORGANIZZATO
PER LA DESTRA DI GOVERNO DELLA MACEDONIA
CRIME AND POLITICS IN MACEDONIA
Opposition politicians and media have intensified accusations of
government
collusion with organised crime in Macedonia following the murder of
three
police officers on routine patrol.
By Zeljko Bajic in Skopje
During a routine patrol January 11, four Macedonian police officers
stopped
three cars in Aracinovo, a mainly ethnic Albanian village. While they
were
checking the first vehicle, the occupants of the other two cars opened
fire
with automatic weapons, killing three of the officers instantly. The
fourth
managed to escape with gunshot wounds.
The police authorities believe the cars were stolen and that the
occupants
were delivering them to Kosovo. The Macedonian media is full of
speculation
that the killers belonged to an Albanian criminal gang. Three ethnic
Albanian suspects have been named as Ibrahim Musa from Aracinovo, Nijazi
N.
from Skopje and Ibrahim N. from Kacanik. The village of Aracinovo has
long
been suspected of housing a roaring trade in smuggled cigarettes,
narcotics,
weapons and cars.
Leading Albanian and Macedonian politicians quickly issued conciliatory
public statements, in light of intensified public fear that the incident
will dramatically worsen the already tense relations between the ethnic
Macedonian and Albanian populations. It is only the latest in a string
of
violent incidents involving the police in which ethnic Albanians have
been
killed.
Arben Xhaferi, leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) and the
dominant force in ethnic Albanian politics, stressed that the killings
should not become a political issue, and that the police should be
allowed
to complete their investigation. This view was re-iterated by Prime
Minister
Ljupco Georgievski, leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary
Organisation-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity
(VMRO-DPMNE),
the leading member of the governing coalition.
Such a common position is notable in Macedonia, especially light of
previous
charges by the DPA that any accusations against Albanians for alleged
mafia
links are motivated by ethnic chauvinism.
The police statement following the incident was also notable.
Previously,
police authorities, which have always been closely tied to the political
interests of the ruling party, have placed blame elsewhere for violent
incidents. The current minister for police, Dosta Dimovska, is a
VMRO-DPMNE
party ideologue, who recently replaced Pavle Trajanov, the only
non-party
official to hold the top police post since Macedonia gained
independence.
Yet in a statement after the incident, the police accepted
responsibility
for the officers' deaths in the bungled raid. Macedonian radio reported
that
there might have been a leak from within the police alerting the
criminals
that a police inspection was imminent.
Nevertheless, politically independent media in Macedonia, such as
Dnevnik
daily, have accused the authorities of creating a party political police
force rather than an independent and professional one.
Other media have seen the Aracinovo case not as a harbinger of worsening
inter-ethnic relations but as proof of a dangerous and growing link
between
crime and politics. The Skopje independent daily Makedonija Denes, which
is
sympathetic to the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, has published a
complex analysis arguing that Macedonia is being increasingly drawn down
criminal paths leading to Kosovo, which it called "a black hole and home
to
the most shady deals in this part of the Balkans".
The paper accused the ruling coalition of controlling the profits and
flow
of money generated by such "shady deals". It alleged that there are
clearly
established rules governing who controls the smuggling of cigarettes,
who
enables narcotics trafficking and who participates in illegal arms
trade.
According to Makedonija Denes, about 70 per cent of illegal trades can
be
ascribed to the DPA, while the rest of the profit go into the pockets of
the
VMRO-DPMNE.
Similar accusations could be heard during the last session of parliament
just before New Year. The opposition Social Democratic Alliance accused
the
ruling coalition of reaching a "gentlemen's-mafia agreement" to prevent
internal, violent feuds. Opposition newspapers such as Start and
Utrinjski
Vesnik claimed that this agreement ensured that where the VMRO-DPMNE
dominated illegal business the DPA would not interfere, and vice-versa.
Opposition parties persistently accuse Georgievski of forming a
coalition
with a party, the DPA, which they allege is financed by the Albanian
mafia.
If it emerges that the mafia is behind the killings of the three police
officers in Aracinovo, such accusations of mafia links could put DPA
leader
Xhaferi in a very tight position. Having smugly declared during the
Kosovo
crisis that it was "keeping the situation under control" - that is,
firmly
monitoring Albanian radicalism and ties to Kosovo - the DPA will have a
difficult time convincing the media and the public that it does not know
what is going on in villages such as Aracinovo now.
Meantime, the lack of an adequate police and judicial system in Kosovo
only
encourages the rising crime rate in Macedonia. Despite the arrival of
KFOR
troops in Kosovo, civilian authority is still not functioning
effectively.
An effective international authority in Kosovo would provide a great
boost
for the Macedonian security services.
As it is, Kosovo remains open for unregulated and illegal business,
while
Macedonia's role as a key organising and transit point for criminal
activity
has grown. Thus, even if the Macedonian police were seriously to take on
the
forces of organised crimes, they are left to their own devices and have
little chance of success.
Zeljko Bajic is a journalist in Skopje.
B92 14/01/2000 ---------------------------
ESTESO IL MANDATO DELLA MISSIONE ONU SULLA
PENISOLA JUGOSLAVA DI PREKLAVA, AL CONFINE
CON LA CROAZIA
Prevlaka mission mandate extended
NEW YORK, Friday - The UN Security Council has extended the mandate of
the UN
monitoring mission on the Prevlaka Peninsula for another six months. The
mission, which monitors the disputed border between Yugoslavia and
Croatia on
the Adriatic Coast will now remain until at least July 15 this year. The
Security Council also called on Croatia and Yugoslavia to urgently
engage in
negotiations to resolve the border dispute.
B92 07/01/2000 ---------------------------
IL MINISTRO DEGLI ESTERI CECO SI CONSIDERA
INNOCENTE PER I CRIMINI DELLA NATO
I don't feel guilty: Czech foreign minister
PRAGUE, Friday - Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kavan told media last night
that
he felt no guilt for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, despite a proposal
by a
group of lawyers to charge 68 world leaders with war crimes over the
intervention. Kavan, who is charged along with Czech President Vaclav
Havel
said that his conscience was clear over all he had done during the
Kosovo
crisis, adding that he did not believe the Hague Tribunal would issue
indictments.
MANCA L'ACQUA IN JUGOSLAVIA
Yugoslavia facing water shortages
BELGRADE, Friday - More than a million people in Yugoslavia could be
without
water in the near future because of water table contamination caused by
NATO
bombing, Serbian Environment Ministry representative Gordana Brun said
today.
Oil released in attacks on storage depots was slowly seeping into the
water
table and could lead to massive contamination, said Brun, adding that
the
danger of contamination was particularly serious in the area of Novi
Sad,
capital of the northern province of Vojvodina.
SCISMA ALL'INCONTRARIO (FILO-VATICANO)
PER LA CHIESA ORTODOSSA MONTENEGRINA
Police ban Montenegrin Church service
PODGORICA, Friday - Police in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica last
night
prevented members of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church from carrying out a
traditional ritual in front of the Court of King Nikola as part of last
night's Orthodox Christmas Eve ceremonies. Police later gave security as
the
reason for the ban, saying that priests and faithful of the majority
Serbian
Orthodox Church were inside the Court Chapel. After failing to persuade
police to allow the ceremony to go ahead, Montenegrin church members
performed the traditional ritual of burning oak branches in front of
police
cordons. Members of the Social Democratic Party, part of the
Montenegro's
governing coalition, attended the ceremony. Party President Zarko
Rakcevic
described the police intervention as a scandal, saying that he would
raise
the matter with the party's central committee.
PROTESTA DEI SERBI IN KOSMET
Serbs protest in Kosovo
PRISTINA, Friday - Angry Serbs from Bresje, near Kosovo Polje, today
threatened to block the main highway between Pristina and Pec. The
villagers
were protesting at an incident last night in which four Albanians gunned
down
local Serb Momcilo Velickovic in the courtyard of his home. Velickovic
was
reported today to be in a critical condition, awaiting transfer to Nis
hospital following surgery in a Russian mobile surgical unit.
Two Serb women were murdered by Albanian extremists in Prizren this
morning,
according to the local Centre for Peace and Tolerance. State media
report
that the two women were killed on their way to Christmas services at a
local
church. They are believed to have been Croatian Serb refugees from
Krajina.
In other incidents in Kosovo, Pristina correspondent Danijel Kovacevic
reports that a 39-year-old Serb woman was killed near Pec, and another
Serb
murdered in Kosovo Polje yesterday. Kovacevic also reports another three
Serbs beaten last night in Lipljane on their way to Christmas Eve
services at
a local church. KFOR reports today that ten people were arrested in
Kosovo
yesterday for illegal possession of weapons.
IL VINCITORE DELLE ELEZIONI CROATE IVICA RACAN
SEGUE LE ORME DEL SUO PREDECESSORE NELLA POLITICA DI
CATTIVO VICINATO CON LE ALTRE REPUBBLICHE EX-FEDERATE
Croatian PM designate against new Balkan federations
ZAGREB, Friday - The man elected to lead Croatia's new government, Ivica
Racan, said today that he would resist the Balkan element in Croatia's
political life. Racan said he would support cooperation and good
relations
with Croatia's neighbours, but was against any new federation of Balkan
countries because Croatia, which was at the same time a Mediterranean,
Middle
European and Balkan state, did not need "that kind of Balkans". The
prime-minister-to-be emphasised that his government was not running away
from
the region but was opposed to any union of a neo-Yugoslav nature.
B92 05/01/2000 --------------------
TRA QUALCHE SETTIMANA IL MONTENEGRO
ABBANDONERA' IL DINARO
Montenegro to drop dinar within weeks
PODGORICA, Wednesday - The Yugoslav dinar will no longer be official
currency
in Montenegro by the end of this month, a member of the Montenegrin
Monetary
Council said today. Dimitrije Vesovic told Podgorica daily "Pobjeda"
that the
withdrawal of the dinar was no longer a political decision but was
dictated
by practice, as there are no longer dinars in circulation in Montenegro
and
the money mass had been reduced to tens of millions of dinars. Vesovic
also
said that draft plans for establishment of the Montenegrin National Bank
were
in preparation and would be tabled in the republic's parliament.
RIPETUTE AZIONI DEI TERRORISTI NATO/UCK
FUORI DAL KOSMET, VERSO LA SERBIA CENTRALE
South Serbia "under attack"
KURSUMLIJA, Wednesday - Villagers from the southern Serbian municipality
of
Kursumlija today announced that they would organise a civil defence
force if
the number of police on the Kosovo border were not increased. Milos
Kujovic,
from the village of Matarovo, told Beta agency that a large group of
Albanians had attacked the village from across the border on December
12.
Kursumlija Municipal President Borivoje Urosevic told media that six
people
from the municipality had been killed in incidents on the Kosovo border,
adding that he had several times warned the Serbian government that
Kursumlija was still at war.
PRESA A BASTONATE ANZIANA SERBA-KOSOVARA
Elderly Serb woman beaten
KOSOVO POLJE - An elderly Serb woman who was beaten by a group of
Albanian
boys in Kosovo Polje did not report the attack to UN police for fear of
reprisals, the local Centre for Peace and Tolerance told media today.
The
centre statement added that a number of attacks, threats and burglaries
in
the area had gone unreported for the same reason.
The head of the United Nations civilian mission in Kosovo, Bernard
Kouchner,
is expected to discuss the security situation in Kosovo this evening
with
Serb leaders at the Gracanica monastery. The agenda will include the
possibility of establishing local self-management of Serb enclaves in
the
province.
YDS 04/01/2000 ----------------------------------
IL MINISTRO PER I PROFUGHI DELLA RFJ: I RIFUGIATI
VERRANNO RIMPATRIATI QUEST'ANNO
MINISTER MORINA: REFUGEES WILL BE REPATRIATED IN 2000
NIS, January 3 (Tanjug) - Yugoslav Minister for Refugee Affairs
expressed
hope on Monday that the political and overall situation in Yugoslavia
and
the region would be stabilised in the year 2000, allowing for the
repatriation of refugees and displaced people.
"I am sure the present dramatic situation in Kosovo and Metohija will
change and the truth and justice prevail, to allow for the return of
around
300,000 displaced people, driven from their ancestral hearths by ethnic
Albanian terrorists and extremists," Minister Bratislava Morina told
TANJUG.
Morina stressed the importance of implementing U.N. Resolution 1244,
which
was being violated precisely by the forces deployed to ensure peace,
security and equality for all ethnic communities in Kosovo and Metohija.
"I expect U.N. civilian mission (UNMIK) chief Bernard Kouchner to be
replaced soon and leave the southern Serbian province, where he has made
chaos and allowed the ethnic Albanian chauvinists to achieve their dream
of
an ethnically pure Kosovo and Metohija," she said.
ODALOVIC: SAREBBE ORA CHE LA COMUNITA' INTERNAZIONALE
FACESSE IL SUO DOVERE IN KOSOVO E METOHIJA
ODALOVIC: INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY MUST DO ITS DUTY IN KOSMET
JAGODINA, January 3 (Tanjug) - A Kosovo and Metohija Serbian assembly
official said on Monday that the international community must in the
year
2000 fully discharge its obligations undertaken in connection with that
U.N.-administered Serbian province.
Veljko Odalovic, who heads the Executive Board of the Serbian National
Assembly for Kosovo and Metohija, was speaking by phone for a local
television station in Jagodina, central Serbia.
Odalovic said the international community must guarantee the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia and Serbia, and make it clear to
ethnic Albanian separatists that they will not be allowed to snatch away
Kosovo and Metohija.
"I hope the international community will realise the madness of its
policy
towards Serbia and Yugoslavia, and especially what is being done in
Kosovo
and Metohija, and that the violence of ethnic Albanian separatists which
has gone on under the wing of the international KFOR force and the U.N.
civilian mission (UNMIK) in the second half of 1999 will stop," he said.
The job the peace mission has done in Kosovo and Metohija so far has
left
the impression that it has been feeding the hope of separatist gangs
that
they can with violence create a state of their own in Kosovo and
Metohija,
according to Odalovic.
Since the U.N. forces' deployment, hundreds of people have been murdered
and abducted, hundreds of thousands have been displaced, tens of
thousands
of homes have been plundered and torched, he said.
This is "the only concrete result achieved by KFOR and UNMIK in Kosovo
and
Metohija," according to Odalovic.
He hoped that "displaced Serbs and other non-Albanians, as well as
displaced ethnic Albanians will this year start back for their homes and
jobs in Kosovo and Metohija, which they have been forced to leave since
mid-June under threat from ethnic Albanian terrorists".
Responsibility for their return should be taken by the U.N. forces which
had been deployed to Kosovo and Metohija with the mandate of providing
security for all living there, he stressed.
DUE MILIONI DI RIFUGIATI IN EUROPA
EUROPE IS FACED WITH TWO MILLION REFUGEES
BELGRADE, January 4 (Tanjug) - Two million refugees and displaced
persons
from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and the Yugoslav republic of Serbia's
Kosovo and Metohija province will spend 2000, the last year of this
century, far from their homes and scattered throughout the states
emerging
from the former Yugoslavia, in the heart of Europe.
Half of the figure are Serb refugees and displaced persons from
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (700,000) and Kosovo and Metohija
(300,000)
who have sought shelter in Yugoslavia which has for years been under the
regime of sanctions imposed by world power-wielders and which was
devastated still further during NATO's 78-day bombing campaign.
Yugoslavia is the only state in Europe where at least 500,000 refugees
have been sheltering at some point or another over the past eight years.
The country was faced with the biggest wave of refugees following the
outbreak of civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992. Between 800,000 and
one million refugees sought shelter in Yugoslavia between early 1992 and
late 1993.
>From that point on, the country has been spending five percent of its
gross domestic product annually to provide refugees with accommodation,
food, clothing, footwear, health care and education.
International humanitarian organisations justified their belated action
by
a media campaign which was aimed at creating the impression that only
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were burdened with refugees and which
ignored those who had sought refuge in Yugoslavia.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the E.U. humanitarian
bureau (ECHO), the World Food Programme and the International Federation
of
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) offered assistance to
refugees
in Yugoslavia as late as late 1993 and 1994. Following a brief lull in
fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993, new clashes between Moslems and
Croats broke out in 1994 but the international community was incapable
of
finding a real solution to stabilise the situation in the former
Yugoslav
republic and the entire region.
Operation Lightning that the Croatian army launched against Western
Slavonia on May 1, 1995, and Operation Storm, launched against Krajina
on
August 5, 1995, triggered another exodus of Serbs, tens of thousands of
them, mainly women, children and the elderly, who were shelled
continually
for seven days while trying to reach safety. Moreover, thousands of
Serbs
were killed during the Croatian army's two military campaigns.
At this point, only several thousand elderly Serbs live in Banija, Lika,
Kordun and northern Dalmatia, while as many as 300,000 Serbs from these
areas have sought shelter in Yugoslavia. More than 2,000 Serbs were
listed
missing during Operation Lightning and Operation Storm.
The exodus of Serbs was not over, however. Peace accords for
Bosnia-Herzegovina signed in Dayton and Paris in 1995 triggered another
wave of refugees from four Sarajevo districts that were given to the
Moslem-Croat federation under the accords.
Fifty thousand Serb refugees sought shelter in Yugoslavia after that,
while about 30,000 Serbs fled Sarajevo for the (Bosnian Serb) Republika
Srpska.
The international community's failure over the years to recognise the
fact
that at least 700,000 refugees and displaced persons are sheltering in
Yugoslavia and its favouring of refugees sheltering in
Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Croatia, prompted Belgrade to request that UNHCR conduct the
registration of refugees sheltering in the country.
The registration, which UNHCR carried out together with the Serbian
Refugee Commissioner in 1996, showed that 617,728 refugees and displaced
persons had regulated their status in Yugoslavia, while another 120,005
persons had applied to be registered as refugees.
Serbs account for nearly 500,000 of the total figure of refugees
sheltering in the country, Croats for 4,000, Moslems for 4,847, those
who
declare themselves as Yugoslavs for 7,900 and others for about 24,000.
The
registration of refugees in Yugoslavia, however, did not lead to bigger
humanitarian assistance. Quite the opposite was the case.
Consequently, in 1996, international humanitarian organisations provided
assistance to only 250,000 refugees in Yugoslavia who were in the most
critical position, including children under 18, people over 65, mothers
with children, chronically-ill and handicapped people and invalids.
According to an analysis by the humanitarian bureau of the Yugoslav Red
Cross, international humanitarian assistance met only the needs of 14.7
percent of the refugees sheltering in Yugoslavia in 1996.
The allegedly peaceful reintegration of Eastern Slavonia into Croatia
and
the end of the U.N. Transitional Administration in Eastern Slavonia
(UNTAES) mission triggered another exodus of about 40,000 Serbs who
sought
shelter in Yugoslavia.
As on previous occasions, world media, however, for the largest part
chose
to disregard this exodus of Serbs.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata said in Brussels in
1997
that it must not be forgotten that Yugoslavia had the highest number of
refugees, declaring 1998 the year of the repatriation of refugees.
Ogata said on that occasion that, under the UNHCR plan, 225,000 refugees
should return to Bosnia-Herzegovina and, of that figure, 20,000 Serbs
and
Croats should return to Sarajevo alone.
This goal was not achieved because both UNHCR and the international
community continued to favour Moslems and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina
and
Croatia, showing much greater understanding for them than for Serbs.
Last year, the hypocrisy and true colours of world power-wielders,
specifically the United States and NATO, were revealed in the most
striking
way. The U.S.-led NATO aggression on Yugoslavia caused more deaths, the
country's destruction and a new exodus of 300,000 Serbs, this time from
Kosovo and Metohija.
In a meeting of the working group for humanitarian affairs of the Peace
Implementation Council in Geneva on December 9, Ogata said that it was
unacceptable that Europe had two million refugees on the eve of the 21st
century.
She said that, in the year 2000, the international community's
imperative
must be to ensure the return of all refugees and displaced persons to
their
homes throughout the former Yugoslavia.
Commenting on humanitarian issues at the end of the century, president
of
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Cornelio Sommaruga
said
that he was shocked by the situation in the field.
Sommaruga said that the critical position of refugees in Europe was the
result of a series of political mistakes and the fiasco of governments
and
their policies as well as religious leaders.
For one million refugees and displaced persons in Yugoslavia the year
2000
will be yet another year of hope that they will return to their homes,
integrate into the Yugoslav society or seek their fortune in third
countries.
B92 03/01/2000 ----------------------
RITROVATO CADAVERE DOPO DUE SETTIMANE
CASA DI SERBI COLPITA DA UNA BOMBA A MANO
News from Kosovo
KOSOVO, Monday - The body of Slavoljub Radunovic who has been missing
since
17th December was found last night by international police near Pec
patriarchate, Beta reports today. One of the priests from the
patriarchate
told AFP news agency that 30-year-old psychiatric patient Radunovic went
missing after leaving the patriarchate for a walk two weeks ago.
Unknown attackers threw a hand grenade at a Serbian house in the village
of
Binca on Saturday night, radio amateurs told Beta today. The grenade
missed
the window and exploded on the terrace. Nobody was injured in the
incident.
ODALOVIC SPERA CHE SI PONGA FINE ALLA VIOLENZA
Odalovic expresses his hopes for an end to the violence in Kosovo
JAGODINA, Monday -- My hope is that the violence against Serbs and other
non
Albanian citizens in Kosovo will come to an end this year, President of
the
Serbian National Parliament of Kosovo, Veljko Odalovic said in an
interview
for TV Palma plus today. Odalovic said that he also hoped that the
international community would come to realise the nonsensical politics
it has
been pursuing regarding Yugoslavia and Kosovo, and that the year 2000
would
be the year when refugees and displaced people would return to there
homes in
Kosovo.
IL DINARO JUGOSLAVO SARA' TOLTO DALLA CIRCOLAZIONE IN MONTENEGRO
Yugoslavian dinar to be taken out of circulation in Montenegro
MONTENEGRO, Monday - The Yugoslavian dinar will be taken out of
circulation
in Montenegro this year, President of the Montenegrin Monetary Council
Bozidar Gazivoda announced today. Gazivoda also said that preparations
for
the establishment of the Montenegrin National Bank are currently
underway as
are preparations for the introduction of the southern republic's own
currency. The replacement of the dinar with a new currency would cost
Montenegro thirty five million German marks.
Commenting on Gazivoda's announcement, Montenegrin President Milo
Djukanovic's advisor Steve Henke said today that Montenegro should avoid
the
establishment of their own national bank since that would involve a
further
burden on the tax payer, one which the population may not be able to
withstand.
YDS 03/01/2000 -----------------------
RITROVATO CADAVERE MUTILATO PRESSO PEC
MUTILATED BODY OF SERB CIVILIAN FOUND IN PEC
PEC, January 3 (Tanjug) - The mutilated body of a Serb civilian, who had
been abducted by ethnic Albanian terrorists on December 17, was found on
Sunday near the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Pec, in the west
of
the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija Province.
The mutilated body of the victim, who had been abducted while doing the
shopping, indicates that he had been tortured before he was murdered,
radio
enthusiasts in Kosovo and Metohija reported.
ANCORA SACCHEGGI NELLE CASE SERBE PRESSO GNJILANE
ETHNIC ALBANIAN TERRORISTS CONTINUE TO PLUNDER SERB HOUSES IN GNJILANE
GNJILANE, January 3 (Tanjug) - Ethnic Albanian terrorists continued to
plunder before and after the New Year houses belonging to Serbs and
other
non-Albanians in Gnjilane, in the east of the Yugoslav Republic of
Serbia's
Kosovo and Metohija Province.
Radio enthusiasts quoted the local church-national board as saying that
ethnic Albanian criminals had stolen the entire furniture from one of
the
Serb houses.
The criminals continued to plunder that house even after troops of the
KFOR had sealed off the street where the house is located, gaining
access
to the house through the yards of ethnic Albanians living in the
neighbourhood.
During the New Year holidays, ethnic Albanian criminals plundered two
other Serb houses in Gnjilane.
Frequent power cuts, lasting even for 20 hours, make it easier for
ethnic
Albanians to plunder houses.
Serb villages near Gnjilane have for days been without power and water.
BOMBA A MANO CONTRO CASA DI SERBI
ETHNIC ALBANIAN TERRORISTS THROW HAND GRENADE AT SERB HOUSE
VITINA, January 3 (Tanjug) - Ethnic Albanian terrorists threw late on
Saturday a hand grenade at a Serb house in the mixedly-populated village
of
Binca at Vitina, in the southeast of the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia's
Kosovo and Metohija Province.
The grenade landed on the balcony of the house so that there were no
casualties, radio enthusiasts reported. The family living in the house
threw themselves on the floor as soon as they heard the grenade hit the
balcony so that shrapnel only shattered the windows.
Troops of the U.N. peacekeeping force KFOR who arrived at the scene only
established that there were no casualties taking no action against local
ethnic Albanian extremists responsible for the incident although their
identity is known to all in the village.
Dissatisfied with KFOR's attitude, Serbs in Vrbovac, the largest Serb
village in the Vitina area, have announced that they will form a Serb
protection corps because they can no longer rely on KFOR to offer them
protection.
FORZE UCK/KFOR IMPEGNATE NELLA INDIMIDAZIONE DEGLI
ESPONENTI DELLA MINORANZA DEI GORANI, IN KOSMET
KOSOVO-METOHIJA ALBANIAN KLA MEMBERS, U.N. POLICE RAID GORANY HOMES
DRAGAS, January 2 (Tanjug) - The ethnic Albanian so-called Kosovo
Liberation army (KLA), supported by U.N. police, raided on Sunday the
home
of a local official in the village of Vraniste outside Dragas in the
south
of U.N.-secured Kosovo-Metohija.
Without a warrant, they confiscated the hunting guns of Gora
Municipality
Secretary Mejdin Selmani, for which he holds a valid permit, a computer
with important files and other classified municipal documents, the
ethnic
Gorany Council said.
This is not the first time that U.N. forces in the Yugoslav Republic of
Serbia's Kosovo-Metohija Province have behaved arrogantly and violently
in
Vraniste, the Gorany Council said.
KLA troopers, escorted by U.N. police, daily raid Gorany homes, seeking
weapons which Goranies have, as agreed, turned
B92 02/01/2000 --------------------------------
BOMBA A MANO CONTRO LA CASA DI UNA FAMIGLIA ROM
A hand grenade was thrown at a Romanie house in Pec
KOSOVO, Sunday - A hand grenade was thrown at a Romanie house injuring
one
person and four Serb houses were burned to the ground in Pec yesterday
morning, KFOR stated today. Both incidents are under investigation.
Serbs from Gorazdevac blocked the road to Pec last night in protest at
an
attack on one Serb woman and her daughter which took place yesterday
afternoon. The woman and her daughter were shot at from a passing car.
Fortunately they were not injured in the incident.
ALAIN RICHARD PASSA IN RASSEGNA LE TRUPPE IN KOSMET
French Defense Minister arrives in Kosovo
KOSOVO, Sunday - French Defense Minister Alain Richard arrived in Kosovo
this
morning to visit French KFOR forces in the province. On arrival, Richard
went
straight to French KFOR headquarters in Pristina where he is due to meet
Head
of the UN Mission in Kosovo Bernard Kouchner and KFOR Commander Klaus
Reinhardt. During his stay in Kosovo, Richard plans to visit one Serb
and two
Albanian villages in the northern part of the province as well as the
town of
Kosovska Mitrovica where he is scheduled to meet with the Commander of
French
forces General Henri Payesa.
KOUCHNER: "IN KOSOVO SI INVESTE TROPPO POCO!"
Kouchner dissatisfied with lack of investment in Kosovo
KOSOVO, Sunday - Lack of funding has resulted in the postponing of
elections
in Kosovo, Head of the UN Mission Bernard Kouchner said today in his
first
interview of the New Year. Kouchner expressed his dissatisfaction with
the
current lack of money being invested in the province saying that UN
members
and European countries in particular should invest more money in Kosovo.
RILASCIATA LA SPIA DELLA ORGANIZZAZIONE "CARE"
Humanitarian worker Branko Jelen released from prison
ATLANTA, Sunday - The Yugoslav Government released CARE humanitarian
worker
Branko Jelen from prison on Friday. Branko Jelen was arrested for spying
during the NATO bombing campaign on Yugoslavia along with two Australian
activists Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace. Wallace and Pratt were given a
pardon by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic three months ago.
President
of CARE Peter Bell expressed his gratitude at Jelen's release at the
same
time emphasising that none of the three who were arrested had ever been
spies.
IL PATRIARCA PAVLE IN TERRA SANTA
Patriarch Pavle leaves for the Holy Land
BELGRADE, Sunday -- Serbian Patriarch Pavle today left for the Holy Land
where he will take part in celebrating 2000 years of Christianity along
with
the heads of all Orthodox Churches, reports Beta. Mass will be said on
Orthodox Christmas day 7th January in Bethlehem. Prime Ministers and
Presidents of all Orthodox countries are expected to attend the
celebrations.
VUJANOVIC: SE IL REGIME NON CAMBIA SPACCHIAMO IL PAESE
Vujanovic: Democratic changes in Serbia will decide the future of the
FRY
MONTENEGRO, Sunday - Democratic changes in Serbia will decide the future
of
the FRY, said Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic in his
interview for
the BBC today. Vujanovic said that Montenegro would wait for the
eventual
formation of a new democratic Serbia to solve the current dispute
between
Montenegro and Serbia.
B92 31/12/1999 -------------------------------------
MILOSEVIC: SUL MONTENEGRO DECIDERANNO I MONTENEGRINI
Milosevic: Montenegro has the right to choose
BELGRADE, Friday - The people of Montenegro have the right to choose
life
outside Yugoslavia if they believe they will be better off, FRY
President
Slobodan Milosevic said in his interview for Belgrade daily Politika
today.
Milosevic also said that nobody could take Kosovo from Yugoslavia and
that
the presence of UN security forces in the province is only temporary and
must
be endured with great patience.
In an interview for B2 92 today, President of the Montenegrin People's
Party
Novak Kilibarda said that he paid no heed to Milosevic's statement
concerning
Montenegro and that if Milosevic was serious, he should distance himself
from
Seselj's fascistic statements regarding the southern republic.
VENTI CASE INCENDIATE IN UN REMOTO VILLAGGIO DEL KOSMET
ALTRE DUE PERSONE TROVATE CADAVERI
Twenty houses burned to the ground in remote village in Kosovo
KOSOVO, Friday - In a remote village under the control of the multi
national
brigade East, twenty houses were burnt to the ground last night, KFOR
announced today. KFOR representatives said that the fire brigade was
unable
to reach the village due to the poor state of the roads in the area.
Two male bodies were found in Trestenik and a further two in Srbica last
night. The bodies have not yet been identified.
DJUKANOVIC: IL MONTENEGRO CONTINUERA' SULLA STRADA DELLA
SVENDITA ALL'IMPERIALISMO OCCIDENTALE
Djukanovic: Montenegro will continue its progress towards
democratisation
MONTENEGRO, Friday - Montenegro will persevere in its aim to develop
democratic institutions, a free market, cooperation with neighbouring
countries and its progress towards European and transatlantic
integration,
Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said in his New Year address on
Montenegrin state television today. Djukanovic said that 1999 had
brought
many problems and difficulties and the self-destructive policies of the
Federal Government had lead Montenegro to the edge of war.
AFP 31/12/1999 -------------
MILOSEVIC ACCUSA L'OCCIDENTE
RFY: Milosevic dénonce la "culpabilité" de l'Occident envers la
Yougoslavie
BELGRADE (AFP) - Ven 31 Déc 99 - 8h33 heure de Paris - Le président
yougoslave Slobodan Milosevic a estimé que l'Occident devait tôt ou
tard reconnaître "sa culpabilité" envers la Yougoslavie, jugeant par
ailleurs que "le nouveau siècle sera plus juste et meilleur".
"L'Occident doit avoir le courage et la force morale d'affronter sa
culpabilité pour les crimes commis lors de l'agression contre la
Yougoslavie", a-t-il déclaré, parlant de la guerre aérienne
menée au début de cette année par l'OTAN dans une interview,
publiée vendredi par le quotidien Politika. "Plus il attendra, plus la
honte sera grande", a ajouté le président yougoslave.
L'opération aérienne de l'OTAN, déclenchée le 24 mars pour le
contraindre à accepter un accord sur le Kosovo et pour mettre fin aux
exactions des forces de Belgrade contre la population albanaise dans la
province, a fait plusieurs milliers de morts et a ravagé
l'infrastructure de la Yougoslavie.
"Au milieu de ce siècle, le fascisme a dû rendre des comptes devant
l'humanité. Je crois que ce monstre néofasciste n'échappera pas au
jugement de son époque, de l'humanité, de l'histoire contemporaine",
a dit M. Milosevic, parlant de l'OTAN.
Quant au 21ème siècle, le président yougoslave estime qu'il sera
"plus juste et meilleur" que le précédent. "Je crois que la tendance
positive qui s'est exprimée au 20ème siècle l'emportera sur la
tendance destructive qui s'est manifestée à un haut degré, surtout
à la fin de ce siècle", a déclaré M. Milosevic.
Bien sûr, "le danger de guerre est présent dans chaque partie de la
planète", et "la peur d'une guerre mondiale est présente à juste
titre parmi la population du globe", a-t-il observé, néanmoins,
continue-t-il, "je suis convaincu que le nouveau siècle sera plus
juste et meilleur".
Interrogé sur ses voeux pour l'an 2000 aux citoyens de la Yougoslavie
qui ont connu en 1999 le conflit entre les Albanais du Kosovo et les
forces de Belgrade, les sanctions occidentales et les bombardements de
l'OTAN, M. Milosevic a répondu: "Je souhaite la paix à notre pays".
"Qu'il se développe librement, rapidement, de manière moderne et
avec succès. Je lui souhaite de coopérer avec le monde entier, de
manière équitable et mutuellement profitable", a-t-il poursuivi. "Je
crois que notre peuple obtiendra au cours du prochain siècle la
tranquillité et le bien-être qu'il a mérités", a-t-il conclu.
© 1999 AFP
==================================================================
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/
AFP - e' l'agenzia di stampa francese France Presse.
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 ***
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
------------------------------------------------------------
Lettera aperta a "Il Manifesto"
Su certe questioni purtroppo non vale dire "meglio tardi che mai"...
Cosi', accogliamo con grande sconforto le notizie che da qualche mese
possiamo leggere pure su "Il Manifesto" - particolarmente dopo la
aggressione dei paesi della NATO contro la Repubblica Federale di
Jugoslavia - riguardanti le efferatezze commesse dai nazionalisti e
dai separatisti, le meschinita' che le accompagnano e le menzogne dei
media,
iniziate a Lubiana, ma ancor prima proprio in Kosmet. In Kosovo e
Metohija si va avanti, con livelli di crudelta' crescente, per cui in
assenza della popolazione ortodossa ormai in gran parte scacciata e
sterminata ci si scaglia contro chiunque non rispetti l'ordine
dell'UCKFOR - se ci e' lecito coniare un neologismo il cui significato
dovrebbe essere chiaro.
Mesi ed anni fa cercavamo di esporre alcuni dati di fatto elementari,
dialogando con i vostri giornalisti, ma ci rispondevano "picche". C'era
la Bosnia ("aggressione serba"? Adesso ci raccontano delle fosse comuni
di serbi a Sarajevo...), c'era il Kosovo ("apartheid antialbanese"?
Adesso ci spiegano che in Kosmet abitano decine di popoli, tutti con lo
stesso diritto di considerarla propria patria...), c'era lo sfascio
della
Jugoslavia federativa ("autodeterminazione"? Adesso ci si preoccupa
anche
per la sorte della piccola Macedonia...). C'era una volta la Rossanda
che
appoggiava i bombardamenti della NATO contro i serbi della Bosnia, c'era
(c'e' ancora) Matvejevic a definirsi "ex-jugoslavo" per non cadere in un
abisso di contraddizioni chiarendo piuttosto COSA ritiene di essere (se
non slavo del sud, cosa?); e c'erano tanti altri, che ogni tanto pero'
riappaiono con il loro carico di idiozie politicamente corrette.
Esempio: tale Paolo Dieci (responsabile del Cisp) esordisce sull'ultimo
numero del 1999 affermando che "i bombardamenti da parte della NATO
sulla
Serbia e sul Kossovo sono stati, come e' noto, motivati dalla volonta'
di proteggere i civili kossovari dalla repressione dei soldati di
Milosevic". La premessa e' bugiarda, e falsifica pertanto tutto il resto
dell'articolo, che comunque non manca di ulteriori corbellerie (tipo:
l'esaltazione acritica del Tribunale dell'Aia; considerare il governo
dell'UCK come un "dato di fatto", un referente cui appellarsi per
"chiedere garanzie"). Di fronte a queste affermazioni vergognose, che
ricadranno prima o poi, come tutte le altre, come macigni, o bombe a
grappolo, su persone in carne ed ossa, non capiamo a cosa serva
puntualizzare ad esempio che la NATO ha falsificato il video del treno
colpito dal missile, scandalizzandosi ingenuamente per queste ovvieta'
del moderno "imperialismo etico" (e genocida)... Oppure che senso abbia
l'euforia per la vittoria della "opposizione" in Croazia, guidata dal
voltagabbana ex- (lui si, ex!) comunista Racan, un carrierista che ha
passato tutti questi anni ad intrigare con Tudjman, a tradire i suoi
vecchi
compagni di fede ("Mai piu' comunisti", esclamava), a presentare le
credenziali ai padroni euro-americani, ad applaudire alla aggressione
NATO contro il suo paese - perche', ci si consenta, Belgrado, Pristina e
Zagabria sono nella stessa terra, e nessun Matvejevic ci convincera' mai
del contrario.
O forse si, tutto questo serve: ad aggirare le vere ragioni della
distruzione della Jugoslavia federativa e socialista, a confondere le
idee a chi compra il "Manifesto" per il sottotitolo che nonostante tutto
esso ancora conserva, subito sotto la testata.
Coordinamento Romano per la Jugoslavia, gennaio 2000
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
Su certe questioni purtroppo non vale dire "meglio tardi che mai"...
Cosi', accogliamo con grande sconforto le notizie che da qualche mese
possiamo leggere pure su "Il Manifesto" - particolarmente dopo la
aggressione dei paesi della NATO contro la Repubblica Federale di
Jugoslavia - riguardanti le efferatezze commesse dai nazionalisti e
dai separatisti, le meschinita' che le accompagnano e le menzogne dei
media,
iniziate a Lubiana, ma ancor prima proprio in Kosmet. In Kosovo e
Metohija si va avanti, con livelli di crudelta' crescente, per cui in
assenza della popolazione ortodossa ormai in gran parte scacciata e
sterminata ci si scaglia contro chiunque non rispetti l'ordine
dell'UCKFOR - se ci e' lecito coniare un neologismo il cui significato
dovrebbe essere chiaro.
Mesi ed anni fa cercavamo di esporre alcuni dati di fatto elementari,
dialogando con i vostri giornalisti, ma ci rispondevano "picche". C'era
la Bosnia ("aggressione serba"? Adesso ci raccontano delle fosse comuni
di serbi a Sarajevo...), c'era il Kosovo ("apartheid antialbanese"?
Adesso ci spiegano che in Kosmet abitano decine di popoli, tutti con lo
stesso diritto di considerarla propria patria...), c'era lo sfascio
della
Jugoslavia federativa ("autodeterminazione"? Adesso ci si preoccupa
anche
per la sorte della piccola Macedonia...). C'era una volta la Rossanda
che
appoggiava i bombardamenti della NATO contro i serbi della Bosnia, c'era
(c'e' ancora) Matvejevic a definirsi "ex-jugoslavo" per non cadere in un
abisso di contraddizioni chiarendo piuttosto COSA ritiene di essere (se
non slavo del sud, cosa?); e c'erano tanti altri, che ogni tanto pero'
riappaiono con il loro carico di idiozie politicamente corrette.
Esempio: tale Paolo Dieci (responsabile del Cisp) esordisce sull'ultimo
numero del 1999 affermando che "i bombardamenti da parte della NATO
sulla
Serbia e sul Kossovo sono stati, come e' noto, motivati dalla volonta'
di proteggere i civili kossovari dalla repressione dei soldati di
Milosevic". La premessa e' bugiarda, e falsifica pertanto tutto il resto
dell'articolo, che comunque non manca di ulteriori corbellerie (tipo:
l'esaltazione acritica del Tribunale dell'Aia; considerare il governo
dell'UCK come un "dato di fatto", un referente cui appellarsi per
"chiedere garanzie"). Di fronte a queste affermazioni vergognose, che
ricadranno prima o poi, come tutte le altre, come macigni, o bombe a
grappolo, su persone in carne ed ossa, non capiamo a cosa serva
puntualizzare ad esempio che la NATO ha falsificato il video del treno
colpito dal missile, scandalizzandosi ingenuamente per queste ovvieta'
del moderno "imperialismo etico" (e genocida)... Oppure che senso abbia
l'euforia per la vittoria della "opposizione" in Croazia, guidata dal
voltagabbana ex- (lui si, ex!) comunista Racan, un carrierista che ha
passato tutti questi anni ad intrigare con Tudjman, a tradire i suoi
vecchi
compagni di fede ("Mai piu' comunisti", esclamava), a presentare le
credenziali ai padroni euro-americani, ad applaudire alla aggressione
NATO contro il suo paese - perche', ci si consenta, Belgrado, Pristina e
Zagabria sono nella stessa terra, e nessun Matvejevic ci convincera' mai
del contrario.
O forse si, tutto questo serve: ad aggirare le vere ragioni della
distruzione della Jugoslavia federativa e socialista, a confondere le
idee a chi compra il "Manifesto" per il sottotitolo che nonostante tutto
esso ancora conserva, subito sotto la testata.
Coordinamento Romano per la Jugoslavia, gennaio 2000
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
I GRANDI DIFENSORI DEI DIRITTI UMANI / 3: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Riproduciamo l'elenco delle persone alle quali e' stata applicata la
sentenza di morte negli USA tra l'1/1 e il 9/12/1999. A seguire, la
lista delle esecuzioni pendenti.
(dal sito http://www.smu.edu/~deathpen/ )
>
> USA Executions 1999 (as of 12/9/99)
>
> 1999 Overall Date Name State Method
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 1 501 1/5 John Glenn Moody TX Lethal Injection
> 2 502 1/7 John Walter Castro Sr. OK Lethal Injection
> 3 503 1/8 Ronnie Howard SC Lethal Injection
> 4 504 1/8 Dobie Gillis Williams LA Lethal Injection
> 5 505 1/13 Kelvin Malone MO Lethal Injection
> 6 506 1/13 Jess James Gillies AZ Lethal Injection
> 7 507 1/13 Troy Farris TX Lethal Injection
> 8 508 1/20 Mark Arlo Sheppard VA Lethal Injection
> 9 509 1/22 Joseph Atkins SC Lethal Injection
> 10 510 1/26 Martin Sauceda Vega TX Lethal Injection
> 11 511 2/3 Darick Gerlaugh AZ Lethal Injection
> 12 512 2/4 Sean Sellers OK Lethal Injection
> 13 513 2/4 Tony Leslie Fry VA Lethal Injection
> 14 514 2/9 Jaturun Siripongs CA Lethal Injection
> 15 515 2/10 George Cordova TX Lethal Injection
> 16 516 2/11 Danny Lee Barber TX Lethal Injection
> 17 517 2/16 Johnie Michael Cox AR Lethal Injection
> 18 518 2/16 Andrew Cantu TX Lethal Injection
> 19 519 2/19 Wilford Lee Berry Jr. OH Lethal Injection
> 20 520 2/24 James Edward Rodden MO Lethal Injection
> 21 521 2/24 Norman Evans Green TX Lethal Injection
> 22 522 2/24 Karl LaGrand AZ Lethal Injection
> 23 523 3/3 Walter LaGrand AZ Gas Chamber
> 24 524 3/9 George Quesinberry Jr. VA Lethal Injection
> 25 525 3/10 Roy Michael Roberts MO Lethal Injection
> 26 526 3/17 Andrew Kokoraleis IL Lethal Injection
> 27 527 3/25 Charles Rector TX Lethal Injection
> 28 528 3/25 David Lee Fisher VA Lethal Injection
> 29 529 3/27 James David Rich NC Lethal Injection
> 30 530 3/30 Robert Excell White TX Lethal Injection
> 31 531 4/5 Alvaro Calambro NV Lethal Injection
> 32 532 4/12 Marion Pruett AR Lethal Injection
> 33 533 4/13 Carl H. Chichester VA Lethal Injection
> 34 534 4/14 Roy Ramsey Jr. MO Lethal Injection
> 35 535 4/20 Arthur Ray Jenkins III VA Lethal Injection
> 36 536 4/22 David J. Lawrie DE Lethal Injection
> 37 537 4/28 Ralph Davis MO Lethal Injection
> 38 538 4/28 Aaron Christopher Foust TX Lethal Injection
> 39 539 4/28 Eric Christopher Payne VA Lethal Injection
> 40 540 4/29 Ronald Dale Yeatts VA Lethal Injection
> 41 541 5/4 Manuel Pina Babbitt CA Lethal Injection
> 42 542 5/4 Jose De La Cruz TX Lethal Injection
> 43 543 5/5 Robert Wayne Vickers AZ Lethal Injection
> 44 544 5/5 Clydell Coleman TX Lethal Injection
> 45 545 5/25 Edward Lee Harper Jr. KY Lethal Injection
> 46 546 5/26 Jessie Lee Wise MO Lethal Injection
> 47 547 6/1 William Hamilton Little TX Lethal Injection
> 48 548 6/3 Scotty Lee Moore OK Lethal Injection
> 49 549 6/16 Bruce Kilgore MO Lethal Injection
> 50 550 6/16 Michael Poland AZ Lethal Injection
> 51 551 6/17 Joseph Stanley Faulder TX Lethal Injection
> 52 552 6/18 Brian K. Baldwin AL Electrocution
> 53 553 6/30 Robert Walls MO Lethal Injection
> 54 554 7/1 Charles Daniel Tuttle TX Lethal Injection
> 55 555 7/6 Gary Michael Heidnik PA Lethal Injection
> 56 556 7/7 Tyrone Fuller TX Lethal Injection
> 57 557 7/8 Norman Lee Newsted OK Lethal Injection
> 58 558 7/8 Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis FL Electrocution
> 59 559 7/21 Tommy David Strickler VA Lethal Injection
> 60 560 8/4 Ricky Blackmon TX Lethal Injection
> 61 561 8/5 Charles Anthony Boyd TX Lethal Injection
> 62 562 8/6 Victor Kennedy AL Electrocution
> 63 563 8/10 Kenneth Dwayne Dunn TX Lethal Injection
> 64 564 8/11 James Otto Earhart TX Lethal Injection
> 65 565 8/17 Marlon DeWayne Williams VA Lethal Injection
> 66 566 8/18 Joe Mario Trevino Jr. TX Lethal Injection
> 67 567 9/1 David R. Leisure MO Lethal Injection
> 68 568 9/1 Raymond James Jones TX Lethal Injection
> 69 569 9/8 Mark Gardner AR Lethal Injection
> 70 570 9/8 Alan Willett AR Lethal Injection
> 71 571 9/10 Willis Barnes TX Lethal Injection
> 72 572 9/14 William Prince Davis TX Lethal Injection
> 73 573 9/16 Everett Lee Mueller VA Lethal Injection
> 74 574 9/21 Richard Wayne Smith TX Lethal Injection
> 75 575 9/24 Willie Sullivan DE Lethal Injection
> 76 576 9/24 Harvey Lee Green NC Lethal Injection
> 77 577 10/12 Alvin Wayne Crane TX Lethal Injection
> 78 578 10/14 Jerry McFadden TX Lethal Injection
> 79 579 10/15 Joseph Mitchell Parsons UT Lethal Injection
> 80 580 10/19 Jason Matthew Joseph VA Lethal Injection
> 81 581 10/21 Arthur Martin Boyd NC Lethal Injection
> 82 582 10/27 Ignacio Alberto Ortiz AZ Lethal Injection
> 83 583 10/28 Domingo Cantu TX Lethal Injection
> 84 584 11/9 Thomas Lee Royal Jr VA Lethal Injection
> 85 585 11/12 Leroy Joseph Drayton SC Lethal Injection
> 86 586 11/16 Desmond Jennings TX Lethal Injection
> 87 587 11/17 John Michael Lamb TX Lethal Injection
> 88 588 11/18 Jose Gutierrez TX Lethal Injection
> 89 589 11/19 David Junior Brown NC Lethal Injection
> 90 590 12/2 Cornel Cooks OK Lethal Injection
> 91 591 12/3 David Rocheville SC Lethal Injection
> 92 592 12/8 David Long TX Lethal Injection
> 93 593 12/9 Bobby Lynn Ross OK Lethal Injection
> 94 594 12/9 D.H. Fleenor IN Lethal Injection
> 95 595 12/9 James Beathard TX Lethal Injection
> 96 596 12/9 Andre Graham VA Lethal Injection
>
>
> Methods of execution and numbers executed by that method in the USA are:
> electrocution (142), firing squad (2), gas chamber (11), hanging (3),
> and lethal injection (438).
>
> ****************************
>
> Pending U.S. Executions (as of 12/11/99)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Please note that these dates are only tentative.
>
> Execution dates known or thought to be considered SERIOUS are marked
> with a *.The designation would mean that an execution would be considered
> most likely to be carried out.
>
> Please note that this designation should in no way be construed as
> absolute. Stays can be granted or denied at the very last momemt prior
> to an execution.
>
> A name with no * designation may simply mean that not enough information
> is currently available to know whether the execution date is serious.
> In other words, please DO NOT automatically equate the fact that a name
> with no * designation means that his/her date assigned execution date is
> not serious. It might, in fact, be (very) serious.
>
>
>
> December
>
> 14* Robert Atworth Texas (volunteer)
>
> 14 Orlando Baez Pennsylvania
>
> 14* Jack Greene Arkansas
>
> 14* Andrew Sasser Arkansas
>
> 15* Sammie Felder Texas
>
> 16 Dennis Miller Pennsylvania
>
> 17* Wendell Flowers North Carolina
>
> January 2000
>
> 6* Malcolm Johnson Oklahoma
>
> 7* David Duren Alabama
>
> 10* Douglas Thomas Virginia
>
> 11 Roland Steele Pennsylvania
>
> 11 Richard Bays Ohio
>
> 12* Earl Heiselbetz, Jr. Texas
>
> 12 Michael Goodwin Ohio
>
> 13* Johnny Paul Penry Texas
>
> 13* Steve Roach Virginia
>
> 18* Spencer Goodman Texas
>
> 18 Andre Stevens Pennsylvania
>
> 20* David Hicks Texas
>
> 25* Glen McGinnis Texas
>
> 26 Anzel Jones Texas
>
> 13* Steve Roach Virginia
>
> February 2000
>
>
> 23 Ralph Lynch Ohio
>
> 23* Cornelius Goss Texas
>
> 24 Toronto Patterson Texas
>
(Per la serie "I grandi difensori dei diritti umani"; nelle puntate
precedenti: Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini)
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
Riproduciamo l'elenco delle persone alle quali e' stata applicata la
sentenza di morte negli USA tra l'1/1 e il 9/12/1999. A seguire, la
lista delle esecuzioni pendenti.
(dal sito http://www.smu.edu/~deathpen/ )
>
> USA Executions 1999 (as of 12/9/99)
>
> 1999 Overall Date Name State Method
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 1 501 1/5 John Glenn Moody TX Lethal Injection
> 2 502 1/7 John Walter Castro Sr. OK Lethal Injection
> 3 503 1/8 Ronnie Howard SC Lethal Injection
> 4 504 1/8 Dobie Gillis Williams LA Lethal Injection
> 5 505 1/13 Kelvin Malone MO Lethal Injection
> 6 506 1/13 Jess James Gillies AZ Lethal Injection
> 7 507 1/13 Troy Farris TX Lethal Injection
> 8 508 1/20 Mark Arlo Sheppard VA Lethal Injection
> 9 509 1/22 Joseph Atkins SC Lethal Injection
> 10 510 1/26 Martin Sauceda Vega TX Lethal Injection
> 11 511 2/3 Darick Gerlaugh AZ Lethal Injection
> 12 512 2/4 Sean Sellers OK Lethal Injection
> 13 513 2/4 Tony Leslie Fry VA Lethal Injection
> 14 514 2/9 Jaturun Siripongs CA Lethal Injection
> 15 515 2/10 George Cordova TX Lethal Injection
> 16 516 2/11 Danny Lee Barber TX Lethal Injection
> 17 517 2/16 Johnie Michael Cox AR Lethal Injection
> 18 518 2/16 Andrew Cantu TX Lethal Injection
> 19 519 2/19 Wilford Lee Berry Jr. OH Lethal Injection
> 20 520 2/24 James Edward Rodden MO Lethal Injection
> 21 521 2/24 Norman Evans Green TX Lethal Injection
> 22 522 2/24 Karl LaGrand AZ Lethal Injection
> 23 523 3/3 Walter LaGrand AZ Gas Chamber
> 24 524 3/9 George Quesinberry Jr. VA Lethal Injection
> 25 525 3/10 Roy Michael Roberts MO Lethal Injection
> 26 526 3/17 Andrew Kokoraleis IL Lethal Injection
> 27 527 3/25 Charles Rector TX Lethal Injection
> 28 528 3/25 David Lee Fisher VA Lethal Injection
> 29 529 3/27 James David Rich NC Lethal Injection
> 30 530 3/30 Robert Excell White TX Lethal Injection
> 31 531 4/5 Alvaro Calambro NV Lethal Injection
> 32 532 4/12 Marion Pruett AR Lethal Injection
> 33 533 4/13 Carl H. Chichester VA Lethal Injection
> 34 534 4/14 Roy Ramsey Jr. MO Lethal Injection
> 35 535 4/20 Arthur Ray Jenkins III VA Lethal Injection
> 36 536 4/22 David J. Lawrie DE Lethal Injection
> 37 537 4/28 Ralph Davis MO Lethal Injection
> 38 538 4/28 Aaron Christopher Foust TX Lethal Injection
> 39 539 4/28 Eric Christopher Payne VA Lethal Injection
> 40 540 4/29 Ronald Dale Yeatts VA Lethal Injection
> 41 541 5/4 Manuel Pina Babbitt CA Lethal Injection
> 42 542 5/4 Jose De La Cruz TX Lethal Injection
> 43 543 5/5 Robert Wayne Vickers AZ Lethal Injection
> 44 544 5/5 Clydell Coleman TX Lethal Injection
> 45 545 5/25 Edward Lee Harper Jr. KY Lethal Injection
> 46 546 5/26 Jessie Lee Wise MO Lethal Injection
> 47 547 6/1 William Hamilton Little TX Lethal Injection
> 48 548 6/3 Scotty Lee Moore OK Lethal Injection
> 49 549 6/16 Bruce Kilgore MO Lethal Injection
> 50 550 6/16 Michael Poland AZ Lethal Injection
> 51 551 6/17 Joseph Stanley Faulder TX Lethal Injection
> 52 552 6/18 Brian K. Baldwin AL Electrocution
> 53 553 6/30 Robert Walls MO Lethal Injection
> 54 554 7/1 Charles Daniel Tuttle TX Lethal Injection
> 55 555 7/6 Gary Michael Heidnik PA Lethal Injection
> 56 556 7/7 Tyrone Fuller TX Lethal Injection
> 57 557 7/8 Norman Lee Newsted OK Lethal Injection
> 58 558 7/8 Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis FL Electrocution
> 59 559 7/21 Tommy David Strickler VA Lethal Injection
> 60 560 8/4 Ricky Blackmon TX Lethal Injection
> 61 561 8/5 Charles Anthony Boyd TX Lethal Injection
> 62 562 8/6 Victor Kennedy AL Electrocution
> 63 563 8/10 Kenneth Dwayne Dunn TX Lethal Injection
> 64 564 8/11 James Otto Earhart TX Lethal Injection
> 65 565 8/17 Marlon DeWayne Williams VA Lethal Injection
> 66 566 8/18 Joe Mario Trevino Jr. TX Lethal Injection
> 67 567 9/1 David R. Leisure MO Lethal Injection
> 68 568 9/1 Raymond James Jones TX Lethal Injection
> 69 569 9/8 Mark Gardner AR Lethal Injection
> 70 570 9/8 Alan Willett AR Lethal Injection
> 71 571 9/10 Willis Barnes TX Lethal Injection
> 72 572 9/14 William Prince Davis TX Lethal Injection
> 73 573 9/16 Everett Lee Mueller VA Lethal Injection
> 74 574 9/21 Richard Wayne Smith TX Lethal Injection
> 75 575 9/24 Willie Sullivan DE Lethal Injection
> 76 576 9/24 Harvey Lee Green NC Lethal Injection
> 77 577 10/12 Alvin Wayne Crane TX Lethal Injection
> 78 578 10/14 Jerry McFadden TX Lethal Injection
> 79 579 10/15 Joseph Mitchell Parsons UT Lethal Injection
> 80 580 10/19 Jason Matthew Joseph VA Lethal Injection
> 81 581 10/21 Arthur Martin Boyd NC Lethal Injection
> 82 582 10/27 Ignacio Alberto Ortiz AZ Lethal Injection
> 83 583 10/28 Domingo Cantu TX Lethal Injection
> 84 584 11/9 Thomas Lee Royal Jr VA Lethal Injection
> 85 585 11/12 Leroy Joseph Drayton SC Lethal Injection
> 86 586 11/16 Desmond Jennings TX Lethal Injection
> 87 587 11/17 John Michael Lamb TX Lethal Injection
> 88 588 11/18 Jose Gutierrez TX Lethal Injection
> 89 589 11/19 David Junior Brown NC Lethal Injection
> 90 590 12/2 Cornel Cooks OK Lethal Injection
> 91 591 12/3 David Rocheville SC Lethal Injection
> 92 592 12/8 David Long TX Lethal Injection
> 93 593 12/9 Bobby Lynn Ross OK Lethal Injection
> 94 594 12/9 D.H. Fleenor IN Lethal Injection
> 95 595 12/9 James Beathard TX Lethal Injection
> 96 596 12/9 Andre Graham VA Lethal Injection
>
>
> Methods of execution and numbers executed by that method in the USA are:
> electrocution (142), firing squad (2), gas chamber (11), hanging (3),
> and lethal injection (438).
>
> ****************************
>
> Pending U.S. Executions (as of 12/11/99)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Please note that these dates are only tentative.
>
> Execution dates known or thought to be considered SERIOUS are marked
> with a *.The designation would mean that an execution would be considered
> most likely to be carried out.
>
> Please note that this designation should in no way be construed as
> absolute. Stays can be granted or denied at the very last momemt prior
> to an execution.
>
> A name with no * designation may simply mean that not enough information
> is currently available to know whether the execution date is serious.
> In other words, please DO NOT automatically equate the fact that a name
> with no * designation means that his/her date assigned execution date is
> not serious. It might, in fact, be (very) serious.
>
>
>
> December
>
> 14* Robert Atworth Texas (volunteer)
>
> 14 Orlando Baez Pennsylvania
>
> 14* Jack Greene Arkansas
>
> 14* Andrew Sasser Arkansas
>
> 15* Sammie Felder Texas
>
> 16 Dennis Miller Pennsylvania
>
> 17* Wendell Flowers North Carolina
>
> January 2000
>
> 6* Malcolm Johnson Oklahoma
>
> 7* David Duren Alabama
>
> 10* Douglas Thomas Virginia
>
> 11 Roland Steele Pennsylvania
>
> 11 Richard Bays Ohio
>
> 12* Earl Heiselbetz, Jr. Texas
>
> 12 Michael Goodwin Ohio
>
> 13* Johnny Paul Penry Texas
>
> 13* Steve Roach Virginia
>
> 18* Spencer Goodman Texas
>
> 18 Andre Stevens Pennsylvania
>
> 20* David Hicks Texas
>
> 25* Glen McGinnis Texas
>
> 26 Anzel Jones Texas
>
> 13* Steve Roach Virginia
>
> February 2000
>
>
> 23 Ralph Lynch Ohio
>
> 23* Cornelius Goss Texas
>
> 24 Toronto Patterson Texas
>
(Per la serie "I grandi difensori dei diritti umani"; nelle puntate
precedenti: Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini)
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Poesia Autori Vari (ispirata da una lettera di Gregorio al padre)
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Gregorio, cella 21, fine millennio
>
> 23:59 - finestra dai vetri leggeri,
> coperta di lana,
> riscaldamento buono,
> cena speciale di capodanno,
> non basta
>
> Libri,
> una piccola radio,
> un tavolo di verde formica intagliato,
> e la luna nel cielo terso.
> no, non basta
> Il pilota tagliatore del cermis è con la moglie
> quello miratore della scuola di Gnjilane con l'amante
> i piloti infurianti sui convogli con le famiglie
> quelli delle case, delle chiese, dell'elettricità brindano a champagne
> Belluno sembra esplodere di polvere pirica e fatui fuochi
> e intorno i miei compagni di sventura battono i piedi
> benvenuto,
> merda
>
> 00.01 - Per chi sei qui,
> cinquantasei milioni di stronzi
> stappano ritmando 20 milioni di stronze bottiglie
> ed esplodono 100 milioni di stronzi botti
>
> Chi mi chiedo,
> la base assassina continua a produrre
> squallide targhe AFI che continuano a circolare
> piloti brindano, hanno 100 tacche nella fusoliera
> una per ogni casa d'uranio infuocata
> Il pilota tagliatore del cermis è con la moglie
> quello miratore della scuola di Gnjilane con l'amante
> i piloti infurianti sui convogli con le famiglie
> quelli delle case, delle chiese, dell'elettricità brindano a champagne
> Impedirgli di volare, distruggergli le armi
> bloccare le loro bombe al suolo
> trasformare in verdi campi
> i loro cuori d'uranio
>
> maledetto cuore ribelle, eccomi qui
> isolato, contagioso, letale,
> minaccia alla democrazia
> pericolo di pace
>
> Leggi speciali
> golpiste, fasciste
> agitate nell'aria da nere toghe
> nobili Pargoli mercenari mi compatiscono e rinchiudono a vita
> Il pilota tagliatore del cermis è con la moglie
> quello miratore della scuola di Gnjilane con l'amante
> i piloti infurianti sui convogli con le famiglie
> quelli delle case, delle chiese, dell'elettricità brindano a champagne
> un deserto di fuoco ora circonda la città
> mille mani si ustioneranno
> d'altri mille altre mani dalle macerie di quest'anno
> tacciono da maggio
>
> Chi...
> ora brindano la vittoria
> prospera il loro avvenire
> i miei compagni che faranno...
>
> Mi aspettano. Tornerò. Non ora....
>
> Ora non riesco a pensare che al passato
> volgo intorno lo sguardo e il cemento mi frena
> ora punto in alto e lui mi copre, in basso mi sostiene
> dal piccolo buco di finestra solo la luna...
>
> Promontori gialli, immense valli bianche
> grotte, dune, spazi liberi
> aria o vuoto, salti altissimi
> nessun fesso con le chiavi
> che mi squadra e mi sorride.
>
> Luna, futuro altissimo e lontano
> radioso di luce riflessa
> irraggiungibile, senza patria
> da lassù domani ridere di qui
>
> Irraggiungibile,
> corro,
> libero...
>
> Ma inciampo mio malgrado sul freddo tubo
> asta di vessillo di voli planetari
> deposto a stelle e strisce a mò di proprietà
> drappo di Armstrong mi ridesti
>
> Sei già li.
> Anche li.
>
> E torno al mio presente
> nell'attesa di cambiare non guardo ciò che resta
> cemento, cella 21, una cicca e trecentomila bestemmie,
> anche in via Baldenich 11 arriverà il millennio.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Poesia Autori Vari (ispirata da una lettera di Gregorio al padre)
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Gregorio, cella 21, fine millennio
>
> 23:59 - finestra dai vetri leggeri,
> coperta di lana,
> riscaldamento buono,
> cena speciale di capodanno,
> non basta
>
> Libri,
> una piccola radio,
> un tavolo di verde formica intagliato,
> e la luna nel cielo terso.
> no, non basta
> Il pilota tagliatore del cermis è con la moglie
> quello miratore della scuola di Gnjilane con l'amante
> i piloti infurianti sui convogli con le famiglie
> quelli delle case, delle chiese, dell'elettricità brindano a champagne
> Belluno sembra esplodere di polvere pirica e fatui fuochi
> e intorno i miei compagni di sventura battono i piedi
> benvenuto,
> merda
>
> 00.01 - Per chi sei qui,
> cinquantasei milioni di stronzi
> stappano ritmando 20 milioni di stronze bottiglie
> ed esplodono 100 milioni di stronzi botti
>
> Chi mi chiedo,
> la base assassina continua a produrre
> squallide targhe AFI che continuano a circolare
> piloti brindano, hanno 100 tacche nella fusoliera
> una per ogni casa d'uranio infuocata
> Il pilota tagliatore del cermis è con la moglie
> quello miratore della scuola di Gnjilane con l'amante
> i piloti infurianti sui convogli con le famiglie
> quelli delle case, delle chiese, dell'elettricità brindano a champagne
> Impedirgli di volare, distruggergli le armi
> bloccare le loro bombe al suolo
> trasformare in verdi campi
> i loro cuori d'uranio
>
> maledetto cuore ribelle, eccomi qui
> isolato, contagioso, letale,
> minaccia alla democrazia
> pericolo di pace
>
> Leggi speciali
> golpiste, fasciste
> agitate nell'aria da nere toghe
> nobili Pargoli mercenari mi compatiscono e rinchiudono a vita
> Il pilota tagliatore del cermis è con la moglie
> quello miratore della scuola di Gnjilane con l'amante
> i piloti infurianti sui convogli con le famiglie
> quelli delle case, delle chiese, dell'elettricità brindano a champagne
> un deserto di fuoco ora circonda la città
> mille mani si ustioneranno
> d'altri mille altre mani dalle macerie di quest'anno
> tacciono da maggio
>
> Chi...
> ora brindano la vittoria
> prospera il loro avvenire
> i miei compagni che faranno...
>
> Mi aspettano. Tornerò. Non ora....
>
> Ora non riesco a pensare che al passato
> volgo intorno lo sguardo e il cemento mi frena
> ora punto in alto e lui mi copre, in basso mi sostiene
> dal piccolo buco di finestra solo la luna...
>
> Promontori gialli, immense valli bianche
> grotte, dune, spazi liberi
> aria o vuoto, salti altissimi
> nessun fesso con le chiavi
> che mi squadra e mi sorride.
>
> Luna, futuro altissimo e lontano
> radioso di luce riflessa
> irraggiungibile, senza patria
> da lassù domani ridere di qui
>
> Irraggiungibile,
> corro,
> libero...
>
> Ma inciampo mio malgrado sul freddo tubo
> asta di vessillo di voli planetari
> deposto a stelle e strisce a mò di proprietà
> drappo di Armstrong mi ridesti
>
> Sei già li.
> Anche li.
>
> E torno al mio presente
> nell'attesa di cambiare non guardo ciò che resta
> cemento, cella 21, una cicca e trecentomila bestemmie,
> anche in via Baldenich 11 arriverà il millennio.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
PENSIERINI PER IL NUOVO ANNO
Alcune riflessioni di carattere generale ed un bilancio di quattro anni
di Coordinamento Romano per la Jugoslavia.
> Qualche esperienza di cui fare tesoro
La sigla CRJ nasceva nel dicembre 1995 in occasione della organizzazione
di due giorni di conferenza-dibattito presso l'Universita' di Roma "La
Sapienza". Gia' i titoli delle due giornate (la prima dedicata a "Guerra
civile jugoslava e disinformazione strategica", la seconda a "Guerra
civile jugoslava e nuovi imperialismi") miravano ad aprire un
varco nel "muro di gomma" del pensiero unico sui fatti jugoslavi, che
aveva dominato per tutta la durata della guerra fratricida in Croazia e
Bosnia anche negli ambienti della solidarieta' ed in tutta la "sinistra"
italiana. Come gruppo di persone di diversa esperienza politica ed
assortita estrazione sociale e "nazionale", a vario titolo e per vario
motivo impegnate sull'"altro versante" della opposizione alla guerra nei
Balcani - il versante jugoslavista e jugoslavo, quello di tutti coloro i
quali erano stati contrari allo squartamento della RSF di Jugoslavia
essendo per questo relegati nel ghetto del "filoserbismo paranoico" -
decidemmo di continuare l'attivita' portata avanti fino ad allora
ciascuno nel proprio ambito (dalle trasmissioni radiofoniche alle
missioni di solidarieta' nei Balcani, alla presenza critica a
dimostrazioni ed altre iniziative), possibilmente coordinandola e
rendendola piu' efficace e "leggibile" dall'esterno.
Questo specialmente sul versante della CONTROINFORMAZIONE, cioe' nella
produzione e diffusione militante delle informazioni negate dai media e
nella lotta contro la disinformazione strategica, che era e rimane
secondo la nostra analisi strumento di guerra da parte dell'imperialismo
impegnato nel "divide et impera" ai danni della Jugoslavia e di tutta
l'Europa centro-orientale.
Il 1996 proseguiva con la pseudo-pace determinata dagli accordi di
Dayton, che sancivano la spartizione della RFSJ con la occupazione e
militarizzazione di alcune delle ex-repubbliche federate da parte degli
USA e della NATO. Ma le avvisaglie di nuove disgrazie erano presenti, e
verso la fine dell'anno veniva avviato un lavoro continuativo di
informazione per via telematica allo scopo di comunicare le vicende e
le interpretazioni dei fatti sottoposte ad una piu' o meno intenzionale
censura dei media.
All'inizio del 1997 coglievamo alcuni spunti per iniziare una sana
polemica con certe aree della sinistra italiana fino ad allora attive
nella demonizzazione della parte serba e nell'occultamente della storia
della RFSJ. Soprattutto sui problemi della provincia serba del Kosmet
intervenivamo contro la disinformazione di settori impegnati ad
appoggiare il movimento secessionista panalbanese di Ibrahim Rugova e la
sua politica di boicottaggio su base etnica.
A meta' dello stesso anno aprivamo un sito internet sul server dei
Centri Sociali del Nord Est "Isole nella Rete" (http://www.ecn.org),
cercando di allargare lo spettro dei nostri interlocutori nell'ambito
della sinistra antiimperialista. Ma con il passare delle settimane
l'informazione da noi diffusa diventava sempre piu' indigesta ai
responsabili del server. Le iniziative contro la NATO ed i rapporti con
gli antiimperialisti dei Balcani (spec. la manifestazione di Belgrado
contro la NATO, in ottobre) passavano come inosservate, mentre si
acuivano le tensioni in Kosmet a causa dell'exploit della attivita'
dell'UCK, organizzazione irredentista armata, finanziata e sostenuta
dagli USA e dalla NATO. Cosi', mentre all'inizio del 1998 insieme agli
scontri armati in Kosmet cresceva anche la campagna di stampa
antijugoslava e la simpatia di certi settori del "centrosocialismo"
(oltreche' radicali, diessini, eccetera) nei confronti dell'UCK, il sito
internet del CRJ veniva censurato da "Isole nella Rete" e ci veniva
negato l'accesso ai servizi di posta elettronica.
Oltre a continuare l'attivita' in rete tramite alcuni server gratuiti,
venivano riprese le trasmissioni radiofoniche sull'emittente romana
"Radio Citta' Aperta" e tenuti occasionali interventi su altre emittenti
e nel corso di altre iniziative. Alla fine dell'anno, grazie al sostegno
dei compagni di Marx2001 e Nuova Unita', avevamo ripreso uno spazio
stabile in rete ed una attivita' di controinformazione particolarmente
intensa attraverso gli indirizzi http://www.marx2001.org e
crj@...
Il 1999 si apriva in un clima pesantissimo. Gia' all'inizio dell'estate
precedente avevamo indicato la realta' della minaccia incombente da
parte della NATO, ed ora nuovissime operazioni di disinformazione
strategica e cecchinaggio diplomatico ("strage" di Racak, "accordi" di
Rambouillet) prefiguravano l'interventismo del nostro paese e degli
altri della Alleanza Atlantica. A partire dal mese di marzo eravamo
soggetti ad una attivita' frenetica, sia in rete sia con la
partecipazione a trasmissioni ed iniziative pubbliche, sia nella
produzione di materiali di controinformazione - ad esempio con il
Comitato Unitario contro la guerra imperialista alla Jugoslavia
costituitosi a Roma.
Verso la fine dei bombardamenti, durante la manifestazione di
Aviano del 6 giugno, alcuni nostri attivisti "colpevoli" di
sventolare la bandiera della RFSJ subivano una aggressione da
parte dei settori "centrosocialisti" di cui sopra. Piu' recentemente,
nell'ambito di una operazione della Procura della Repubblica
di Pordenone per azioni di danneggiamento avvenute in zona di Aviano,
un nostro esponente ed altri compagni di realta' a noi molto vicine
venivano perquisiti ed indagati benche' fossero assolutamente
estranei ai fatti.
> Il lavoro continua
Veniamo dunque ai giorni nostri. Come si e' visto, piu' il tempo passa,
piu' il gioco si fa pesante. Non potendo ribattere nel merito di quello
che andiamo dicendo - sulle cause della crisi nei Balcani, sulla deriva
autoritaria nei paesi europei, sui crimini commessi da militari e
leaders politici quali l'attuale Presidente del Consiglio D'Alema, sul
neocolonialismo nei Balcani e fino al Caucaso, eccetera - i nostri
avversari cercano di colpire noi e tutto il movimento internazionalista
ed antiimperialista attraverso la repressione, le provocazioni,
l'operato dei loro "servi stupidi" che fanno capo a qualche ritrovo di
fumatori di spinelli o a qualche redazione di giornaletti di
autoproclamata sinistra.
Intanto l'onda lunga della guerra di aggressione contro la Repubblica
Federale di Jugoslavia continua, in termini di pericoli per la pace, e
continua allora anche il nostro impegno. Ricordiamo in particolare il
lavoro per la istituzione della sezione italiana del Tribunale
Indipendente contro i crimini di guerra della NATO, cui aderiamo, e
l'attivita', come gruppo o individualmente, in varie altre iniziative
contro la guerra (Comitato di solidarieta' alla popolazione jugoslava e
raccolta fondi per la Zastava di Kragujevac, Comitato Scienziate/i
contro la guerra, "Un ponte per...", eccetera).
Ma continua soprattutto l'opera di controinformazione. Su "Radio Citta'
Aperta" (a Roma e nel Lazio FM 88.900) la trasmissione "Voce Jugoslava"
va avanti, ogni martedi alle ore 13, a parte occasionali variazioni nel
palinsesto. Al nostro bollettino telematico e' dedicata una attenzione
crescente: esso viene ricevuto e ri-usato da individualita' e gruppi
internazionalisti, come e' giusto, benche' i documenti che facciamo
circolare continuino ad essere apparentemente ignorati dagli ambienti
politici ufficiali (compreso il PRC, nel cui seno sopravvive un settore
antijugoslavo ed affezionato all'irredentismo panalbanese) e dai
giornalisti "che contano". Il sito internet si arricchisce lentamente,
anche se la natura volontaria del nostro lavoro non ci consente di
aggiornarlo tanto spesso quanto sarebbe necessario.
In generale, benche' con grave ritardo, l'interpretazione jugoslavista
della vicende balcaniche guadagna spazio tra militanti e nell'opinione
pubblica. Questo peraltro avviene con difficolta' a causa dei danni
causati dal pensiero "politicamente corretto" (cioe'
liberal-secessionista e razzista antiserbo) diffuso a spron battente da
influenti quotidiani come "Il Manifesto" nei primi anni del conflitto; e
sfortunatamente la "correzione di rotta" attuale e' duvuta proprio alla
estrema drammaticita' degli avvenimenti ed all'accanimento imperialista
a fare a pezzi ancora tutto cio' che resta di un paese, comprese tante
vite umane.
Rispetto a questo, restano troppo indietro proprio gli jugoslavi, per la
loro difficolta' a coordinarsi e per la incredibile stratificazione di
divisioni interne (specialmente nel frastagliatissimo mondo serbo e dei
serbi in esilio).
Il riscontro che riceviamo per il nostro lavoro e' reale, ma
discontinuo. Abbiamo l'impressione che la nostra attivita' desti
aspettative svariate, talvolta contraddittorie: ognuno ha interesse per
una problematica diversa, vorrebbe trascinarci su questo o su quel
versante. Qualcuno si lamenta perche' inviamo troppi documenti, qualcun
altro ci richiede ancora questo e quest'altro.
> La sinistra antiimperialista in Italia
In qualche maniera poi, attraverso le nostre comunicazioni per via
telematica come anche attraverso tutti gli altri contatti, abbiamo "il
polso" della situazione della sinistra antiimperialista italiana nel suo
complesso. Il quadro che ne emerge e' preoccupante per la tendenza
cronica alla discontinuita' ed alla disgregazione, tendenza che nemmeno
episodi gravi come la guerra della primavera 1999 riescono ad invertire.
Sperimentiamo una commistione di settarismi, "settarismi al contrario"
(cioe' determinati da un apparente antisettarismo per cui si escludono
tutta una serie di interlocutori), difficolta' tutte personalistiche nei
rapporti con individui e gruppi, nonche' la sostanziale disabitudine a
basare l'analisi e la prassi politica su basi scientifiche piuttosto che
su slogan superficiali e passioni estemporanee, a privilegiare il rigore
del metodo e delle conoscenze piuttosto che le sparate velleitarie.
E' vero che esiste una vera e propria BALCANIZZAZIONE della sinistra
italiana nel suo complesso, all'interno della quale convivono ad esempio
interpretazioni diametralmente opposte dei fatti jugoslavi (dai
sostenitori dell'UCK a quelli che piangono la morte di Arkan come un
"compagno"), che affonda le sue radici proprio nella deriva
anti-ideologica ed anti-razionale degli ultimi anni, nella
disinformazione e nell'abbandono delle chiavi di interpretazione
marxiste. Ma esiste anche un sostanziale caos nella - ben piu'
delimitata e delimitabile - scena antiimperialista, sul piano
organizzativo-pratico piu' che su quello analitico-ideologico; un caos
che emerge con accenti paradossali negli ambienti marxisti-leninisti,
dove l'interpretazione dei fatti e' univoca e salda ma la litigiosita'
tra individui e gruppi e' feroce. Una situazione che pesa notevolmente
sulle possibilita' di costruzione di una organizzazione politica dei
comunisti nel nostro paese.
Noi non intendiamo occuparci di tutto: siamo nati, e probabilmente
termineremo la nostra attivita', incentrandoci sulle vicende della
Jugoslavia federativa e socialista. Tuttavia, il nostro lavoro ci porta
necessariamente ad affrontare anche altre questioni e tutti i nodi
presenti nella sinistra italiana, sul fronte antiimperialista, ed anche
in gran parte del mondo della cultura. Speriamo che qualcuno di questi
nodi si sciolga nel futuro prossimo, possibilmente in modo non troppo
doloroso... Per quanto ci riguarda, la nostra piu' grande ambizione e'
scomparire come Coordinamento Romano per la Jugoslavia una volta che le
drammatiche ragioni per cui ci siamo costituiti verranno meno!
Con i migliori auguri l'anno 2000... ma solo a chi ama la Jugoslavia,
la unita' e la fratellanza fra tutti i popoli!
Smrt fasizmu, sloboda narodu!
Italo Slavo, gennaio 2000
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
Alcune riflessioni di carattere generale ed un bilancio di quattro anni
di Coordinamento Romano per la Jugoslavia.
> Qualche esperienza di cui fare tesoro
La sigla CRJ nasceva nel dicembre 1995 in occasione della organizzazione
di due giorni di conferenza-dibattito presso l'Universita' di Roma "La
Sapienza". Gia' i titoli delle due giornate (la prima dedicata a "Guerra
civile jugoslava e disinformazione strategica", la seconda a "Guerra
civile jugoslava e nuovi imperialismi") miravano ad aprire un
varco nel "muro di gomma" del pensiero unico sui fatti jugoslavi, che
aveva dominato per tutta la durata della guerra fratricida in Croazia e
Bosnia anche negli ambienti della solidarieta' ed in tutta la "sinistra"
italiana. Come gruppo di persone di diversa esperienza politica ed
assortita estrazione sociale e "nazionale", a vario titolo e per vario
motivo impegnate sull'"altro versante" della opposizione alla guerra nei
Balcani - il versante jugoslavista e jugoslavo, quello di tutti coloro i
quali erano stati contrari allo squartamento della RSF di Jugoslavia
essendo per questo relegati nel ghetto del "filoserbismo paranoico" -
decidemmo di continuare l'attivita' portata avanti fino ad allora
ciascuno nel proprio ambito (dalle trasmissioni radiofoniche alle
missioni di solidarieta' nei Balcani, alla presenza critica a
dimostrazioni ed altre iniziative), possibilmente coordinandola e
rendendola piu' efficace e "leggibile" dall'esterno.
Questo specialmente sul versante della CONTROINFORMAZIONE, cioe' nella
produzione e diffusione militante delle informazioni negate dai media e
nella lotta contro la disinformazione strategica, che era e rimane
secondo la nostra analisi strumento di guerra da parte dell'imperialismo
impegnato nel "divide et impera" ai danni della Jugoslavia e di tutta
l'Europa centro-orientale.
Il 1996 proseguiva con la pseudo-pace determinata dagli accordi di
Dayton, che sancivano la spartizione della RFSJ con la occupazione e
militarizzazione di alcune delle ex-repubbliche federate da parte degli
USA e della NATO. Ma le avvisaglie di nuove disgrazie erano presenti, e
verso la fine dell'anno veniva avviato un lavoro continuativo di
informazione per via telematica allo scopo di comunicare le vicende e
le interpretazioni dei fatti sottoposte ad una piu' o meno intenzionale
censura dei media.
All'inizio del 1997 coglievamo alcuni spunti per iniziare una sana
polemica con certe aree della sinistra italiana fino ad allora attive
nella demonizzazione della parte serba e nell'occultamente della storia
della RFSJ. Soprattutto sui problemi della provincia serba del Kosmet
intervenivamo contro la disinformazione di settori impegnati ad
appoggiare il movimento secessionista panalbanese di Ibrahim Rugova e la
sua politica di boicottaggio su base etnica.
A meta' dello stesso anno aprivamo un sito internet sul server dei
Centri Sociali del Nord Est "Isole nella Rete" (http://www.ecn.org),
cercando di allargare lo spettro dei nostri interlocutori nell'ambito
della sinistra antiimperialista. Ma con il passare delle settimane
l'informazione da noi diffusa diventava sempre piu' indigesta ai
responsabili del server. Le iniziative contro la NATO ed i rapporti con
gli antiimperialisti dei Balcani (spec. la manifestazione di Belgrado
contro la NATO, in ottobre) passavano come inosservate, mentre si
acuivano le tensioni in Kosmet a causa dell'exploit della attivita'
dell'UCK, organizzazione irredentista armata, finanziata e sostenuta
dagli USA e dalla NATO. Cosi', mentre all'inizio del 1998 insieme agli
scontri armati in Kosmet cresceva anche la campagna di stampa
antijugoslava e la simpatia di certi settori del "centrosocialismo"
(oltreche' radicali, diessini, eccetera) nei confronti dell'UCK, il sito
internet del CRJ veniva censurato da "Isole nella Rete" e ci veniva
negato l'accesso ai servizi di posta elettronica.
Oltre a continuare l'attivita' in rete tramite alcuni server gratuiti,
venivano riprese le trasmissioni radiofoniche sull'emittente romana
"Radio Citta' Aperta" e tenuti occasionali interventi su altre emittenti
e nel corso di altre iniziative. Alla fine dell'anno, grazie al sostegno
dei compagni di Marx2001 e Nuova Unita', avevamo ripreso uno spazio
stabile in rete ed una attivita' di controinformazione particolarmente
intensa attraverso gli indirizzi http://www.marx2001.org e
crj@...
Il 1999 si apriva in un clima pesantissimo. Gia' all'inizio dell'estate
precedente avevamo indicato la realta' della minaccia incombente da
parte della NATO, ed ora nuovissime operazioni di disinformazione
strategica e cecchinaggio diplomatico ("strage" di Racak, "accordi" di
Rambouillet) prefiguravano l'interventismo del nostro paese e degli
altri della Alleanza Atlantica. A partire dal mese di marzo eravamo
soggetti ad una attivita' frenetica, sia in rete sia con la
partecipazione a trasmissioni ed iniziative pubbliche, sia nella
produzione di materiali di controinformazione - ad esempio con il
Comitato Unitario contro la guerra imperialista alla Jugoslavia
costituitosi a Roma.
Verso la fine dei bombardamenti, durante la manifestazione di
Aviano del 6 giugno, alcuni nostri attivisti "colpevoli" di
sventolare la bandiera della RFSJ subivano una aggressione da
parte dei settori "centrosocialisti" di cui sopra. Piu' recentemente,
nell'ambito di una operazione della Procura della Repubblica
di Pordenone per azioni di danneggiamento avvenute in zona di Aviano,
un nostro esponente ed altri compagni di realta' a noi molto vicine
venivano perquisiti ed indagati benche' fossero assolutamente
estranei ai fatti.
> Il lavoro continua
Veniamo dunque ai giorni nostri. Come si e' visto, piu' il tempo passa,
piu' il gioco si fa pesante. Non potendo ribattere nel merito di quello
che andiamo dicendo - sulle cause della crisi nei Balcani, sulla deriva
autoritaria nei paesi europei, sui crimini commessi da militari e
leaders politici quali l'attuale Presidente del Consiglio D'Alema, sul
neocolonialismo nei Balcani e fino al Caucaso, eccetera - i nostri
avversari cercano di colpire noi e tutto il movimento internazionalista
ed antiimperialista attraverso la repressione, le provocazioni,
l'operato dei loro "servi stupidi" che fanno capo a qualche ritrovo di
fumatori di spinelli o a qualche redazione di giornaletti di
autoproclamata sinistra.
Intanto l'onda lunga della guerra di aggressione contro la Repubblica
Federale di Jugoslavia continua, in termini di pericoli per la pace, e
continua allora anche il nostro impegno. Ricordiamo in particolare il
lavoro per la istituzione della sezione italiana del Tribunale
Indipendente contro i crimini di guerra della NATO, cui aderiamo, e
l'attivita', come gruppo o individualmente, in varie altre iniziative
contro la guerra (Comitato di solidarieta' alla popolazione jugoslava e
raccolta fondi per la Zastava di Kragujevac, Comitato Scienziate/i
contro la guerra, "Un ponte per...", eccetera).
Ma continua soprattutto l'opera di controinformazione. Su "Radio Citta'
Aperta" (a Roma e nel Lazio FM 88.900) la trasmissione "Voce Jugoslava"
va avanti, ogni martedi alle ore 13, a parte occasionali variazioni nel
palinsesto. Al nostro bollettino telematico e' dedicata una attenzione
crescente: esso viene ricevuto e ri-usato da individualita' e gruppi
internazionalisti, come e' giusto, benche' i documenti che facciamo
circolare continuino ad essere apparentemente ignorati dagli ambienti
politici ufficiali (compreso il PRC, nel cui seno sopravvive un settore
antijugoslavo ed affezionato all'irredentismo panalbanese) e dai
giornalisti "che contano". Il sito internet si arricchisce lentamente,
anche se la natura volontaria del nostro lavoro non ci consente di
aggiornarlo tanto spesso quanto sarebbe necessario.
In generale, benche' con grave ritardo, l'interpretazione jugoslavista
della vicende balcaniche guadagna spazio tra militanti e nell'opinione
pubblica. Questo peraltro avviene con difficolta' a causa dei danni
causati dal pensiero "politicamente corretto" (cioe'
liberal-secessionista e razzista antiserbo) diffuso a spron battente da
influenti quotidiani come "Il Manifesto" nei primi anni del conflitto; e
sfortunatamente la "correzione di rotta" attuale e' duvuta proprio alla
estrema drammaticita' degli avvenimenti ed all'accanimento imperialista
a fare a pezzi ancora tutto cio' che resta di un paese, comprese tante
vite umane.
Rispetto a questo, restano troppo indietro proprio gli jugoslavi, per la
loro difficolta' a coordinarsi e per la incredibile stratificazione di
divisioni interne (specialmente nel frastagliatissimo mondo serbo e dei
serbi in esilio).
Il riscontro che riceviamo per il nostro lavoro e' reale, ma
discontinuo. Abbiamo l'impressione che la nostra attivita' desti
aspettative svariate, talvolta contraddittorie: ognuno ha interesse per
una problematica diversa, vorrebbe trascinarci su questo o su quel
versante. Qualcuno si lamenta perche' inviamo troppi documenti, qualcun
altro ci richiede ancora questo e quest'altro.
> La sinistra antiimperialista in Italia
In qualche maniera poi, attraverso le nostre comunicazioni per via
telematica come anche attraverso tutti gli altri contatti, abbiamo "il
polso" della situazione della sinistra antiimperialista italiana nel suo
complesso. Il quadro che ne emerge e' preoccupante per la tendenza
cronica alla discontinuita' ed alla disgregazione, tendenza che nemmeno
episodi gravi come la guerra della primavera 1999 riescono ad invertire.
Sperimentiamo una commistione di settarismi, "settarismi al contrario"
(cioe' determinati da un apparente antisettarismo per cui si escludono
tutta una serie di interlocutori), difficolta' tutte personalistiche nei
rapporti con individui e gruppi, nonche' la sostanziale disabitudine a
basare l'analisi e la prassi politica su basi scientifiche piuttosto che
su slogan superficiali e passioni estemporanee, a privilegiare il rigore
del metodo e delle conoscenze piuttosto che le sparate velleitarie.
E' vero che esiste una vera e propria BALCANIZZAZIONE della sinistra
italiana nel suo complesso, all'interno della quale convivono ad esempio
interpretazioni diametralmente opposte dei fatti jugoslavi (dai
sostenitori dell'UCK a quelli che piangono la morte di Arkan come un
"compagno"), che affonda le sue radici proprio nella deriva
anti-ideologica ed anti-razionale degli ultimi anni, nella
disinformazione e nell'abbandono delle chiavi di interpretazione
marxiste. Ma esiste anche un sostanziale caos nella - ben piu'
delimitata e delimitabile - scena antiimperialista, sul piano
organizzativo-pratico piu' che su quello analitico-ideologico; un caos
che emerge con accenti paradossali negli ambienti marxisti-leninisti,
dove l'interpretazione dei fatti e' univoca e salda ma la litigiosita'
tra individui e gruppi e' feroce. Una situazione che pesa notevolmente
sulle possibilita' di costruzione di una organizzazione politica dei
comunisti nel nostro paese.
Noi non intendiamo occuparci di tutto: siamo nati, e probabilmente
termineremo la nostra attivita', incentrandoci sulle vicende della
Jugoslavia federativa e socialista. Tuttavia, il nostro lavoro ci porta
necessariamente ad affrontare anche altre questioni e tutti i nodi
presenti nella sinistra italiana, sul fronte antiimperialista, ed anche
in gran parte del mondo della cultura. Speriamo che qualcuno di questi
nodi si sciolga nel futuro prossimo, possibilmente in modo non troppo
doloroso... Per quanto ci riguarda, la nostra piu' grande ambizione e'
scomparire come Coordinamento Romano per la Jugoslavia una volta che le
drammatiche ragioni per cui ci siamo costituiti verranno meno!
Con i migliori auguri l'anno 2000... ma solo a chi ama la Jugoslavia,
la unita' e la fratellanza fra tutti i popoli!
Smrt fasizmu, sloboda narodu!
Italo Slavo, gennaio 2000
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
* Kosovo: dopo la guerra, gli affari ("La Rinascita della Sinistra")
* Stupro etnico all'americana ("Il Manifesto", 18/01/2000)
* Triplo omicidio, escalation di violenza (AFP 17/01/2000)
* Trasferito a Mannheim il "peacekeeper" stupratore ed omicida (Reuters)
* Hanno fatto saltare in aria ancora un'altra chiesa ortodossa (AP)
* Sconfinamenti dell'UCKFOR nella Serbia centrale (New York Times)
* Anche i cattolici in Kosmet sono presi di mira (CWNews.com/Fides)
* Arsenale sequestrato a casa del fratello di Thaci "il serpente"
(Nandotimes.com)
===
Il seguente contributo appare sull'ultimo numero di "La Rinascita della
sinistra":
KOSOVO: DOPO LA GUERRA, GLI AFFARI
Finita la guerra, il Kosovo stato sostanzialmente scaricato dai mass
media italiani: ben poca eco suscitano le provocazioni, gli eccidi,
l'esodo forzato di Serbi, Rom ed Ebrei kosovari, cos“ come la nascita di
un "governo provvisorio" kosovaro-albanese patrocinato dal capo della
missione Kfor B. Kouchner, senza alcuna legittimazione democratica e in
totale disprezzo degli accordi internazionali.
Ancora meno si conosce sulla spartizione neo-coloniale delle ricchezze
della regione, benchŽ numerose multinazionali siano giˆ alacremente
all'opera. Ne scrive (su "Solidaire" del 1/12/1999) il belga Michel
Collon, autore nel '98 di "Poker Menteur", un fondamentale
libro-inchiesta riguardante la disinformazione sui conflitti
interjugoslavi.
A Pec, la filiale Zastava produce parti dei camion Iveco. Nessuna
sorpresa che la cittˆ sia divenuta il quartier generale del contingente
italiano, cui sono state affidate le chiavi della ditta.
Coincidenza? Le miniere di Trepca, uno dei principali volani
dell'economia jugoslava, erano state sottoposte negli ultimi anni a una
parziale privatizzazione che aveva visto fronteggiarsi la francese SCMM
e la holding del miliardario greco Mitilineos. Quest'ultimo, alla fine,
l'aveva spuntata, ma disgraziatamente Trepca stata occupata proprio
dal
contingente francese, che ha immediatamente sospeso i rappresentanti
greci dal Consiglio di impresa, in vista di una futura "corte arbitrale"
("Danas").
A dire il vero, il presidente dell'Assemblea degli azionisti, il serbo
B. Milanovic, ha fatto presente come la miniera, proprietˆ di gruppi di
azionisti e non dello Stato jugoslavo, non rientri nella giurisdizione
della Kfor, ma i suoi argomenti non sono parsi convincenti, tanto pi
che
il "governo provvisorio" albanese-kosovaro di H. Thaqi ha reclamato
Trepca come proprietˆ di un ancora formalmente inesistente "stato
albanese"... A chi darˆ ragione Kouchner?
Scenario simile per petrolio ed elettricitˆ: le istallazioni petrolifere
di Nis e quelle della societˆ elettrica EPS fanno parte del settore
inglese. Se ne occuperanno le societˆ britanniche British Power, Nat
West
e Bankers Trust. Agli amministratori e agli operai serbi, evidentemente
ormai superflui, stato dato il benservito.
A Suva Reka la ditta Balkan produce pneumatici per camion in
collaborazione con la Deutsche Kontinental. Per cementare tali
promettenti sinergie, l'area stata affidata al contingente germanico,
cos“ come la zona dei vigneti kosovari sfruttati da aziende vinicole
tedesche.
Gli americani si sono invece aggiudicati i minerali strategici di Novo
Brdo e la cittˆ di Gnjilane con la sua famosa fabbrica di pile, alcune
delle quali sono utilizzate dalla Nasa. Sempre a Gnjilane si trova la
fabbrica di tabacco TIG (recentemente insignita in Francia del Premio
mondiale qualitˆ), giˆ sotto contratto con la Lucky Strike. Non sarˆ
certo
dispiaciuto agli investitori che le squadracce UCK habbiano ripulito dai
Serbi una cittadina cos“ fiorente.
G. Carpi
===
"Il Manifesto", 18/01/2000:
Kosovo, stupro etnico all'americana
Violentata e uccisa da un soldato Usa una bambina albanese.
- R. ES. - PRISTINA
Quotidiani agguati contro le minoranze etniche, negli ultimi due giorni
sono stati assassinati quattro serbi e un "collaborazionista" albanese,
corrente elettrica ed attività economiche a singhiozzo, la giustizia che
non decolla. Per l'amministrazione Onu-Nato del Kosovo la prova di
questi
sei mesi non potrebbe essere più disastrosa. Ci mancava solo che un
militare Usa venisse accusato di violenza sessuale ed omicidio di una
ragazzina albanese di 11 anni; è accaduto anche questo nelle ultime
convulse
giornate.
Le forza americane "non risparmieranno gli sforzi per assicurare che
sulla
vicenda sia fatta giustizia", è l'impegno assunto dal comandante del
contingente Usa in Kosovo, generale Ricardo Sanchez, in una lettera ai
parenti dalla bambina uccisa. Il militare accusato si chiama Frank
Ronghi, 35
anni, ha il grado di sergente presso il 405mo reggimento paracadutisti.
Domenica è stato trasferito al penitenziario militare di Mannheim, in
Germania, dove sarà processato da una corte marziale statunitense. Sul
suo capo
pende l'accusa di "omicidio" preceduto da "atti osceni" sulla bimba, il
cui cadavere è stato trovato venerdì scorso nella campagna adiacente
alla città di Vitina, nel Kosovo orientale, una zona di "competenza"
degli
americani della Kfor.
Il padre della bimba, Hamdi Shabiu, ha riferito di aver visto per
l'ultima
volta la figlia giovedì mattina quando era uscita per andare a fare la
spesa al mercato; i vicini sostengono che la bimba è stata uccisa nello
scantinato di un condominio dall'altra parte della strada, ora
presidiato
da soldati americani. "Me l'hanno uccisa a 20 metri da casa, aveva solo
11
anni e mezzo", ha mormorato ai giornalisti il padre, mostrando una foto
del cadavere della figlia, con il viso coperto di graffi ed ecchimosi e
un
vistoso taglio sulla fronte. Nel tentativo di ricucire lo strappo con la
comunità albanese - che non nasce ieri, leggere al proposito il
reportage
qui accanto - il generale Sanchez si è precipitato domenica a Vitina per
dialogare con gli anziani e le autorità locali e portare le condoglianze
alla famiglia della piccola vittima. "Si tratta di un atto criminale, ma
isolato", ha cercato di giustificarsi il generale.
Si allunga intanto la scia degli omicidi etnici. Soltanto domenica
quattro
serbi sono rimasti vittima di attentati. Tre di loro, che tornavano a
casa
dalla vicina Serbia, sono stati fermati a un passo dal "confine" da un
commando di "sconosciuti" a un passo dal villaggio di Pasjane, nel
Kosovo
orientale, ed uccisi a sangue freddo. A Pertes, un altro paese vicino,
200
serbi, esasperati, sono scesi in piazza alla notizia del triplice
omicidio. Come sempre, la polizia dell'Unmik - la missione dell'Onu -
"brancola
nel buio". A Urosevac invece è stata una pattuglia della Kfor a portare
d'urgenza in ospedale un serbo ferito da arma da fuoco, mentre era alla
guida della sua auto. E' morto poco dopo il ricovero. E ieri dall'altra
parte
del "confine", a Vranje in Serbia, è stato freddato un
"collaborazionista"
albanese, Chemalj Mustafi, iscritto al Partito socialista di Milosevic e
preside della scuola locale.
===
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
Tuesday, January 18 3:17 AM SGT
Triple Kosovo killing deals blow to returning Serbs
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Jan 17 (AFP) -
International attempts to encourage Kosovo Serbs to return to unruly
Kosovo suffered a blow with the killing of three Serbs near the border
with Serbia.
Ethnic violence also appeared to have spilled over the internal frontier
between Kosovo and Serbia proper Monday with the slaying of two Serbs on
the other side of the boundary. The attacks were blamed by Serb
authorities on ethnic Albanians crossing from Kosovo.
Sunday's triple murder of men trying to reach their village of Pasjane,
near the southern town of Gnjilane came as representatives of the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned against any large scale
Serbian return.
UNHCR spokesman Peter Kessler described the Kosovo as "extremely tense"
and said "there have been a series of disturbing incidents recently."
He cited the killing of four Muslim Slavs from the same family in the
southern town of Prizren last week, the torching of eight Serb houses in
the same area and the murder of a Croatian Serb refugee on January 6.
A bus service between Nis in southern Serbia and the Serb village of
Gracanica on the southern outskirts of Kosovo's capital Pristina was
stoned by ethnic Albanians last week, he said.
Philip Anido, spokesman for the international peacekeeping force KFOR,
said it was too early to say if Sunday's killings would affect attempts
to encourage Serbs to return to a multi-ethnic Kosovo.
The UNHCR was less equivalent. Kessler said: "The time is not yet right
for large-scale return of non-Albanian refugees. Any return has to be an
individual decision but security cannot be guaranteed."
Up to 200 Serbs demonstrated peacefully in the Serbian village of
Partes, near Pasjane, on hearing news of Sunday's killing, UN police
said.
One person was helping police with inquiries into the attack, said
Anido.
Up to 250,000 non-Albanians fled Kosovo after NATO drove Serbian forces
out of the Yugoslav province last June and KFOR took over security under
UN administration.
Since then Serbs have suffered almost daily attacks in revenge for
Belgrade's oppression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.
Investigators have so far unearthed the bodies of some 2,000 Kosovar
Albanian victims, while at least 800,000 were expelled.
Kessler warned that returning Serbs may also end up as internally
displaced persons in Kosovo as they cannot always return to their homes,
many of which have been taken over by ethnic Albanians.
Many remaining Serbs moved into enclaves where they live under KFOR
protection.
Last month KFOR commander General Klaus Reinhardt unveiled new security
measures to tackle ethnic violence, including bringing educational and
health facilities closer to Serb communities to cut travel risks.
But Kessler said young Serbs returning still face educational problems,
given the lack of Serbian-language high schools and universities in
Kosovo.
Jobs would also be hard to come by in the ruined economy, he said, with
most large companies still shut, while those that do open are unlikely
to employ Serbo-Croat speakers.
"The situation could also become dangerous in the spring as people go
out into the fields again to sow their crops," he said.
The western internal boundary has been tense since three Serb police
were killed by a landmine in November. Belgrade blamed ethnic Albanian
"terrorists."
On Monday Chemalj Mustafi, 53, a school principal and official of the
Socialist party of Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic was shot
dead close to Bujanovac near the boundary, Yugoslav news agency Beta
said.
A 75-year-old woman was injured in a separate hand grenade attack, Beta
said.
===
Monday January 17 3:12 PM ET
U.S. Soldier in Kosovo Murder Case Moved to Germany By Andrew Gray
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier held on murder and
indecency charges over the killing of a 12-year-old girl in Kosovo has
been transferred to a military prison in Germany, U.S. forces said
Monday.
Staff Sergeant Frank Ronghi, 35, was charged Sunday with murder and
indecent acts with a child. Officers said then they planned to transfer
him to the prison in Germany.
They did not give any reason but it seems likely they thought it prudent
to get him out of Kosovo quickly to minimize the chance of any adverse
local reaction. Ronghi served with the Third Battalion of the 504th
Parachute Infantry Regiment, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., but currently
stationed in Vitina in eastern Kosovo. The name of his hometown has not
been made public.
Officers Monday released the text of a condolence letter sent to the
family of the ethnic Albanian girl by Brigadier General Ricardo Sanchez,
the commander of U.S. forces in Kosovo.
``We can only imagine the irreparable loss that you have suffered and
fully realize there is little we can say to help in this moment of
sorrow,´´ Sanchez wrote in his letter, expressing sympathy on behalf
of the U.S. military.
``I did not know your daughter, but as a father, I feel a deep sense of
loss and can imagine your pain,´´ the U.S. army general, who has
four children, said in the letter hand- delivered to the family Sunday.
``The Department of the Army will spare no effort in bringing this
matter to justice,´´ he assured the family. A spokesman at Camp
Bondsteel, the main base for U.S. forces in Kosovo who serve as part of
the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force, said he was not aware exactly when
Ronghi was transferred to Mannheim, southern Germany. But the move was
now complete.
``He´s already been transferred to Mannheim,´´ the spokesman
confirmed.
U.S. Mission Chief Expresses Deep Shock U.S. soldiers found the body of
the girl, Merite Shabiu, about two miles outside Vitina Thursday
evening, U.S. forces have said. Ronghi was immediately detained. The
girl's exact cause of death has not been released but officers have
confirmed she was attacked. The charges against Ronghi also allege an
indecent act for ``sexual gratification or stimulation´´ took place.
Whether the girl was also raped is part of the ongoing investigation, a
spokeswoman for U.S. forces said Sunday.
Larry Rossin, the head of the U.S. government office in the Kosovo
capital Pristina, expressed deep shock at the murder. ``I want to
strongly emphasize that this was an isolated, individual act of
violence,´´ Rossin added in a statement. The girl´s murder has
prompted shock and some complaints in Vitina, a town of around 15,000
people, about the general behavior of U.S. troops. But there have been
no reports so far of any large-scale demonstrations of anti-U.S.
sentiment.
Although no longer met with the euphoria which marked their arrival,
KFOR troops are generally given a warm reception by Kosovo's majority
ethnic Albanians who see them as a guarantee against the return of the
Serb forces which repressed them.
===
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
Blast Destroys Serb Church in Kosovo
The Associated Press
Saturday, Jan. 15, 2000; 6:47 a.m. EST
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- An explosive destroyed half of a Serb Orthodox
church in southeastern Kosovo early Saturday, the independent Beta news
agency reported.
The explosion that ripped through the St. Elias church, built in 1912 in
the ethnically
mixed village of Cernica, 20 miles southeast of the province's capital
Pristina, also
damaged three houses owned by local Serbs and heightened tensions in the
part of Kosovo patrolled by U.S. members of the NATO-led peacekeeping
force.
Nobody was hurt in the village, shared by some 450 Serbs and about 3,000
ethnic Albanians.
Serbs and the Orthodox Church have repeatedly blamed Kosovo Albanians
for the destruction of more than 50 Serb churches since Serb forces
pulled out of the province last summer at the end of NATO bombing, and
the NATO-led peacekeepers moved in.
Ethnic Albanians have targeted Serbs in revenge for the Serb-led
Yugoslav government's bloody crackdown in the province.
===
The New York Times January 15, 2000
Serbs at Border Complain of Attacks From Kosovo
By CARLOTTA GALL
KURSUMLIJA, Serbia -- The Serbian chief of police here looks weary. For
him the war in Kosovo is not only not over, but has come closer. He says
Albanians from Kosovo are crossing the border into his district in the
adjacent part of Serbia and attacking villagers and the police.
Unlocking the door of his small Yugo car outside the police station, 10
miles from the Kosovo border, he spoke of a land mine explosion that
killed three policemen in November. He said the mine had been laid by
Kosovo Albanians, almost certainly former members of the separatist
Kosovo Liberation Army.
"The K.L.A. is here already," he said with a small shrug, as if it were
no surprise.
If true, that assertion represents a serious problem for the NATO-led
peacekeeping force in Kosovo. The force moved in and took control of
Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, in June after an 11-week NATO
campaign of air strikes to end Serbian repression of Albanians and to
force Serbian troops to withdraw.
Already struggling to contain the postwar violence against Serbs and
other minorities inside Kosovo, the peacekeepers may face a growing
burden of policing a long and porous border to prevent Kosovo Albanians
from carrying out attacks in nearby parts of Serbia.
The Serbian police say there have been at least 16 attacks on Serbian
police officers and villagers in the area near Kosovo since June.
They began with occasional shootings and harassment of villagers by
Albanians straying over the border to steal wood or to settle scores.
But recently there have been more serious and organized attacks that the
Serbian police say indicate guerrilla activity.
The worst attack occurred on Nov. 21, when gunmen opened fire on a
police post near the Serbian village of Prepolac, just a few hundred
yards from a unit of peacekeeping troops on the Kosovo side of the
border.
Shooting continued through the early hours of the morning, and then a
loud explosion resounded through the remote wooded hills. Serbian police
officers traveling back down the mud road from the border to their
headquarters had hit a land mine. Three men were killed in the blast and
six were wounded.
The Serbian police chief, Rodoljub Dosovic, said he had no doubt that
well-trained Albanian guerrillas had placed the mine, in a coordinated
action with the shooting attack on the police post. "They started a
firefight to draw out the police, and another group laid the mine on the
road," he said.
Another attack occurred several weeks later on a road near the town of
Bujanovac, east of Kosovo, when a police car came under fire. Two senior
officers were wounded in the attack, which the police again blamed on
Albanians from Kosovo.
"It was a classic attack, an ambush from both sides of the road," said
Milivoje Mihajlovic, a Serbian journalist who used to be based in
Kosovo. "It reminded me of the K.L.A. attacks on the police in Kosovo in
1998."
When the Serbian military pulled out of Kosovo in June, it moved all
troops and heavy weaponry behind a three-mile buffer zone. The Serbian
police are posted on every road in the area and patrol the back roads
and villages. Many of them are from Kosovo and served there for years.
They take the attacks in stride. It has been part of the job for several
years, one said.
The villagers in this area appear more alarmed. Some are moving out of
the villages closest to the border, and all are calling for a stronger
police presence.
In the town hall in Kursumlija, Mayor Borivoje Urosevic pulled out a
detailed map of his district, which has a 60-mile boundary with Kosovo.
There is no Albanian population in this area, he said, but five Serbian
villages have been abandoned as residents have come under repeated
attack from Albanians from Kosovo. "There is no day without an attack,"
he said.
Six people have been killed since June, including the three policemen
near Prepolac, and seven people wounded, he said.
The level of violence remains low compared with that of neighboring
Kosovo, but the growing use of explosives shows a more organized intent,
Mayor Urosevic said. On Dec. 12 two young men narrowly missed injury
when their tractor drove over a mine outside the border village of
Merdare.
"This is the K.L.A.," the mayor said. "This is organized. Robbery is not
the motive as it was earlier. It is pressure to make the Serbs move from
their territory." The peacekeepers, he added, "must prevent these
attacks, because we have people being displaced from the area."
Ljubica Aleksic was the last to leave the now abandoned village of
Tacevac.
The police used to patrol daily, he said, but after the land mine
incident they were reluctant to drive up the roads. The Albanians are
bolder than before, he said, because they know that the Serbian police
cannot pursue them over the border into Kosovo.
"They want to take advantage of the woods to clear the area of the
border, so there are no more Serbs there anymore," Mr. Aleksic said.
On the other side of the border, in Kosovo, Albanian villagers have
returned to rebuild their houses under the protection of peacekeepers
but remain nervous with the Serbian police so close. When shooting broke
out near the Kosovo village of Donje Dubnica recently, several families
fled their homes for the day.
They said they did not dare venture to cut wood on the Serbian side.
When prompted, they acknowledged that young men who had fought in the
war were slipping across the border to attack the Serbian police.
Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, the German commander of the peacekeeping force,
played down the issue in an interview, as did the British officer in
charge of operations in the border area. Both appeared confident that
their border controls and covert operations were sufficient.
"I cannot prevent everyone who wants to go across, except by mining to a
maximum," General Reinhardt said. "And we are busy trying to demine the
place."
===========================
The Committee for National Solidarity
Tolstojeva 34, 11000 Belgrade, YU
12-Jan-00 -- EWTN News Brief
KOSOVO CHRISTIANS TARGETED BY EXTREMIST MUSLIMS
PRISTINA, Kosovo (CWNews.com/Fides) - Christians in
Kosovo are being increasingly targeted by
fundamentalist Muslims and Kosovar magistrates don't
know which law to apply, according to Father Mato
Jakovic, coordinator of the Jesuit Relief Service
(JRS) in Macedonia and Kosovo.
Father Jakovic says episodes of maltreatment of
Catholics are ever more frequent, and families of
priests are also targeted. He said -- without
revealing the name of the place -- that on December 6
the homes of relatives of two Franciscans were
torched. In his most recent report Father Jakovic said
that Catholic cemeteries in Prizren and Pec have been
destroyed and the vandals -- still unidentified --
profaned the graves of Bishop Nikola Prela and
Monsignor Nikola Mini.
In the meantime, attacks against Kosovar Serbs
continue. On January 9, a Serb was shot dead in front
of his home at Gnjilane in east Kosovo. A spokesman of
the UN Mission MINUK said the aggressors spoke
Albanian. On the same day, two Serb homes were set on
fire, one in Pristina and another at Kosovo Polje. At
least 250,000 Serbs and Rom gypsies have left the area
since last March and those who remain live in small
protected enclaves in Gnjilane and Kosovo Polje, but
constantly fear being attacked.
Secretary General
Mrs. Jela Jovanovic
Art historian
===========================
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Arms, money seized at house of Kosovo leader's brother
Associated Press
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (January 6, 2000 2:41 p.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) - A brother of Kosovo Albanian leader Hashim
Thaci has been charged with illegal possession of weapons and released
from detention, sources said Thursday.
Gani Thaci, whose brother was the political head of the now disbanded
Kosovo Liberation Army, was released Wednesday after U.N. police
detained him for firing a gun from an apartment, the United Nations said
in a statement.
He was arrested Tuesday. The U.N. statement made no mention of any
charges, which were confirmed by U.N. and NATO sources on condition they
not be named.
The sources also said that $791,000 was confiscated from the apartment,
along with weapons.
In a separate incident, Hashim Thaci's personal bodyguard was also
briefly detained Wednesday during a search for illegal weapons in a
Pristina cafe, the United Nations said.
Hashim Thaci's office declined comment Thursday, saying he had no
connection to either incident.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
------------------------------------------------------------
* Stupro etnico all'americana ("Il Manifesto", 18/01/2000)
* Triplo omicidio, escalation di violenza (AFP 17/01/2000)
* Trasferito a Mannheim il "peacekeeper" stupratore ed omicida (Reuters)
* Hanno fatto saltare in aria ancora un'altra chiesa ortodossa (AP)
* Sconfinamenti dell'UCKFOR nella Serbia centrale (New York Times)
* Anche i cattolici in Kosmet sono presi di mira (CWNews.com/Fides)
* Arsenale sequestrato a casa del fratello di Thaci "il serpente"
(Nandotimes.com)
===
Il seguente contributo appare sull'ultimo numero di "La Rinascita della
sinistra":
KOSOVO: DOPO LA GUERRA, GLI AFFARI
Finita la guerra, il Kosovo stato sostanzialmente scaricato dai mass
media italiani: ben poca eco suscitano le provocazioni, gli eccidi,
l'esodo forzato di Serbi, Rom ed Ebrei kosovari, cos“ come la nascita di
un "governo provvisorio" kosovaro-albanese patrocinato dal capo della
missione Kfor B. Kouchner, senza alcuna legittimazione democratica e in
totale disprezzo degli accordi internazionali.
Ancora meno si conosce sulla spartizione neo-coloniale delle ricchezze
della regione, benchŽ numerose multinazionali siano giˆ alacremente
all'opera. Ne scrive (su "Solidaire" del 1/12/1999) il belga Michel
Collon, autore nel '98 di "Poker Menteur", un fondamentale
libro-inchiesta riguardante la disinformazione sui conflitti
interjugoslavi.
A Pec, la filiale Zastava produce parti dei camion Iveco. Nessuna
sorpresa che la cittˆ sia divenuta il quartier generale del contingente
italiano, cui sono state affidate le chiavi della ditta.
Coincidenza? Le miniere di Trepca, uno dei principali volani
dell'economia jugoslava, erano state sottoposte negli ultimi anni a una
parziale privatizzazione che aveva visto fronteggiarsi la francese SCMM
e la holding del miliardario greco Mitilineos. Quest'ultimo, alla fine,
l'aveva spuntata, ma disgraziatamente Trepca stata occupata proprio
dal
contingente francese, che ha immediatamente sospeso i rappresentanti
greci dal Consiglio di impresa, in vista di una futura "corte arbitrale"
("Danas").
A dire il vero, il presidente dell'Assemblea degli azionisti, il serbo
B. Milanovic, ha fatto presente come la miniera, proprietˆ di gruppi di
azionisti e non dello Stato jugoslavo, non rientri nella giurisdizione
della Kfor, ma i suoi argomenti non sono parsi convincenti, tanto pi
che
il "governo provvisorio" albanese-kosovaro di H. Thaqi ha reclamato
Trepca come proprietˆ di un ancora formalmente inesistente "stato
albanese"... A chi darˆ ragione Kouchner?
Scenario simile per petrolio ed elettricitˆ: le istallazioni petrolifere
di Nis e quelle della societˆ elettrica EPS fanno parte del settore
inglese. Se ne occuperanno le societˆ britanniche British Power, Nat
West
e Bankers Trust. Agli amministratori e agli operai serbi, evidentemente
ormai superflui, stato dato il benservito.
A Suva Reka la ditta Balkan produce pneumatici per camion in
collaborazione con la Deutsche Kontinental. Per cementare tali
promettenti sinergie, l'area stata affidata al contingente germanico,
cos“ come la zona dei vigneti kosovari sfruttati da aziende vinicole
tedesche.
Gli americani si sono invece aggiudicati i minerali strategici di Novo
Brdo e la cittˆ di Gnjilane con la sua famosa fabbrica di pile, alcune
delle quali sono utilizzate dalla Nasa. Sempre a Gnjilane si trova la
fabbrica di tabacco TIG (recentemente insignita in Francia del Premio
mondiale qualitˆ), giˆ sotto contratto con la Lucky Strike. Non sarˆ
certo
dispiaciuto agli investitori che le squadracce UCK habbiano ripulito dai
Serbi una cittadina cos“ fiorente.
G. Carpi
===
"Il Manifesto", 18/01/2000:
Kosovo, stupro etnico all'americana
Violentata e uccisa da un soldato Usa una bambina albanese.
- R. ES. - PRISTINA
Quotidiani agguati contro le minoranze etniche, negli ultimi due giorni
sono stati assassinati quattro serbi e un "collaborazionista" albanese,
corrente elettrica ed attività economiche a singhiozzo, la giustizia che
non decolla. Per l'amministrazione Onu-Nato del Kosovo la prova di
questi
sei mesi non potrebbe essere più disastrosa. Ci mancava solo che un
militare Usa venisse accusato di violenza sessuale ed omicidio di una
ragazzina albanese di 11 anni; è accaduto anche questo nelle ultime
convulse
giornate.
Le forza americane "non risparmieranno gli sforzi per assicurare che
sulla
vicenda sia fatta giustizia", è l'impegno assunto dal comandante del
contingente Usa in Kosovo, generale Ricardo Sanchez, in una lettera ai
parenti dalla bambina uccisa. Il militare accusato si chiama Frank
Ronghi, 35
anni, ha il grado di sergente presso il 405mo reggimento paracadutisti.
Domenica è stato trasferito al penitenziario militare di Mannheim, in
Germania, dove sarà processato da una corte marziale statunitense. Sul
suo capo
pende l'accusa di "omicidio" preceduto da "atti osceni" sulla bimba, il
cui cadavere è stato trovato venerdì scorso nella campagna adiacente
alla città di Vitina, nel Kosovo orientale, una zona di "competenza"
degli
americani della Kfor.
Il padre della bimba, Hamdi Shabiu, ha riferito di aver visto per
l'ultima
volta la figlia giovedì mattina quando era uscita per andare a fare la
spesa al mercato; i vicini sostengono che la bimba è stata uccisa nello
scantinato di un condominio dall'altra parte della strada, ora
presidiato
da soldati americani. "Me l'hanno uccisa a 20 metri da casa, aveva solo
11
anni e mezzo", ha mormorato ai giornalisti il padre, mostrando una foto
del cadavere della figlia, con il viso coperto di graffi ed ecchimosi e
un
vistoso taglio sulla fronte. Nel tentativo di ricucire lo strappo con la
comunità albanese - che non nasce ieri, leggere al proposito il
reportage
qui accanto - il generale Sanchez si è precipitato domenica a Vitina per
dialogare con gli anziani e le autorità locali e portare le condoglianze
alla famiglia della piccola vittima. "Si tratta di un atto criminale, ma
isolato", ha cercato di giustificarsi il generale.
Si allunga intanto la scia degli omicidi etnici. Soltanto domenica
quattro
serbi sono rimasti vittima di attentati. Tre di loro, che tornavano a
casa
dalla vicina Serbia, sono stati fermati a un passo dal "confine" da un
commando di "sconosciuti" a un passo dal villaggio di Pasjane, nel
Kosovo
orientale, ed uccisi a sangue freddo. A Pertes, un altro paese vicino,
200
serbi, esasperati, sono scesi in piazza alla notizia del triplice
omicidio. Come sempre, la polizia dell'Unmik - la missione dell'Onu -
"brancola
nel buio". A Urosevac invece è stata una pattuglia della Kfor a portare
d'urgenza in ospedale un serbo ferito da arma da fuoco, mentre era alla
guida della sua auto. E' morto poco dopo il ricovero. E ieri dall'altra
parte
del "confine", a Vranje in Serbia, è stato freddato un
"collaborazionista"
albanese, Chemalj Mustafi, iscritto al Partito socialista di Milosevic e
preside della scuola locale.
===
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
Tuesday, January 18 3:17 AM SGT
Triple Kosovo killing deals blow to returning Serbs
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Jan 17 (AFP) -
International attempts to encourage Kosovo Serbs to return to unruly
Kosovo suffered a blow with the killing of three Serbs near the border
with Serbia.
Ethnic violence also appeared to have spilled over the internal frontier
between Kosovo and Serbia proper Monday with the slaying of two Serbs on
the other side of the boundary. The attacks were blamed by Serb
authorities on ethnic Albanians crossing from Kosovo.
Sunday's triple murder of men trying to reach their village of Pasjane,
near the southern town of Gnjilane came as representatives of the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned against any large scale
Serbian return.
UNHCR spokesman Peter Kessler described the Kosovo as "extremely tense"
and said "there have been a series of disturbing incidents recently."
He cited the killing of four Muslim Slavs from the same family in the
southern town of Prizren last week, the torching of eight Serb houses in
the same area and the murder of a Croatian Serb refugee on January 6.
A bus service between Nis in southern Serbia and the Serb village of
Gracanica on the southern outskirts of Kosovo's capital Pristina was
stoned by ethnic Albanians last week, he said.
Philip Anido, spokesman for the international peacekeeping force KFOR,
said it was too early to say if Sunday's killings would affect attempts
to encourage Serbs to return to a multi-ethnic Kosovo.
The UNHCR was less equivalent. Kessler said: "The time is not yet right
for large-scale return of non-Albanian refugees. Any return has to be an
individual decision but security cannot be guaranteed."
Up to 200 Serbs demonstrated peacefully in the Serbian village of
Partes, near Pasjane, on hearing news of Sunday's killing, UN police
said.
One person was helping police with inquiries into the attack, said
Anido.
Up to 250,000 non-Albanians fled Kosovo after NATO drove Serbian forces
out of the Yugoslav province last June and KFOR took over security under
UN administration.
Since then Serbs have suffered almost daily attacks in revenge for
Belgrade's oppression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.
Investigators have so far unearthed the bodies of some 2,000 Kosovar
Albanian victims, while at least 800,000 were expelled.
Kessler warned that returning Serbs may also end up as internally
displaced persons in Kosovo as they cannot always return to their homes,
many of which have been taken over by ethnic Albanians.
Many remaining Serbs moved into enclaves where they live under KFOR
protection.
Last month KFOR commander General Klaus Reinhardt unveiled new security
measures to tackle ethnic violence, including bringing educational and
health facilities closer to Serb communities to cut travel risks.
But Kessler said young Serbs returning still face educational problems,
given the lack of Serbian-language high schools and universities in
Kosovo.
Jobs would also be hard to come by in the ruined economy, he said, with
most large companies still shut, while those that do open are unlikely
to employ Serbo-Croat speakers.
"The situation could also become dangerous in the spring as people go
out into the fields again to sow their crops," he said.
The western internal boundary has been tense since three Serb police
were killed by a landmine in November. Belgrade blamed ethnic Albanian
"terrorists."
On Monday Chemalj Mustafi, 53, a school principal and official of the
Socialist party of Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic was shot
dead close to Bujanovac near the boundary, Yugoslav news agency Beta
said.
A 75-year-old woman was injured in a separate hand grenade attack, Beta
said.
===
Monday January 17 3:12 PM ET
U.S. Soldier in Kosovo Murder Case Moved to Germany By Andrew Gray
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier held on murder and
indecency charges over the killing of a 12-year-old girl in Kosovo has
been transferred to a military prison in Germany, U.S. forces said
Monday.
Staff Sergeant Frank Ronghi, 35, was charged Sunday with murder and
indecent acts with a child. Officers said then they planned to transfer
him to the prison in Germany.
They did not give any reason but it seems likely they thought it prudent
to get him out of Kosovo quickly to minimize the chance of any adverse
local reaction. Ronghi served with the Third Battalion of the 504th
Parachute Infantry Regiment, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., but currently
stationed in Vitina in eastern Kosovo. The name of his hometown has not
been made public.
Officers Monday released the text of a condolence letter sent to the
family of the ethnic Albanian girl by Brigadier General Ricardo Sanchez,
the commander of U.S. forces in Kosovo.
``We can only imagine the irreparable loss that you have suffered and
fully realize there is little we can say to help in this moment of
sorrow,´´ Sanchez wrote in his letter, expressing sympathy on behalf
of the U.S. military.
``I did not know your daughter, but as a father, I feel a deep sense of
loss and can imagine your pain,´´ the U.S. army general, who has
four children, said in the letter hand- delivered to the family Sunday.
``The Department of the Army will spare no effort in bringing this
matter to justice,´´ he assured the family. A spokesman at Camp
Bondsteel, the main base for U.S. forces in Kosovo who serve as part of
the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force, said he was not aware exactly when
Ronghi was transferred to Mannheim, southern Germany. But the move was
now complete.
``He´s already been transferred to Mannheim,´´ the spokesman
confirmed.
U.S. Mission Chief Expresses Deep Shock U.S. soldiers found the body of
the girl, Merite Shabiu, about two miles outside Vitina Thursday
evening, U.S. forces have said. Ronghi was immediately detained. The
girl's exact cause of death has not been released but officers have
confirmed she was attacked. The charges against Ronghi also allege an
indecent act for ``sexual gratification or stimulation´´ took place.
Whether the girl was also raped is part of the ongoing investigation, a
spokeswoman for U.S. forces said Sunday.
Larry Rossin, the head of the U.S. government office in the Kosovo
capital Pristina, expressed deep shock at the murder. ``I want to
strongly emphasize that this was an isolated, individual act of
violence,´´ Rossin added in a statement. The girl´s murder has
prompted shock and some complaints in Vitina, a town of around 15,000
people, about the general behavior of U.S. troops. But there have been
no reports so far of any large-scale demonstrations of anti-U.S.
sentiment.
Although no longer met with the euphoria which marked their arrival,
KFOR troops are generally given a warm reception by Kosovo's majority
ethnic Albanians who see them as a guarantee against the return of the
Serb forces which repressed them.
===
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
Blast Destroys Serb Church in Kosovo
The Associated Press
Saturday, Jan. 15, 2000; 6:47 a.m. EST
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- An explosive destroyed half of a Serb Orthodox
church in southeastern Kosovo early Saturday, the independent Beta news
agency reported.
The explosion that ripped through the St. Elias church, built in 1912 in
the ethnically
mixed village of Cernica, 20 miles southeast of the province's capital
Pristina, also
damaged three houses owned by local Serbs and heightened tensions in the
part of Kosovo patrolled by U.S. members of the NATO-led peacekeeping
force.
Nobody was hurt in the village, shared by some 450 Serbs and about 3,000
ethnic Albanians.
Serbs and the Orthodox Church have repeatedly blamed Kosovo Albanians
for the destruction of more than 50 Serb churches since Serb forces
pulled out of the province last summer at the end of NATO bombing, and
the NATO-led peacekeepers moved in.
Ethnic Albanians have targeted Serbs in revenge for the Serb-led
Yugoslav government's bloody crackdown in the province.
===
The New York Times January 15, 2000
Serbs at Border Complain of Attacks From Kosovo
By CARLOTTA GALL
KURSUMLIJA, Serbia -- The Serbian chief of police here looks weary. For
him the war in Kosovo is not only not over, but has come closer. He says
Albanians from Kosovo are crossing the border into his district in the
adjacent part of Serbia and attacking villagers and the police.
Unlocking the door of his small Yugo car outside the police station, 10
miles from the Kosovo border, he spoke of a land mine explosion that
killed three policemen in November. He said the mine had been laid by
Kosovo Albanians, almost certainly former members of the separatist
Kosovo Liberation Army.
"The K.L.A. is here already," he said with a small shrug, as if it were
no surprise.
If true, that assertion represents a serious problem for the NATO-led
peacekeeping force in Kosovo. The force moved in and took control of
Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, in June after an 11-week NATO
campaign of air strikes to end Serbian repression of Albanians and to
force Serbian troops to withdraw.
Already struggling to contain the postwar violence against Serbs and
other minorities inside Kosovo, the peacekeepers may face a growing
burden of policing a long and porous border to prevent Kosovo Albanians
from carrying out attacks in nearby parts of Serbia.
The Serbian police say there have been at least 16 attacks on Serbian
police officers and villagers in the area near Kosovo since June.
They began with occasional shootings and harassment of villagers by
Albanians straying over the border to steal wood or to settle scores.
But recently there have been more serious and organized attacks that the
Serbian police say indicate guerrilla activity.
The worst attack occurred on Nov. 21, when gunmen opened fire on a
police post near the Serbian village of Prepolac, just a few hundred
yards from a unit of peacekeeping troops on the Kosovo side of the
border.
Shooting continued through the early hours of the morning, and then a
loud explosion resounded through the remote wooded hills. Serbian police
officers traveling back down the mud road from the border to their
headquarters had hit a land mine. Three men were killed in the blast and
six were wounded.
The Serbian police chief, Rodoljub Dosovic, said he had no doubt that
well-trained Albanian guerrillas had placed the mine, in a coordinated
action with the shooting attack on the police post. "They started a
firefight to draw out the police, and another group laid the mine on the
road," he said.
Another attack occurred several weeks later on a road near the town of
Bujanovac, east of Kosovo, when a police car came under fire. Two senior
officers were wounded in the attack, which the police again blamed on
Albanians from Kosovo.
"It was a classic attack, an ambush from both sides of the road," said
Milivoje Mihajlovic, a Serbian journalist who used to be based in
Kosovo. "It reminded me of the K.L.A. attacks on the police in Kosovo in
1998."
When the Serbian military pulled out of Kosovo in June, it moved all
troops and heavy weaponry behind a three-mile buffer zone. The Serbian
police are posted on every road in the area and patrol the back roads
and villages. Many of them are from Kosovo and served there for years.
They take the attacks in stride. It has been part of the job for several
years, one said.
The villagers in this area appear more alarmed. Some are moving out of
the villages closest to the border, and all are calling for a stronger
police presence.
In the town hall in Kursumlija, Mayor Borivoje Urosevic pulled out a
detailed map of his district, which has a 60-mile boundary with Kosovo.
There is no Albanian population in this area, he said, but five Serbian
villages have been abandoned as residents have come under repeated
attack from Albanians from Kosovo. "There is no day without an attack,"
he said.
Six people have been killed since June, including the three policemen
near Prepolac, and seven people wounded, he said.
The level of violence remains low compared with that of neighboring
Kosovo, but the growing use of explosives shows a more organized intent,
Mayor Urosevic said. On Dec. 12 two young men narrowly missed injury
when their tractor drove over a mine outside the border village of
Merdare.
"This is the K.L.A.," the mayor said. "This is organized. Robbery is not
the motive as it was earlier. It is pressure to make the Serbs move from
their territory." The peacekeepers, he added, "must prevent these
attacks, because we have people being displaced from the area."
Ljubica Aleksic was the last to leave the now abandoned village of
Tacevac.
The police used to patrol daily, he said, but after the land mine
incident they were reluctant to drive up the roads. The Albanians are
bolder than before, he said, because they know that the Serbian police
cannot pursue them over the border into Kosovo.
"They want to take advantage of the woods to clear the area of the
border, so there are no more Serbs there anymore," Mr. Aleksic said.
On the other side of the border, in Kosovo, Albanian villagers have
returned to rebuild their houses under the protection of peacekeepers
but remain nervous with the Serbian police so close. When shooting broke
out near the Kosovo village of Donje Dubnica recently, several families
fled their homes for the day.
They said they did not dare venture to cut wood on the Serbian side.
When prompted, they acknowledged that young men who had fought in the
war were slipping across the border to attack the Serbian police.
Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, the German commander of the peacekeeping force,
played down the issue in an interview, as did the British officer in
charge of operations in the border area. Both appeared confident that
their border controls and covert operations were sufficient.
"I cannot prevent everyone who wants to go across, except by mining to a
maximum," General Reinhardt said. "And we are busy trying to demine the
place."
===========================
The Committee for National Solidarity
Tolstojeva 34, 11000 Belgrade, YU
12-Jan-00 -- EWTN News Brief
KOSOVO CHRISTIANS TARGETED BY EXTREMIST MUSLIMS
PRISTINA, Kosovo (CWNews.com/Fides) - Christians in
Kosovo are being increasingly targeted by
fundamentalist Muslims and Kosovar magistrates don't
know which law to apply, according to Father Mato
Jakovic, coordinator of the Jesuit Relief Service
(JRS) in Macedonia and Kosovo.
Father Jakovic says episodes of maltreatment of
Catholics are ever more frequent, and families of
priests are also targeted. He said -- without
revealing the name of the place -- that on December 6
the homes of relatives of two Franciscans were
torched. In his most recent report Father Jakovic said
that Catholic cemeteries in Prizren and Pec have been
destroyed and the vandals -- still unidentified --
profaned the graves of Bishop Nikola Prela and
Monsignor Nikola Mini.
In the meantime, attacks against Kosovar Serbs
continue. On January 9, a Serb was shot dead in front
of his home at Gnjilane in east Kosovo. A spokesman of
the UN Mission MINUK said the aggressors spoke
Albanian. On the same day, two Serb homes were set on
fire, one in Pristina and another at Kosovo Polje. At
least 250,000 Serbs and Rom gypsies have left the area
since last March and those who remain live in small
protected enclaves in Gnjilane and Kosovo Polje, but
constantly fear being attacked.
Secretary General
Mrs. Jela Jovanovic
Art historian
===========================
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Arms, money seized at house of Kosovo leader's brother
Associated Press
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (January 6, 2000 2:41 p.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) - A brother of Kosovo Albanian leader Hashim
Thaci has been charged with illegal possession of weapons and released
from detention, sources said Thursday.
Gani Thaci, whose brother was the political head of the now disbanded
Kosovo Liberation Army, was released Wednesday after U.N. police
detained him for firing a gun from an apartment, the United Nations said
in a statement.
He was arrested Tuesday. The U.N. statement made no mention of any
charges, which were confirmed by U.N. and NATO sources on condition they
not be named.
The sources also said that $791,000 was confiscated from the apartment,
along with weapons.
In a separate incident, Hashim Thaci's personal bodyguard was also
briefly detained Wednesday during a search for illegal weapons in a
Pristina cafe, the United Nations said.
Hashim Thaci's office declined comment Thursday, saying he had no
connection to either incident.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
------------------------------------------------------------
>
> La ragione dei serbi
>
> Sabato 29 Gennaio 2000 - ore 15,00
> CASA DEL POPOLO (CANDILEJAS)
> Via Bentini, 29 - Bologna
> BUS 27/A
> 4 chiacchere e 1 videotape
> su una guerra dal vago sapore di crociata che forse si poteva evitare:
> "...sempre ci stupisce l'inaudita scoperta che qualcuno ha pensato
> non già più lontano di noi, ma diverso da noi..."
>
> Interverrano:
> - Prof. Aldo Bernardini, Docente di Diritto Internazionale
> Università di Teramo
> - Sig.ra Gordana Glisic, Pres. Assoc. d'Amicizia Italia - Jugoslavia
> - Dott Fulvio Grimaldi, Giornalista
> - Prof. Dragos Kalajic, Direttore Istituto Geopolitico di Belgrado
> - Prof. Claudio Moffa, Docente di Storia e Istituzioni Paesi Afro-Asiatici
> Università di Teramo
>
> lnfo: Cristina 0338.2576525 E-mail: zannaecris@...
>
> "LA RAGIONE DEI SERBI": PERCHE'?
> Tante cose sono state dette e scritte dai mass-media occidentali su quanto è
> accaduto e accade nei paesi balcanici in questi ultimi anni; eppure
> basterebbe un veloce passaggio, anche solo un week-end, nella capitale serba
> per avere la sensazione che molto è stato distorto e/o manipolato, non si sa
> quanto arbitrariamente, da tutte le fonti di informazione di influenza Nato.
> Già poche settimane dopo la fine della guerra sono comparsi diversi articoli
> (anche canadesi ed americani) che hanno messo in dubbio la veridicità delle
> informazioni relative ai presunti genocidi attuati dalle milizie jugoslave
> ai danni della popolazione kossovara, informazioni che da sole
> giustificavano il violento intervento delle forze Nato.
> L'entrata in guerra delle forze alleate era veramente necessaria oppure si è
> voluto rispondere ad una necessità di carattere economico imposta dal
> neo-liberismo imperante? Forse potrebbe essere utile sentire le ragioni di
> chi, in questi anni, è stato dall'altra parte della barricata: le ragioni
> dei serbi.
>
> ASSOCIAZIONE D'AMICIZIA ITALO-JUGOSLAVA
>
> Costituitasi nello scorso mese di settembre al fine di riallacciare i
> rapporti tra i due paesi interrotti bruscamente a causa della guerra,
> l'associazione si pone come obiettivo prioritario la realizzazione di
> progetti a scopo umanitario
> e socio-culturale quali, ad esempio, l'invio di medicinali e beni di prima
> necessità, la collaborazione con il centro culturale italiano di Belgrado,
> l'organizzazione di concerti, mostre, avvenimenti sportivi e quant'altro
> possa contribuire al ripristino dell'equilibrio sociale tra le due nazioni.
> Qui è rappresentata dalla Sig.ra GORDANA GLISIC Presidente dell'Associazione.
>
> PROF. ALDO BERNARDINI
> Docente di diritto internazionale presso l'Università di Teramo, è stato
> Direttore dello Istituto Giuridico della Facoltà di Scienze Politiche,
> quindi Preside della stessa dal 1972 al 1979, Rettore dell'Università di
> Chieti daI 1979 al 1985.
> Autore di libri, saggi, articoli di diritto e politica tra i quali
> "Questione Iraq-Kuwait" ha ultimamente pubblicato un saggio sul rapporto con
> la Costituzione italiana del
> Patto di stabilità dell'Unione Europea. Ha partecipato a diverse relazioni e
> convegni in tutto il mondo, Parigi, Berlino Est, Baghdad, Pyongyang, Mosca.
> Ha tenuto alcune lezioni all'Università di Baghdad. E stato collaboratore
> della Società Italiana per l'organizzazione Internazionale, e redattore di
> periodici quali "La Comunità Internazionale".
>
> DR. FULVIO GRIMALDI
> Giornalista dal 1962, redattore presso la BBC a Londra e corrispondente da
> Londra per Panorama e Paese Sera. Inviato di Paese Sera e poi di Giorni -
> Vie Nuove, settimanale del PCI.
> Direttore di Lotta Continua, giornalista di varie testate straniere e
> inviato RAI dal 1986 al 1989.
> Si è occupato eminentemente di questioni internazionali, delle lotte
> antimperialiste e di ambiente.
> Ha seguito tutte le guerre mediorientali e la lotta irlandese fin dall'inizio.
> Ha visitato molti paesi del terzo mondo per scrivere di neocolonialismo,
> neoliberismo e lotte di liberazione. Autore di diversi libri, ha realizzato
> video sul Chiapas, sul Vietnam, sull'Iraq, sui profughi palestinesi in
> Libano, su Cuba, sul sud-est asiatico e sulla Jugoslavia "Il popolo
> invisibile" e "Serbi da morire" che verrà presentato nel corso del l'incontro.
> Attualmente scrive una rubrica quotidiana su Liberazione e una settimanale
> su "Ultime Notizie".
> Negli ultimi mesi ha dedicato particolare attenzione alla
> contro-informazione sulla Jugoslavia.
>
> PROF. DRAGOS KALAJIC
> Nato a Belgrado nel 1943. Diplomato presso l'Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma
> in Storia dell'Arte, dagli anni sessanta è
> presente sulla scena culturale e politica jugoslava con una serie di saggi
> ed analisi regolarmente recensiti dalla stampa russa. Ha ottenuto diversi
> riconoscimenti tra cui, nel 1994, il premio annuale della rivista
> dell'associazione degli scrittori russi.
> Nel 1997 ha fondato a Belgrado, con alti ufficiali dell'esercito jugoslavo,
> l'istituto di Studi Geopolitici.
> Negli anni dal 1992 al 1995 è stato corrispondente di guerra della stampa
> jugoslava, in Republika Srpska Krajina e Republika Srpska, rispettivamente
> in Croazia e in Bosnia-Herzegovina
> E' senatore della Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
> E' membro onorario dell'Associazione degli Scrittori Russi.
>
> PROF. CLAUDIO MOFFA
> Docente di Storia ed Istituzioni dei Paesi Afro-Asiatici all'Università di
> Teramo. Politologo, esperto delle questioni "nazionali" nell'età
> contemporanea ed autore de "La questione nazionale dopo la decolonizzazione.
> Per una rilettura del principio di autodecisione nazionale" (Quaderni
> Internazionali, 1989).
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
> La ragione dei serbi
>
> Sabato 29 Gennaio 2000 - ore 15,00
> CASA DEL POPOLO (CANDILEJAS)
> Via Bentini, 29 - Bologna
> BUS 27/A
> 4 chiacchere e 1 videotape
> su una guerra dal vago sapore di crociata che forse si poteva evitare:
> "...sempre ci stupisce l'inaudita scoperta che qualcuno ha pensato
> non già più lontano di noi, ma diverso da noi..."
>
> Interverrano:
> - Prof. Aldo Bernardini, Docente di Diritto Internazionale
> Università di Teramo
> - Sig.ra Gordana Glisic, Pres. Assoc. d'Amicizia Italia - Jugoslavia
> - Dott Fulvio Grimaldi, Giornalista
> - Prof. Dragos Kalajic, Direttore Istituto Geopolitico di Belgrado
> - Prof. Claudio Moffa, Docente di Storia e Istituzioni Paesi Afro-Asiatici
> Università di Teramo
>
> lnfo: Cristina 0338.2576525 E-mail: zannaecris@...
>
> "LA RAGIONE DEI SERBI": PERCHE'?
> Tante cose sono state dette e scritte dai mass-media occidentali su quanto è
> accaduto e accade nei paesi balcanici in questi ultimi anni; eppure
> basterebbe un veloce passaggio, anche solo un week-end, nella capitale serba
> per avere la sensazione che molto è stato distorto e/o manipolato, non si sa
> quanto arbitrariamente, da tutte le fonti di informazione di influenza Nato.
> Già poche settimane dopo la fine della guerra sono comparsi diversi articoli
> (anche canadesi ed americani) che hanno messo in dubbio la veridicità delle
> informazioni relative ai presunti genocidi attuati dalle milizie jugoslave
> ai danni della popolazione kossovara, informazioni che da sole
> giustificavano il violento intervento delle forze Nato.
> L'entrata in guerra delle forze alleate era veramente necessaria oppure si è
> voluto rispondere ad una necessità di carattere economico imposta dal
> neo-liberismo imperante? Forse potrebbe essere utile sentire le ragioni di
> chi, in questi anni, è stato dall'altra parte della barricata: le ragioni
> dei serbi.
>
> ASSOCIAZIONE D'AMICIZIA ITALO-JUGOSLAVA
>
> Costituitasi nello scorso mese di settembre al fine di riallacciare i
> rapporti tra i due paesi interrotti bruscamente a causa della guerra,
> l'associazione si pone come obiettivo prioritario la realizzazione di
> progetti a scopo umanitario
> e socio-culturale quali, ad esempio, l'invio di medicinali e beni di prima
> necessità, la collaborazione con il centro culturale italiano di Belgrado,
> l'organizzazione di concerti, mostre, avvenimenti sportivi e quant'altro
> possa contribuire al ripristino dell'equilibrio sociale tra le due nazioni.
> Qui è rappresentata dalla Sig.ra GORDANA GLISIC Presidente dell'Associazione.
>
> PROF. ALDO BERNARDINI
> Docente di diritto internazionale presso l'Università di Teramo, è stato
> Direttore dello Istituto Giuridico della Facoltà di Scienze Politiche,
> quindi Preside della stessa dal 1972 al 1979, Rettore dell'Università di
> Chieti daI 1979 al 1985.
> Autore di libri, saggi, articoli di diritto e politica tra i quali
> "Questione Iraq-Kuwait" ha ultimamente pubblicato un saggio sul rapporto con
> la Costituzione italiana del
> Patto di stabilità dell'Unione Europea. Ha partecipato a diverse relazioni e
> convegni in tutto il mondo, Parigi, Berlino Est, Baghdad, Pyongyang, Mosca.
> Ha tenuto alcune lezioni all'Università di Baghdad. E stato collaboratore
> della Società Italiana per l'organizzazione Internazionale, e redattore di
> periodici quali "La Comunità Internazionale".
>
> DR. FULVIO GRIMALDI
> Giornalista dal 1962, redattore presso la BBC a Londra e corrispondente da
> Londra per Panorama e Paese Sera. Inviato di Paese Sera e poi di Giorni -
> Vie Nuove, settimanale del PCI.
> Direttore di Lotta Continua, giornalista di varie testate straniere e
> inviato RAI dal 1986 al 1989.
> Si è occupato eminentemente di questioni internazionali, delle lotte
> antimperialiste e di ambiente.
> Ha seguito tutte le guerre mediorientali e la lotta irlandese fin dall'inizio.
> Ha visitato molti paesi del terzo mondo per scrivere di neocolonialismo,
> neoliberismo e lotte di liberazione. Autore di diversi libri, ha realizzato
> video sul Chiapas, sul Vietnam, sull'Iraq, sui profughi palestinesi in
> Libano, su Cuba, sul sud-est asiatico e sulla Jugoslavia "Il popolo
> invisibile" e "Serbi da morire" che verrà presentato nel corso del l'incontro.
> Attualmente scrive una rubrica quotidiana su Liberazione e una settimanale
> su "Ultime Notizie".
> Negli ultimi mesi ha dedicato particolare attenzione alla
> contro-informazione sulla Jugoslavia.
>
> PROF. DRAGOS KALAJIC
> Nato a Belgrado nel 1943. Diplomato presso l'Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma
> in Storia dell'Arte, dagli anni sessanta è
> presente sulla scena culturale e politica jugoslava con una serie di saggi
> ed analisi regolarmente recensiti dalla stampa russa. Ha ottenuto diversi
> riconoscimenti tra cui, nel 1994, il premio annuale della rivista
> dell'associazione degli scrittori russi.
> Nel 1997 ha fondato a Belgrado, con alti ufficiali dell'esercito jugoslavo,
> l'istituto di Studi Geopolitici.
> Negli anni dal 1992 al 1995 è stato corrispondente di guerra della stampa
> jugoslava, in Republika Srpska Krajina e Republika Srpska, rispettivamente
> in Croazia e in Bosnia-Herzegovina
> E' senatore della Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
> E' membro onorario dell'Associazione degli Scrittori Russi.
>
> PROF. CLAUDIO MOFFA
> Docente di Storia ed Istituzioni dei Paesi Afro-Asiatici all'Università di
> Teramo. Politologo, esperto delle questioni "nazionali" nell'età
> contemporanea ed autore de "La questione nazionale dopo la decolonizzazione.
> Per una rilettura del principio di autodecisione nazionale" (Quaderni
> Internazionali, 1989).
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
"IL CONVERTITO E' PEGGIO DEL TURCO" (PROVERBIO SLAVO)
Jack Straw, un tempo tra i piu' attivi capelloni del movimento "hippy"
britannico, e' diventato uno dei ministri degli Interni piu' odiosi e
reazionari che la storia della Gran Bretagna ricordi. Straw si sta
costruendo una immagine da fautore della "tolleranza zero", ad esempio
in fatto di droghe leggere, e contemporaneamente impedisce che la
giustizia faccia il suo corso nel caso di criminali conclamati. Dopo i
tentennamenti relativi all'estradizione dell'anziano criminale nazista
lituano Konrad Kalejs, Straw sta dando il peggio di se per impedire la
consegna del ben noto dittatore cileno Pinochet. Eppure Straw - che a
difesa di Pinochet adduce "ragioni umanitarie" in perfetto spregio della
Convenzione Europea sulla Estradizione del 1957 ed in base ad un referto
medico tenuto segreto - 34 anni fa fece persino un viaggio di
solidarieta' internazionalista nel Cile di Allende.
(Fonti: Reuters 14/01/2000; Dichiarazione della Associazione Americana
dei Giuristi - http://www.presos.org/italia )
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
Jack Straw, un tempo tra i piu' attivi capelloni del movimento "hippy"
britannico, e' diventato uno dei ministri degli Interni piu' odiosi e
reazionari che la storia della Gran Bretagna ricordi. Straw si sta
costruendo una immagine da fautore della "tolleranza zero", ad esempio
in fatto di droghe leggere, e contemporaneamente impedisce che la
giustizia faccia il suo corso nel caso di criminali conclamati. Dopo i
tentennamenti relativi all'estradizione dell'anziano criminale nazista
lituano Konrad Kalejs, Straw sta dando il peggio di se per impedire la
consegna del ben noto dittatore cileno Pinochet. Eppure Straw - che a
difesa di Pinochet adduce "ragioni umanitarie" in perfetto spregio della
Convenzione Europea sulla Estradizione del 1957 ed in base ad un referto
medico tenuto segreto - 34 anni fa fece persino un viaggio di
solidarieta' internazionalista nel Cile di Allende.
(Fonti: Reuters 14/01/2000; Dichiarazione della Associazione Americana
dei Giuristi - http://www.presos.org/italia )
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
HUMANITARIAN WAR:
MAKING THE CRIME FIT THE PUNISHMENT
by Diana Johnstone
www.emperors-clothes.com
The order of events is strange. On March 24, 1999, the
NATO forces led by the United States began an
eleven-week-long punishment of Yugoslavia's President,
Slobodan Milosevic, which amounted to capital punishment
for an undetermined number of citizens of that
unfortunate country. Two months later, on May 27, the
U.S.-backed International Criminal Tribunal for former
Yugoslavia issued an indictment of Milosevic for "crimes
against humanity" having occurred after the punishment
began. Then, in late June, the Clinton administration
dispatched 56 forensic experts from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation to Kosovo to gather material evidence of
the crimes for which Milosevic and five of his colleagues
had already been indicted and for which his country had
already been severely and durably punished.
The FBI had no instructions to search for evidence of
crimes as such, including those that might have been
committed by, say, armed rebels fighting against the
established government of Yugoslavia. The only crimes of
interest were those for which Milosevic had previously
been accused, and all evidence was assumed in advance to
point to his guilt.
Thus the world entered the new age of humanitarian
vigilante power.
At the end of World War II, a world political system was
put in place to outlaw war. In its triumph as sole
superpower destined to govern the world, the United
States is currently striving to replace the system that
outlaws war by a system that uses war to punish outlaws.
Who the outlaws are is decided by the United States.
Alongside economic globalization, this vigilante system
corresponds to a dominant American world view of a
capitalist system inherently capable of meeting all human
needs, marred only by the wrongdoings of evil outcasts.
At home and abroad, the social effort to bring everybody
into a community of equal rights and obligations is
abandoned in favour of universal competition in which the
rich winners exclude the losers from society itself. On
the domestic scene, as the rich get richer, the
well-to-do escape from the very sight of the poor by
moving into gated communities, social programs are cut,
while prisons and execution chambers fill up. Punishment,
even vengeance, are popular values.
Twenty years ago, the United Nations and its agencies
provided a political forum for discussions of such
matters as a "new economic order" or a "new information
order" that might seek to narrow the enormous gap between
the rich Atlantic world and most of the rest of the
planet. All that is past, and today, the United Nations
is instrumentalized by the United States to pursue
dissident States which it has chosen to brand as rogues,
terrorists or criminals. Capitalist competition is being
forced onto the entire world as the supreme law by new
bodies such as the World Trade Organization. NATO-land is
a gated community whose armed forces are being prepared
to intervene worldwide, at the bidding of Washington, to
defend members' interests, in the name of the war against
crimes against humanity.
The Clinton Doctrine
The NATO war against Yugoslavia marks a great leap
forward toward the depoliticization and criminalization
of international relations. In the case of the similar
war against Iraq, the regime of Saddam Hussein was in
fact a military dictatorship, which did in fact violate
international law by invading Kuwait (leaving aside
eventual extenuating circumstances), and the United
States did obtain a mandate from the United Nations
Security Council for at least some (but not all) of its
military operations. In the case of Yugoslavia, the
military operations were carried out without U.N. mandate
against a state with an elected civilian government,
which had not violated international law.
NATO's war, directed from Washington, was intended as a
pure demonstration that the United States could make or
break the law. For it was Yugoslavia, which had not
violated international law, that was branded a criminal
State. Already on November 5, 1998, the American
presiding judge at the International Criminal Tribunal
for former Yugoslavia, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, described
Yugoslavia as "a rogue state, one that holds the
international rule of law in contempt". During the
bombing, U.S. and British leaders regularly compared
Milosevic to Hitler. And afterwards, the U.S. Senate on
June 30 adopted a bill describing Yugoslavia as "a
terrorist State", in the total absence of any of the
usual criteria for such a designation. The United States
is free both to commit crimes, and to criminalize its
adversaries. Might is sure of being right.
"A Clinton Doctrine of humanitarian warfare is taking
place", rejoiced (1) columnist Jim Hoagland, a leading
voice in the chorus of syndicated columnists who have
nagged away at the President to get up the gumption to
lead NATO through the Balkans into a brave new
millennium. This "doctrine" is not quite as spontaneous
as it is made to seem by the media chorus which portrays
Uncle Sam as a reluctant Hamlet generously stumbling into
greatness.
Since the end of the Cold War, United States leaders have
been searching for a grand new design to replace the
containment doctrine developed after World War II. To
this end, the oligarchy that formulates American foreign
policy has been hard at work in its various exclusive
venues such as the Council on Foreign Relations, private
clubs, larger assemblages such as the Trilateral
Commission (which specializes in the great American
ruling class art of selective co-optation and conversion
of potential critics), and a myriad of institutes,
foundations and "think tanks", overlapping with a half
dozen of the most prestigious universities and, of
course, the boards of directors of major corporations and
financial institutions. All are united by an unshakable
conviction that what is good for the United States (and
the business of the United States is business) is good
for the world. American policy-makers may be more or less
generous or cynical, crafty or forthright, but all
necessarily share the conviction that the system which
has made America great and powerful should be bestowed on
the rest of an often undeserving and recalcitrant world.
There is no conflict between this conviction and ruthless
pursuit of economic self-interest; they are part of the
same mindset.
None better epitomizes the combined power and good
conscience of American capitalism than the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, founded in 1910 by the
Scottish-American steel king Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
who recycled part of his vast rags-to-riches fortune into
philanthropic enterprises. It is fitting that in
formulating the Doctrine of Humanitarian Warfare now
attributed to Clinton, a major ideological role appears
to have been played by the Carnegie Endowment under the
presidency of Morton I. Abramowitz (2).
The Importance of War Crimes
In May 1997, three months after taking office as U.S.
Secretary of State, Madeleine Korbel Albright created a
new post, ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues. The
creation of the post indicated the crucial importance of
"war crimes" in Albright's foreign policy. Two days
later, crime was linked to punishment as she delivered
her first policy speech on Bosnia to senior military
officers aboard an aircraft carrier in the Hudson River.
These gestures showed that the first woman Secretary of
State was out to demonstrate the serious meaning of her
famous remark, "What's the use of having the world's
greatest military force if you don't use it?"
Albright and the man named to the new "war crimes" post,
David Scheffer, were putting into practice new policy
concepts they had helped develop before Clinton was
elected President, and before the war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, when they had been part of what a
privileged observer (3) recently described as "a small
foreign policy elite convened by the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace to change U.S. foreign policy
after the Cold War."
During the last years of the Bush administration, the
Carnegie Endowment for Peace was confronting the major
question raised by the collapse of the Soviet bloc: what
new mission could save NATO, the necessary instrument for
U.S. leadership in Europe? And it found an answer:
humanitarian intervention. Reports by group members
Albright, Richard Holbrooke and Leon Fuerth "recommended
a dramatic escalation of the use of military force to
settle other countries' domestic conflicts." (4)
The Carnegie Endowment's 1992 report entitled "Changing
Our Ways: America's Role in the New World" called for "a
new principle of international relations: the destruction
or displacement of groups of people within states can
justify international intervention". The U.S. was advised
to "realign" NATO and the OSCE to deal with these new
security problems in Europe.
Release of this report, accompanied by policy briefings
of key Democrats and media big shots, was timed to
influence the Democratic presidential campaign. Candidate
Bill Clinton quickly took up the rhetoric, calling for
Milosevic to be tried for "crimes against humanity" and
advocating military intervention against the Serbs.
However, it took several years to put this into practice.
At the Carnegie Endowment, as member of a study group
including Al Gore's foreign policy advisor Leon Fuerth,
David Scheffer had co-authored (with Morton Halperin) a
book-length report on "Self-Determination in the New
World Order" which proposed military intervention as one
of the ways of "responding to international hot spots". A
major question raised was when and to what end the United
States should become involved in a conflict between an
established state and a "self-determination" -- i.e. a
secessionist -- movement. Clearly, the question was not
to be submitted to the United Nations. "The United States
should seek to build a consensus within regional and
international organizations for its position, but should
not sacrifice its own judgment and principles if such a
consensus fails to materialize"(5).
In general, the authors concluded, "the world community
needs to act more quickly and with more determination to
employ military force when it proves necessary and
feasible"(6). But when is this?
When a self-determination claim triggers an armed
conflict that becomes a humanitarian crisis, getting
food, medicine, and shelter to thousands or millions of
civilians becomes an inescapable imperative. A new
intolerance for such human tragedies is becoming evident
in the post-Cold War world and is redefining the
principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of
states (7).
Now, in theory, this sounds almost indisputable. However,
in practice the question becomes one not of theory but of
facts. When does a crisis in fact correspond to this
description, and when, on the contrary, can it simply be
made to seem to correspond to this description?
In the official NATO version, vigorously endorsed by
mainstream media, the Kosovo war was precisely an
instance when "a self-determination claim triggers an
armed conflict that becomes a humanitarian crisis..."
However, there is considerable, indeed overwhelming
evidence that the "self-determination claim" quite
deliberately provoked both the "armed conflict" and the
"humanitarian crisis" precisely in order to bring in, not
humanitarian aid, but military intervention from NATO on
the pretext of humanitarian aid. For there was never any
need of NATO intervention in order to provide food,
medicine and shelter to civilians within Kosovo or before
the NATO bombing. The "humanitarian crisis" was a mirage
until NATO triggered it by the bombing.
But in the culture of images, temporal relationships are
easily obscured. What came before or after what is
forgotten. And with temporal relationship, cause and
effect are lost, along with responsibility.
Can Kosovo be detached from Serbia? "The use of military
force to create a new state would require conduct by the
parent government so egregious that it has forfeited any
right to govern the minority claiming
self-determination"(8). But who decides that conduct is
sufficiently "egregious"?
Clearly, Madeleine Albright was so eager to put these
bold new theories into practice that she worked mightily
to make the crime fit the punishment.
Morton Abramowitz himself, who as Carnegie Endowment
President nurtured Albright, Holbrooke, Fuerth, Scheffer
and the others as they jointly developed Clinton's future
doctrine of "humanitarian warfare", has also played an
active role. In 1997, he passed through the elite
revolving door from the Carnegie Endowment to the Council
on Foreign Relations. He has contributed his wisdom to a
new, high-level think tank, the International Crisis
Group, whose sponsors include governments and omnipresent
financier George Soros. The ICG has been a leading
designer of policy toward Kosovo.
Putting into practice the hypothesis of "a
self-determination claim triggering an armed conflict",
Abramowitz became an early advocate of arming the "Kosovo
Liberation Army"(U?K). At Rambouillet, Abramowitz
discreetly coached the ethnic Albanian delegation headed
by U?K leader Hashim Thaqi (9).
Back in February 1992, before civil war broke out in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, television producer John B. Roberts
II was asked to design a publicity campaign to gain
public support for the soon-to-be-published Carnegie
Endowment recommendations. When he saw that "Changing Our
Ways" proposed "the revolutionary idea that a U.S.-led
military first strike was justified, not to defend the
United States, but to impose highly subjective political
settlements on other countries", that it "discarded
national sovereignty in favour of international
intervention", Roberts "began to regret [his] efforts to
build publicity for the report" (10).
One way or another, the "revolutionary idea" has been
widely propagated during the 1990s. Humanitarian
intervention was an idea whose time had come because it
met a certain number of perceived needs. It provided a
solution to the problem formulated by Senator Richard
Lugar, that once the Cold War ended, NATO must be "either
out of area or out of business". A new missionary mission
not only kept NATO alive, thereby nourishing a vast array
of vested industrial and financial interests, primarily
but not solely in the United States, it also could be
seen as a potential instrument to defend less broadly
perceived geostrategic interests without submitting them
to public controversy.
Humanitarian Realpolitik
When Madeleine Albright took over the State Department
from Warren Christopher in early 1997, her promotion was
presented to the public more as a personal success for a
woman than as a corporate success for a policy design. At
its most informative, The New York Times (11), mentioned
influential policy-makers as if they were benevolent
uncles ready to give encouragement to a lady. Three
months after she took office, it was reported: "Ms.
Albright has reached out for advice. She has talked with
Zbigniew Brzezinski; the departing president of the
Carnegie Endowment, Morton Abramowitz; the philanthropist
George Soros; and Leslie Gelb, president of the Council
on Foreign Relations."
If Abramowitz may be considered the ?minence grise behind
the whole "humanitarian intervention" policy, Brzezinski
provided a geostrategic rationale. Brzezinski has no
inhibitions about using high principles in the power
game. In Paris in January 1998 to promote the French
edition of his book, The Grand Chessboard, he was asked
about an apparent "paradox" between the fact that his
book was steeped in Realpolitik, whereas, in his days as
National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter,
Brzezinski had been the "defender of human rights".
Brzezinski waved the paradox aside. There is none, he
replied. "I elaborated that doctrine in agreement with
President Carter, as it was the best way to destabilize
the Soviet Union. And it worked"(12).
Of course, it took more than nice words about human
rights to destabilize the Soviet Union. It took war. And
Brzezinski was very active on that front. As he told a
second French weekly (13) during his book promotion tour,
the CIA had begun bank-rolling counter- revolutionary
Afghan forces in mid-1979, half a year before the Soviet
Union moved into Afghanistan on a "stabilizing" mission
around New Year's Day 1980. "We did not push the Russians
into intervening, but we knowingly increased the
possibility that they would. That secret operation was an
excellent idea. The effect was to draw the Russians into
the Afghan trap."
Brzezinski rightly felt he could be forthright about such
matters as humanitarian entrapment in Paris, where the
policy elite admires nothing so much in American leaders
as unabashed cynical power politics. This admiration is
most acute when the French are offered a share in it, as
was the case with Brzezinski and his book. France, wrote
Brzezinski, "is an essential partner in the important
task of permanently locking a democratic Germany into
Europe", which means preventing Germany from building its
own separate sphere of influence to the East, possibly
including Russia -- a connection that Brzezinski's policy
recommendations are designed to forestall at all costs.
"This is the historic role of the Franco-German
relationship, and the expansion of both the EU and NATO
eastward should enhance the importance of that
relationship as Europe's inner core. Finally, France is
not strong enough either to obstruct America on the
geostrategic fundamentals of America's European policy or
to become by itself a leader of Europe as such. Hence,
its peculiarities and even its tantrums can be
tolerated"(14).
These assurances may contribute to explaining the mystery
-- as it was widely perceived in other countries -- of
France's strong support to NATO's Kosovo war, second only
to Britain and in disharmony with reactions in Germany
and Italy. That is, the French elite had been given to
understand this war as part of the Brzezinski design for
a transatlantic Europe giving France a politico-military
leadership role offsetting Germany's economic
predominance.
Brzezinski frankly sets the goal for U.S. policy: "to
perpetuate America's own dominant position for at least a
generation and preferably longer still". This involves
creating a "geopolitical framework" around NATO that will
initially include Ukraine and exclude Russia. This will
establish the geostrategic basis for controlling conflict
in what Brzezinski calls "the Eurasian Balkans", the huge
area between the Eastern shore of the Black Sea to China,
which includes the Caspian Sea and its petroleum
resources, a top priority for U.S. foreign policy. In the
policy elites of both Britain and France, perpetuation of
Trans-Atlantic domination could be understood as a way of
preventing a Russo-German rapprochement able to dominate
the continent.
Along with Jeane Kirkpatrick, Frank Carlucci, William
Odom and Stephan Solarz, Brzezinski has joined the
anti-Serb crusade in yet another new Washington policy
shop, the "Balkan Action Council", calling for all-out
war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo.
In the Brzezinski scheme of things, Yugoslavia is a
testing ground and a metaphor for the Soviet Union. In
this metaphor, "Serbia" is Russia, and Croatia, Bosnia,
Kosovo, etc., are Ukraine, the Baltic States, Georgia and
the former Soviet Republics of "the Eurasian Balkans".
This being the case, the successful secession of Croatia
and company from Yugoslavia sets a positive precedent for
maintaining the independence of Ukraine and its
progressive inclusion in the European Union and NATO,
which he sets for the decade 2005-2015 as a "reasonable
time frame".
The little Balkan "Balkans" appear on a map on page 22 of
The Grand Chessboard interestingly shaded in three
gradations representing U.S. geopolitical preponderance
(dark), U.S. political influence (medium) and the
apparent absence of either (white). Darkly shaded (like
the U.S., Canada and Western Europe) are Hungary,
Rumania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Medium shading covers
Slovakia, Moldavia and Ukraine as well as Georgia and
most of the "Eurasian Balkans". Glaringly white, like
Russia, are Yugoslavia and Greece. For Brzezinski,
Belgrade was a potential relay for Moscow. Serbs might be
unaware of this, but in the geostrategic view, they were
only so many surrogate Russians.
Cultural Divides and Caspian Oil
Samuel Huntington's notion of "conflict of
civilizations", by identifying Orthodox Christianity as a
civilization in conflict with the West and its famous
"values", has offered an ideological cover for the
"divide and conquer" strategy, which has less appeal, but
is not incompatible with, the "humanitarian"
justification. It has been taken up by influential (15)
writer Robert D. Kaplan, who sees a "real battle" that is
"drawn along historical-civilizational lines. On the one
side are the Turks, their fellow Azeri Turks in
Azerbaijan, the Israelis and the Jordanians [...]. On the
other side are those who suffered the most historically
from Turkish rule: the Syrian and Iraqi Arabs, the
Armenians, the Greeks and the Kurds"(16). It is not hard
to see whose side the United States must be on in this
battle, or which must be the winning side.
Kaplan places Kosovo "smack in the middle of a very
unstable and important region where Europe joins the
Middle East" while "Europe is redividing along historic
and cultural lines"(17).
"There is a Western, Catholic, Protestant Europe and an
Eastern Orthodox Europe, which is poorer, more
politically unsettled and more ridden with organized
crime. That Orthodox realm has been shut out of NATO and
is angrier by the day, and it is fiercely anti-Moslem",
Kaplan declares.
An oddity of these "cultural divide" projections is that
they find the abyss between Eastern and Western
Christianity far deeper and more unbridgeable than the
difference between Christianity and Islam. The obvious
short, three-letter explanation is "oil". But there is a
complementary explanation that is more truly cultural,
relating to the transnational nature of Islam and to the
importance of its charitable organizations. Steve Niva
(18) has noted a split within the US foreign policy
establishment between conservatives (clearly absent from
the Clinton administration) who see Islam as a threat,
and "neo-liberals" for whom the primary enemy is "any
barrier to free trade and unfettered markets". These
include European leaders, oil companies and Zbigniew
Brzezinski. "Incorporating Islamists into existing
political systems would disperse responsibility for the
state's difficulties while defusing popular opposition to
severe economic `reforms' mandated by the IMF. Islamist
organizations could also help fill the gap caused by the
rollback of welfare states and social services...", Niva
observed.
In any case, all roads lead to the Caspian, and through
Kosovo. Kaplan publicly advises the nation's leaders that
an "amoral reason of self-interest" is needed to persuade
the country to keep troops in the Balkans for years to
come. The reason is clear. "With the Middle East
increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly-over
rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil. But we
will not have those bases in the future if the Russians
reconquer southeast Europe by criminal stealth. Finally,
if we tell our European allies to go it alone in Kosovo,
we can kiss the Western Alliance goodbye"(19).
Looking at a map, one may wonder why it is necessary to
go through Kosovo to obtain Caspian oil. This is a good
question. However, U.S. strategists don't simply want to
obtain oil, which is a simple matter if one has money.
They want to control its flow to the big European market.
The simple way to get Caspian oil is via pipeline
southward through Iran. But that would evade U.S.
control. Or through Russia; just as bad. The preferred
U.S. route, a pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Turkish
Mediterranean port of Ceyhan has been rejected as too
costly. Turkey has vetoed massive oil tanker traffic
through the Bosporus on ecological grounds. That leaves
the Balkans. It seems the U.S. would like to build a
pipeline across the Balkans, no doubt with Bechtel
getting the building contract -- former Bechtel executive
and Reagan administration Defense Secretary Caspar
Weinberger is a leading Kosovo warhawk. Bechtel has
already obtained major contracts in Tudjman's Croatia. It
is interesting that the Danube, likely to fall under
German control, has been blocked for serious transport by
NATO's bombing of Serbia's bridges.
On the way to the Caspian, the next stop after Yugoslavia
could be the big prize: Ukraine, which like the other
former Soviet Republics is already under U.S. influence
through NATO's "Partnership For Peace". Early this year,
asked by a German magazine whether NATO should be the
world policeman, NATO commander Wesley Clark observed
that the "countries on the Caspian Sea are members of the
`Partnership for Peace'. They have the right to consult
NATO in case of threat." Clark "didn't want to speculate
on what NATO might then do..."(20).
Scenarios Reach the TV Screen
As television producer Roberts recalls, it was a
Ukrainian friend who, seeing the implications for his own
country of the Abramowitz humanitarian war plans, set him
to worrying. "If the U.S. endorsed this new foreign
policy principle the potential for international chaos
was immense. Real or trumped up incidents of destruction
or displacement would be grounds for Russian or American
military intervention in dozens of countries where
nothing like a melting pot has ever existed."
"Real or trumped up" -- that is the question. For once so
much is at stake -- nothing less than the future of the
greatest power the world has ever seen -- events are all
too likely to follow the imaginary scenario laid out by
the policy planners.
This can happen in at least three ways.
1 - Reality imitates fiction. It is a common human
psychological phenomenon that people see what they are
looking for, or have been led to expect to see, often
when it is not there. This happens in countless ways. It
may account for desert mirages, or apparitions of the
Virgin, or simple errors of recognition that occur all
the time.
When reporters unfamiliar with the country are sent into
Bosnia or Kosovo to look for evidence of "Serbian war
crimes", and only evidence of Serbian war crimes, that is
what they will find. And if Croats, Muslims and Albanians
who are fighting against the Serbs know that that is what
they are looking for, it will be even easier.
If they are expecting, say, Serbs to be criminals,
everything Serbs say or do will be interpreted in that
light, with greater or less sincerity. Every ambiguous
detail will find its meaning.
2 - Evidence will be trumped up. This is an age-old
practice in war.
3 - Circumstances can be arranged to incite the very
crimes that the power wants to be able to punish. In
police language, this is called entrapment, or a "sting"
operation, and is illegal in many countries, although not
in the United States.
The Kosovo scenario has been advanced in all three ways.
(1. continua)
MAKING THE CRIME FIT THE PUNISHMENT
by Diana Johnstone
www.emperors-clothes.com
The order of events is strange. On March 24, 1999, the
NATO forces led by the United States began an
eleven-week-long punishment of Yugoslavia's President,
Slobodan Milosevic, which amounted to capital punishment
for an undetermined number of citizens of that
unfortunate country. Two months later, on May 27, the
U.S.-backed International Criminal Tribunal for former
Yugoslavia issued an indictment of Milosevic for "crimes
against humanity" having occurred after the punishment
began. Then, in late June, the Clinton administration
dispatched 56 forensic experts from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation to Kosovo to gather material evidence of
the crimes for which Milosevic and five of his colleagues
had already been indicted and for which his country had
already been severely and durably punished.
The FBI had no instructions to search for evidence of
crimes as such, including those that might have been
committed by, say, armed rebels fighting against the
established government of Yugoslavia. The only crimes of
interest were those for which Milosevic had previously
been accused, and all evidence was assumed in advance to
point to his guilt.
Thus the world entered the new age of humanitarian
vigilante power.
At the end of World War II, a world political system was
put in place to outlaw war. In its triumph as sole
superpower destined to govern the world, the United
States is currently striving to replace the system that
outlaws war by a system that uses war to punish outlaws.
Who the outlaws are is decided by the United States.
Alongside economic globalization, this vigilante system
corresponds to a dominant American world view of a
capitalist system inherently capable of meeting all human
needs, marred only by the wrongdoings of evil outcasts.
At home and abroad, the social effort to bring everybody
into a community of equal rights and obligations is
abandoned in favour of universal competition in which the
rich winners exclude the losers from society itself. On
the domestic scene, as the rich get richer, the
well-to-do escape from the very sight of the poor by
moving into gated communities, social programs are cut,
while prisons and execution chambers fill up. Punishment,
even vengeance, are popular values.
Twenty years ago, the United Nations and its agencies
provided a political forum for discussions of such
matters as a "new economic order" or a "new information
order" that might seek to narrow the enormous gap between
the rich Atlantic world and most of the rest of the
planet. All that is past, and today, the United Nations
is instrumentalized by the United States to pursue
dissident States which it has chosen to brand as rogues,
terrorists or criminals. Capitalist competition is being
forced onto the entire world as the supreme law by new
bodies such as the World Trade Organization. NATO-land is
a gated community whose armed forces are being prepared
to intervene worldwide, at the bidding of Washington, to
defend members' interests, in the name of the war against
crimes against humanity.
The Clinton Doctrine
The NATO war against Yugoslavia marks a great leap
forward toward the depoliticization and criminalization
of international relations. In the case of the similar
war against Iraq, the regime of Saddam Hussein was in
fact a military dictatorship, which did in fact violate
international law by invading Kuwait (leaving aside
eventual extenuating circumstances), and the United
States did obtain a mandate from the United Nations
Security Council for at least some (but not all) of its
military operations. In the case of Yugoslavia, the
military operations were carried out without U.N. mandate
against a state with an elected civilian government,
which had not violated international law.
NATO's war, directed from Washington, was intended as a
pure demonstration that the United States could make or
break the law. For it was Yugoslavia, which had not
violated international law, that was branded a criminal
State. Already on November 5, 1998, the American
presiding judge at the International Criminal Tribunal
for former Yugoslavia, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, described
Yugoslavia as "a rogue state, one that holds the
international rule of law in contempt". During the
bombing, U.S. and British leaders regularly compared
Milosevic to Hitler. And afterwards, the U.S. Senate on
June 30 adopted a bill describing Yugoslavia as "a
terrorist State", in the total absence of any of the
usual criteria for such a designation. The United States
is free both to commit crimes, and to criminalize its
adversaries. Might is sure of being right.
"A Clinton Doctrine of humanitarian warfare is taking
place", rejoiced (1) columnist Jim Hoagland, a leading
voice in the chorus of syndicated columnists who have
nagged away at the President to get up the gumption to
lead NATO through the Balkans into a brave new
millennium. This "doctrine" is not quite as spontaneous
as it is made to seem by the media chorus which portrays
Uncle Sam as a reluctant Hamlet generously stumbling into
greatness.
Since the end of the Cold War, United States leaders have
been searching for a grand new design to replace the
containment doctrine developed after World War II. To
this end, the oligarchy that formulates American foreign
policy has been hard at work in its various exclusive
venues such as the Council on Foreign Relations, private
clubs, larger assemblages such as the Trilateral
Commission (which specializes in the great American
ruling class art of selective co-optation and conversion
of potential critics), and a myriad of institutes,
foundations and "think tanks", overlapping with a half
dozen of the most prestigious universities and, of
course, the boards of directors of major corporations and
financial institutions. All are united by an unshakable
conviction that what is good for the United States (and
the business of the United States is business) is good
for the world. American policy-makers may be more or less
generous or cynical, crafty or forthright, but all
necessarily share the conviction that the system which
has made America great and powerful should be bestowed on
the rest of an often undeserving and recalcitrant world.
There is no conflict between this conviction and ruthless
pursuit of economic self-interest; they are part of the
same mindset.
None better epitomizes the combined power and good
conscience of American capitalism than the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, founded in 1910 by the
Scottish-American steel king Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
who recycled part of his vast rags-to-riches fortune into
philanthropic enterprises. It is fitting that in
formulating the Doctrine of Humanitarian Warfare now
attributed to Clinton, a major ideological role appears
to have been played by the Carnegie Endowment under the
presidency of Morton I. Abramowitz (2).
The Importance of War Crimes
In May 1997, three months after taking office as U.S.
Secretary of State, Madeleine Korbel Albright created a
new post, ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues. The
creation of the post indicated the crucial importance of
"war crimes" in Albright's foreign policy. Two days
later, crime was linked to punishment as she delivered
her first policy speech on Bosnia to senior military
officers aboard an aircraft carrier in the Hudson River.
These gestures showed that the first woman Secretary of
State was out to demonstrate the serious meaning of her
famous remark, "What's the use of having the world's
greatest military force if you don't use it?"
Albright and the man named to the new "war crimes" post,
David Scheffer, were putting into practice new policy
concepts they had helped develop before Clinton was
elected President, and before the war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, when they had been part of what a
privileged observer (3) recently described as "a small
foreign policy elite convened by the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace to change U.S. foreign policy
after the Cold War."
During the last years of the Bush administration, the
Carnegie Endowment for Peace was confronting the major
question raised by the collapse of the Soviet bloc: what
new mission could save NATO, the necessary instrument for
U.S. leadership in Europe? And it found an answer:
humanitarian intervention. Reports by group members
Albright, Richard Holbrooke and Leon Fuerth "recommended
a dramatic escalation of the use of military force to
settle other countries' domestic conflicts." (4)
The Carnegie Endowment's 1992 report entitled "Changing
Our Ways: America's Role in the New World" called for "a
new principle of international relations: the destruction
or displacement of groups of people within states can
justify international intervention". The U.S. was advised
to "realign" NATO and the OSCE to deal with these new
security problems in Europe.
Release of this report, accompanied by policy briefings
of key Democrats and media big shots, was timed to
influence the Democratic presidential campaign. Candidate
Bill Clinton quickly took up the rhetoric, calling for
Milosevic to be tried for "crimes against humanity" and
advocating military intervention against the Serbs.
However, it took several years to put this into practice.
At the Carnegie Endowment, as member of a study group
including Al Gore's foreign policy advisor Leon Fuerth,
David Scheffer had co-authored (with Morton Halperin) a
book-length report on "Self-Determination in the New
World Order" which proposed military intervention as one
of the ways of "responding to international hot spots". A
major question raised was when and to what end the United
States should become involved in a conflict between an
established state and a "self-determination" -- i.e. a
secessionist -- movement. Clearly, the question was not
to be submitted to the United Nations. "The United States
should seek to build a consensus within regional and
international organizations for its position, but should
not sacrifice its own judgment and principles if such a
consensus fails to materialize"(5).
In general, the authors concluded, "the world community
needs to act more quickly and with more determination to
employ military force when it proves necessary and
feasible"(6). But when is this?
When a self-determination claim triggers an armed
conflict that becomes a humanitarian crisis, getting
food, medicine, and shelter to thousands or millions of
civilians becomes an inescapable imperative. A new
intolerance for such human tragedies is becoming evident
in the post-Cold War world and is redefining the
principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of
states (7).
Now, in theory, this sounds almost indisputable. However,
in practice the question becomes one not of theory but of
facts. When does a crisis in fact correspond to this
description, and when, on the contrary, can it simply be
made to seem to correspond to this description?
In the official NATO version, vigorously endorsed by
mainstream media, the Kosovo war was precisely an
instance when "a self-determination claim triggers an
armed conflict that becomes a humanitarian crisis..."
However, there is considerable, indeed overwhelming
evidence that the "self-determination claim" quite
deliberately provoked both the "armed conflict" and the
"humanitarian crisis" precisely in order to bring in, not
humanitarian aid, but military intervention from NATO on
the pretext of humanitarian aid. For there was never any
need of NATO intervention in order to provide food,
medicine and shelter to civilians within Kosovo or before
the NATO bombing. The "humanitarian crisis" was a mirage
until NATO triggered it by the bombing.
But in the culture of images, temporal relationships are
easily obscured. What came before or after what is
forgotten. And with temporal relationship, cause and
effect are lost, along with responsibility.
Can Kosovo be detached from Serbia? "The use of military
force to create a new state would require conduct by the
parent government so egregious that it has forfeited any
right to govern the minority claiming
self-determination"(8). But who decides that conduct is
sufficiently "egregious"?
Clearly, Madeleine Albright was so eager to put these
bold new theories into practice that she worked mightily
to make the crime fit the punishment.
Morton Abramowitz himself, who as Carnegie Endowment
President nurtured Albright, Holbrooke, Fuerth, Scheffer
and the others as they jointly developed Clinton's future
doctrine of "humanitarian warfare", has also played an
active role. In 1997, he passed through the elite
revolving door from the Carnegie Endowment to the Council
on Foreign Relations. He has contributed his wisdom to a
new, high-level think tank, the International Crisis
Group, whose sponsors include governments and omnipresent
financier George Soros. The ICG has been a leading
designer of policy toward Kosovo.
Putting into practice the hypothesis of "a
self-determination claim triggering an armed conflict",
Abramowitz became an early advocate of arming the "Kosovo
Liberation Army"(U?K). At Rambouillet, Abramowitz
discreetly coached the ethnic Albanian delegation headed
by U?K leader Hashim Thaqi (9).
Back in February 1992, before civil war broke out in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, television producer John B. Roberts
II was asked to design a publicity campaign to gain
public support for the soon-to-be-published Carnegie
Endowment recommendations. When he saw that "Changing Our
Ways" proposed "the revolutionary idea that a U.S.-led
military first strike was justified, not to defend the
United States, but to impose highly subjective political
settlements on other countries", that it "discarded
national sovereignty in favour of international
intervention", Roberts "began to regret [his] efforts to
build publicity for the report" (10).
One way or another, the "revolutionary idea" has been
widely propagated during the 1990s. Humanitarian
intervention was an idea whose time had come because it
met a certain number of perceived needs. It provided a
solution to the problem formulated by Senator Richard
Lugar, that once the Cold War ended, NATO must be "either
out of area or out of business". A new missionary mission
not only kept NATO alive, thereby nourishing a vast array
of vested industrial and financial interests, primarily
but not solely in the United States, it also could be
seen as a potential instrument to defend less broadly
perceived geostrategic interests without submitting them
to public controversy.
Humanitarian Realpolitik
When Madeleine Albright took over the State Department
from Warren Christopher in early 1997, her promotion was
presented to the public more as a personal success for a
woman than as a corporate success for a policy design. At
its most informative, The New York Times (11), mentioned
influential policy-makers as if they were benevolent
uncles ready to give encouragement to a lady. Three
months after she took office, it was reported: "Ms.
Albright has reached out for advice. She has talked with
Zbigniew Brzezinski; the departing president of the
Carnegie Endowment, Morton Abramowitz; the philanthropist
George Soros; and Leslie Gelb, president of the Council
on Foreign Relations."
If Abramowitz may be considered the ?minence grise behind
the whole "humanitarian intervention" policy, Brzezinski
provided a geostrategic rationale. Brzezinski has no
inhibitions about using high principles in the power
game. In Paris in January 1998 to promote the French
edition of his book, The Grand Chessboard, he was asked
about an apparent "paradox" between the fact that his
book was steeped in Realpolitik, whereas, in his days as
National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter,
Brzezinski had been the "defender of human rights".
Brzezinski waved the paradox aside. There is none, he
replied. "I elaborated that doctrine in agreement with
President Carter, as it was the best way to destabilize
the Soviet Union. And it worked"(12).
Of course, it took more than nice words about human
rights to destabilize the Soviet Union. It took war. And
Brzezinski was very active on that front. As he told a
second French weekly (13) during his book promotion tour,
the CIA had begun bank-rolling counter- revolutionary
Afghan forces in mid-1979, half a year before the Soviet
Union moved into Afghanistan on a "stabilizing" mission
around New Year's Day 1980. "We did not push the Russians
into intervening, but we knowingly increased the
possibility that they would. That secret operation was an
excellent idea. The effect was to draw the Russians into
the Afghan trap."
Brzezinski rightly felt he could be forthright about such
matters as humanitarian entrapment in Paris, where the
policy elite admires nothing so much in American leaders
as unabashed cynical power politics. This admiration is
most acute when the French are offered a share in it, as
was the case with Brzezinski and his book. France, wrote
Brzezinski, "is an essential partner in the important
task of permanently locking a democratic Germany into
Europe", which means preventing Germany from building its
own separate sphere of influence to the East, possibly
including Russia -- a connection that Brzezinski's policy
recommendations are designed to forestall at all costs.
"This is the historic role of the Franco-German
relationship, and the expansion of both the EU and NATO
eastward should enhance the importance of that
relationship as Europe's inner core. Finally, France is
not strong enough either to obstruct America on the
geostrategic fundamentals of America's European policy or
to become by itself a leader of Europe as such. Hence,
its peculiarities and even its tantrums can be
tolerated"(14).
These assurances may contribute to explaining the mystery
-- as it was widely perceived in other countries -- of
France's strong support to NATO's Kosovo war, second only
to Britain and in disharmony with reactions in Germany
and Italy. That is, the French elite had been given to
understand this war as part of the Brzezinski design for
a transatlantic Europe giving France a politico-military
leadership role offsetting Germany's economic
predominance.
Brzezinski frankly sets the goal for U.S. policy: "to
perpetuate America's own dominant position for at least a
generation and preferably longer still". This involves
creating a "geopolitical framework" around NATO that will
initially include Ukraine and exclude Russia. This will
establish the geostrategic basis for controlling conflict
in what Brzezinski calls "the Eurasian Balkans", the huge
area between the Eastern shore of the Black Sea to China,
which includes the Caspian Sea and its petroleum
resources, a top priority for U.S. foreign policy. In the
policy elites of both Britain and France, perpetuation of
Trans-Atlantic domination could be understood as a way of
preventing a Russo-German rapprochement able to dominate
the continent.
Along with Jeane Kirkpatrick, Frank Carlucci, William
Odom and Stephan Solarz, Brzezinski has joined the
anti-Serb crusade in yet another new Washington policy
shop, the "Balkan Action Council", calling for all-out
war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo.
In the Brzezinski scheme of things, Yugoslavia is a
testing ground and a metaphor for the Soviet Union. In
this metaphor, "Serbia" is Russia, and Croatia, Bosnia,
Kosovo, etc., are Ukraine, the Baltic States, Georgia and
the former Soviet Republics of "the Eurasian Balkans".
This being the case, the successful secession of Croatia
and company from Yugoslavia sets a positive precedent for
maintaining the independence of Ukraine and its
progressive inclusion in the European Union and NATO,
which he sets for the decade 2005-2015 as a "reasonable
time frame".
The little Balkan "Balkans" appear on a map on page 22 of
The Grand Chessboard interestingly shaded in three
gradations representing U.S. geopolitical preponderance
(dark), U.S. political influence (medium) and the
apparent absence of either (white). Darkly shaded (like
the U.S., Canada and Western Europe) are Hungary,
Rumania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Medium shading covers
Slovakia, Moldavia and Ukraine as well as Georgia and
most of the "Eurasian Balkans". Glaringly white, like
Russia, are Yugoslavia and Greece. For Brzezinski,
Belgrade was a potential relay for Moscow. Serbs might be
unaware of this, but in the geostrategic view, they were
only so many surrogate Russians.
Cultural Divides and Caspian Oil
Samuel Huntington's notion of "conflict of
civilizations", by identifying Orthodox Christianity as a
civilization in conflict with the West and its famous
"values", has offered an ideological cover for the
"divide and conquer" strategy, which has less appeal, but
is not incompatible with, the "humanitarian"
justification. It has been taken up by influential (15)
writer Robert D. Kaplan, who sees a "real battle" that is
"drawn along historical-civilizational lines. On the one
side are the Turks, their fellow Azeri Turks in
Azerbaijan, the Israelis and the Jordanians [...]. On the
other side are those who suffered the most historically
from Turkish rule: the Syrian and Iraqi Arabs, the
Armenians, the Greeks and the Kurds"(16). It is not hard
to see whose side the United States must be on in this
battle, or which must be the winning side.
Kaplan places Kosovo "smack in the middle of a very
unstable and important region where Europe joins the
Middle East" while "Europe is redividing along historic
and cultural lines"(17).
"There is a Western, Catholic, Protestant Europe and an
Eastern Orthodox Europe, which is poorer, more
politically unsettled and more ridden with organized
crime. That Orthodox realm has been shut out of NATO and
is angrier by the day, and it is fiercely anti-Moslem",
Kaplan declares.
An oddity of these "cultural divide" projections is that
they find the abyss between Eastern and Western
Christianity far deeper and more unbridgeable than the
difference between Christianity and Islam. The obvious
short, three-letter explanation is "oil". But there is a
complementary explanation that is more truly cultural,
relating to the transnational nature of Islam and to the
importance of its charitable organizations. Steve Niva
(18) has noted a split within the US foreign policy
establishment between conservatives (clearly absent from
the Clinton administration) who see Islam as a threat,
and "neo-liberals" for whom the primary enemy is "any
barrier to free trade and unfettered markets". These
include European leaders, oil companies and Zbigniew
Brzezinski. "Incorporating Islamists into existing
political systems would disperse responsibility for the
state's difficulties while defusing popular opposition to
severe economic `reforms' mandated by the IMF. Islamist
organizations could also help fill the gap caused by the
rollback of welfare states and social services...", Niva
observed.
In any case, all roads lead to the Caspian, and through
Kosovo. Kaplan publicly advises the nation's leaders that
an "amoral reason of self-interest" is needed to persuade
the country to keep troops in the Balkans for years to
come. The reason is clear. "With the Middle East
increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly-over
rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil. But we
will not have those bases in the future if the Russians
reconquer southeast Europe by criminal stealth. Finally,
if we tell our European allies to go it alone in Kosovo,
we can kiss the Western Alliance goodbye"(19).
Looking at a map, one may wonder why it is necessary to
go through Kosovo to obtain Caspian oil. This is a good
question. However, U.S. strategists don't simply want to
obtain oil, which is a simple matter if one has money.
They want to control its flow to the big European market.
The simple way to get Caspian oil is via pipeline
southward through Iran. But that would evade U.S.
control. Or through Russia; just as bad. The preferred
U.S. route, a pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Turkish
Mediterranean port of Ceyhan has been rejected as too
costly. Turkey has vetoed massive oil tanker traffic
through the Bosporus on ecological grounds. That leaves
the Balkans. It seems the U.S. would like to build a
pipeline across the Balkans, no doubt with Bechtel
getting the building contract -- former Bechtel executive
and Reagan administration Defense Secretary Caspar
Weinberger is a leading Kosovo warhawk. Bechtel has
already obtained major contracts in Tudjman's Croatia. It
is interesting that the Danube, likely to fall under
German control, has been blocked for serious transport by
NATO's bombing of Serbia's bridges.
On the way to the Caspian, the next stop after Yugoslavia
could be the big prize: Ukraine, which like the other
former Soviet Republics is already under U.S. influence
through NATO's "Partnership For Peace". Early this year,
asked by a German magazine whether NATO should be the
world policeman, NATO commander Wesley Clark observed
that the "countries on the Caspian Sea are members of the
`Partnership for Peace'. They have the right to consult
NATO in case of threat." Clark "didn't want to speculate
on what NATO might then do..."(20).
Scenarios Reach the TV Screen
As television producer Roberts recalls, it was a
Ukrainian friend who, seeing the implications for his own
country of the Abramowitz humanitarian war plans, set him
to worrying. "If the U.S. endorsed this new foreign
policy principle the potential for international chaos
was immense. Real or trumped up incidents of destruction
or displacement would be grounds for Russian or American
military intervention in dozens of countries where
nothing like a melting pot has ever existed."
"Real or trumped up" -- that is the question. For once so
much is at stake -- nothing less than the future of the
greatest power the world has ever seen -- events are all
too likely to follow the imaginary scenario laid out by
the policy planners.
This can happen in at least three ways.
1 - Reality imitates fiction. It is a common human
psychological phenomenon that people see what they are
looking for, or have been led to expect to see, often
when it is not there. This happens in countless ways. It
may account for desert mirages, or apparitions of the
Virgin, or simple errors of recognition that occur all
the time.
When reporters unfamiliar with the country are sent into
Bosnia or Kosovo to look for evidence of "Serbian war
crimes", and only evidence of Serbian war crimes, that is
what they will find. And if Croats, Muslims and Albanians
who are fighting against the Serbs know that that is what
they are looking for, it will be even easier.
If they are expecting, say, Serbs to be criminals,
everything Serbs say or do will be interpreted in that
light, with greater or less sincerity. Every ambiguous
detail will find its meaning.
2 - Evidence will be trumped up. This is an age-old
practice in war.
3 - Circumstances can be arranged to incite the very
crimes that the power wants to be able to punish. In
police language, this is called entrapment, or a "sting"
operation, and is illegal in many countries, although not
in the United States.
The Kosovo scenario has been advanced in all three ways.
(1. continua)
(seconda parte)
Military intervention may be justified "when a
self-determination claim triggers an armed conflict that
becomes a humanitarian crisis", wrote Scheffer and
Halperin.
The much-praised non-violent movement of Ibrahim Rugova
could not meet this criterion. It failed precisely
because it was not a movement for political equality but
a movement for secession. A non-violent movement for
political equality can find many active ways to
illustrate its exclusion and press its demands for
inclusion. But the goals of the Albanian movement were
not inclusion but complete independence from the existing
State. To show their rejection of Serbia, Kosovo
Albanians in the Rugova period refused to use the
democratic rights they had, boycotted elections, refused
to pay taxes, and even set up their own parallel schools
and public health service. The odd thing is that this
movement of passive resistance was met for the most part
by passive resistance on the part of the Serbian State,
which allowed Dr Rugova to go about his business
(obviously in defiance of Serbian laws) as "President of
the Republic of Kosova", let people get away with not
paying taxes and did not force children to attend Serbian
schools. Certainly, there were numerous instances of
police brutality, although their extent is hard to judge,
inasmuch as Kosovar Albanian Human Rights Groups
notoriously exaggerated such incidents in order to claim
that their people were being brutally oppressed -- a
claim which was not accepted by the German government
(21), incidentally, despite its support to the separatist
movement. But in reality, internal separatism was too
easy. The two communities grew ever farther apart, but
peacefully. There was an impasse.
That impasse was broken by the U?K/KLA, acting with the
backing of the United States. The strategy was summed up
by Richard Cohen (22):
The KLA had a simple but effective plan. It would kill
Serbian policemen. The Serbs would retaliate, Balkan
style, with widespread reprisals and the occasional
massacre. The West would get more and more appalled,
until finally it would, as it did in Bosnia, take action.
In effect, the United States and much of Europe would go
to war on the side of the KLA.
It worked.
This version perhaps gives the KLA/U?K a little too much
credit. The United States has been watching Kosovo
closely for years, and there are strong indications that
it both passively and actively assisted the armed rebels
in their humanitarian sting operation. The KLA did indeed
kill Serbian policemen, as well as a number of civilians,
including ethnic Albanians who failed to boycott the
Serbian state. But in between these killings and the Serb
retaliation, "Balkan style", there was a very significant
encouragement from Richard Gelbard, acting as U.S.
proconsul for former Yugoslavia. Normally, Gelbard's
visits to Belgrade were marked by utterances berating
Serbian authorities for not doing Washington's bidding in
one respect or another. But on February 23, 1998, Gelbard
visited Pristina and declared publicly that the KLA/U?K
was indeed "unquestionably a terrorist organization".
To the Serbs, this simply seemed to be recognition of
what to them was an obvious fact. Naively believing that
the United States was, as it continued to declare,
sincerely opposed to "international terrorism", Serbian
authorities took this remark as a green light to do what
any government normally does in such circumstances: send
in armed police to repress the terrorists. After all,
they were not hard to find. Unlike guerrillas in most
conflicts, they made no effort to conceal their
whereabouts but openly proclaimed that they were hanging
out in a number of villages in the Drenica hill region.
Far from heading for the hills when the police
approached, the U?K let civilians who didn't want to get
shot head for the hills while they themselves hunkered
down at home, sometimes with a few remaining family
members, and shot it out with police. This suicidal
tactic may have stemmed from the fact that Albanian homes
often double as fortresses in the traditional blood
feuds, but could not withstand Serbian government fire
power. In any case, the results were enough dead
Albanians in their villages to enable Madeleine Albright
and her chorus of media commentators to cry "ethnic
cleansing". It was not "ethnic cleansing", it was a
classic anti-insurgency operation. But that was enough
for the trap to start closing.
It is easy to imagine how the same scenario could enfold
again in some remote area of the "Eurasian Balkans",
where folk customs are not frightfully different from
those of the Albanians.
How to Get the Job of U.N. Secretary General
The Abramowitz-Albright policy for Yugoslavia has been
used as the event, the fait accompli, to complete a major
institutional shift of power. Institutions based on the
principle of decision-making equality between nations
(the United Nations, its agencies, and the OSCE) have
been drastically weakened. Others, effectively under U.S.
control (NATO, the International Criminal Tribunal), have
enlarged their scope, under the heading of a vague new
entity, the "international community".
The first target of this shift has of course been the
United Nations. Already weakened by the successful U.S.
undermining of U.N. agencies such as UNESCO and UNCTAD
which threatened to promote alternative and more
egalitarian concepts of "globalization", the United
Nations has been reduced by the conflict in Yugoslavia to
a rubber stamp to be used or ignored by the United States
as it chooses.
Certainly, responsibility for weakening the United
Nations is widely shared among world powers, but the
United States' role in this demolition enterprise has
nevertheless been outstanding. Far from trying to help
the United Nations seek an even-handed solution to the
Yugoslav crisis, the Clinton administration used its
influence to secure decisions of benefit to its own
chosen clients, the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanian
secessionists. In Bosnia, United Nations forces were
given impossible missions: hanging around deceptively
declared -- deceptively because never demilitarized --
"safe areas", as fighting continued. Their inevitable,
not to say programmed, failure could be, and has been,
trumpeted as "proof" that only NATO can carry out a
proper peace-keeping mission.
A significant high point in the United States' reduction
of the United Nations to a pliant tool came on August 30,
1995, when the United Nations momentarily relinquished
its control over Bosnian peace-keeping to NATO, aka the
Pentagon, in order to let the United States bomb the
Bosnian Serbs.
For Washington, the primary significance of this bombing
had less to do with the people of Bosnia than with U.S.
power. According to Richard Holbrooke, this was correctly
grasped by columnist William Pfaff who wrote the next
day: "The United States today is again Europe's leader;
there is no other."
In his memoir To End a War, Richard Holbrooke recounted
this proud achievement and lavishly praised the United
Nations official who made it possible: the Ghanaian
diplomat Kofi Annan, then in charge of peacekeeping
operations.
Madeleine Albright, at the time the U.S. ambassador to
the United Nations, was carrying on a "vigorous campaign"
in favour of bombing the Serbs. Luck smiled:
"fortunately, Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali was
unreachable [...], so she dealt instead with his best
deputy, Kofi Annan, who was in charge of peacekeeping
operations. At 11:45 a.m., New York time, came a big
break: Annan informed Talbott and Albright that he had
instructed the U.N.'s civilian officials and military
commanders to relinquish for a limited period of time
their authority to veto air strikes in Bosnia. For the
first time in the war, the decision on the air strikes
was solely in the hands of NATO -- primarily two American
officers [...]"
"Annan's gutsy performance in those twenty-four hours was
to play a central role in Washington's strong support for
him a year later as the successor to Boutros
Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations.
Indeed, in a sense Annan won the job on that day"(23).
Bosnia was the main reason for getting rid of
Boutros-Ghali. "More than any other issue, it was his
performance on Bosnia that made us feel he did not
deserve a second term -- just as Kofi Annan's strength on
the bombing in August had already made him the private
favorite of many American officials", Holbrooke
explained. "Although the American campaign against
Boutros-Ghali, in which all our key allies opposed us,
was long and difficult [...] the decision was correct,
and may well have saved America's role in the United
Nations."
How to Sabotage the OSCE
With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was widely
favoured to succeed both the dismantled Warsaw Pact and
NATO as an all-inclusive institution to ensure security,
resolve conflicts and defend human rights in Europe. This
naturally encountered opposition from all those who
wanted to preserve and expand NATO, and with it, the
leading U.S. role in Europe -- that is, from many
important officials in many NATO countries, especially
Britain and the Netherlands, as well as the United States
itself.
On the eve of the Kosovo war, the tandem of Richard
Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright once again moved to
cripple a rival to NATO and clear the way for NATO
bombing.
On October 13, 1998, under threat of NATO bombing, U.S.
envoy Richard Holbrooke got Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic to sign a unilateral deal to end security
operations against armed rebels. The agreement was to be
monitored by 2,000 foreign "verifiers" provided under the
auspices of the OSCE. From the start, opinions in Europe
were divided as to whether this Kosovo Verification
Mission (KVM) marked an advance for the OSCE or a kiss of
death, designed to prove the organization's impotence and
leave NATO as the uncontested arbiter of conflicts in
Europe.
The mission's fate was sealed in favour of the second
alternative when the European majority in the OSCE was
somehow persuaded to accept U.S. diplomat William Walker
to head the KVM. Walker was a veteran of Central American
"banana republic" management, who had collaborated with
Oliver North in illegally arming the "Contras" and had
covered up murderous state security operations in El
Salvador as U.S. ambassador there during the Reagan
administration.
Walker brought in 150 professional mercenaries from the
Arlington, Virginia-based DynCorp which had already
worked in Bosnia, drove around in a vehicle flying the
American flag, and did everything to confirm what his
French deputy, Ambassador Gabriel Keller, described as
the "wide-spread conviction in Serbian public opinion
that the OSCE was working under cover for NATO, [...]
that we acted with a hidden agenda" (24).
That impression was shared by many members of the KVM. A
number of Italians, whose comments were published
anonymously in the geostrategic review LiMes, accused the
Americans of "sabotaging the OSCE mission". Said one:
"The mission in my view had two primary aims. One was to
infiltrate personnel into the theatre with intelligence
tasks and for special forces activities (preparatory work
for a predetermined war). The other was to give the world
the impression that everything had been tried and thus
create grounds for public consent to the aggression we
perpetrated"(25).
According to Swiss verifier Pascal Neuffer: "We
understood from the start that the information gathered
by OSCE patrols during our mission were destined to
complete the information that NATO had gathered by
satellite. We had the very sharp impression of doing
espionage work for the Atlantic Alliance"(26).
KVM members have criticized Walker and his British chief
of operations, Karol (John) Drewienkiewicz, for rejecting
any cooperation with Serb authorities, for blocking
diplomatic means to ensure human rights, for controlling
the mission's information flow, and most serious of all,
for using the mission to make contact with U?K rebels and
train them to guide NATO to targets in the subsequent
bombing (27). Since the Serbs were quite aware of this
activity, as soon as the bombing began on March 24, Serb
security forces set out to root out all suspected U?K
indicators. These operations are very probably at the
heart of what NATO has described as ethnic cleansing.
However, prior to the bombing, KVM members testify to a
low level of violence, as well as a pattern of U?K
provocations. According to Keller, "every pullback by the
Yugoslav army or the Serbian police was followed by a
movement forward by [U?K] forces [...] OSCE's presence
compelled Serbian government forces to a certain
restraint [...] and U?K took advantage of this to
consolidate its positions everywhere, continuing to
smuggle arms from Albania, abducting and killing both
civilians and military personnel, Albanians and Serbs
alike."
By the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999, an
increasingly audible split was taking place within the
KVM between Walker and most of the Europeans. Every
incident was an occasion for Walker and the U.S. State
Department to denounce the Serbs for breaking the truce,
and to accuse Milosevic of violating his commitment. The
Europeans saw things differently: the Albanian rebels,
with U.S. encouragement, were systematically provoking
Serb attacks in order to justify NATO coming in on their
side of the conflict.
In mid-January, Walker settled the score with his
European critics by bringing the world media over to his
side. This was the political significance of the famous
"Racak massacre". On January 15, Serb police had carried
out a pre-announced operation, accompanied by observers
and television cameras, against U?K killers believed to
be hiding out in the village of Racak. As the Serbs swept
into the village, the U?K gunmen took refuge on
surrounding high ground and began to fire on the police,
as TV footage showed. But the Serbs had sent forces
around behind them, and many U?K fighters were trapped
and shot. After the Serb forces withdrew that afternoon,
the U?K again took control of the village, and it was
they who led Walker into the village the next day to see
what they described as victims of a massacre. It may be,
as Serb authorities claimed and many Europeans tended to
believe, that the victims were in fact killed in the
shootout reported by the police, and then aligned to give
the appearance of a mass execution, or "massacre".
In any case, the extremely emotional public reaction by
the high-profile head of the KVM, condemning the Serbs
for "a crime against humanity", "an unspeakable atrocity"
committed by Serbs "with no value for human life", ended
any possible pretense of neutrality of the OSCE mission.
Walker's accusations were quickly taken up by NATO
politicians and editorialists. A complex conflict was
reduced to a simple opposition between Serbian
perpetrators of massacres and innocent Albanian civilian
victims. The U?K and its provocative murders of policemen
and civilians were to all intents and purposes invisible.
Presented as a gratuitous atrocity, "Racak" became the
immediate justification for NATO war against Yugoslavia.
In Kosovo itself, KVM members have testified, after Racak
the Serbs were totally convinced that the OSCE was
working for NATO and began to prepare for war, while the
U?K became still more aggressive. KVM members have also
complained of the fact that Walker evacuated the mission
to Macedonia on March 20, five days before the bombing
began. This way, no outside observers were there to see
exactly what did happen when the bombing began, much less
try to prevent it. Walker's leadership had effectively
removed all pressure or incentive for either side to show
restraint.
"In the history of international missions it would be
hard to find such a chaotic and tragically ambiguous
enterprise", concluded an Italian participant.
How to Obtain Justice
The importance of crimes in this new world order was
highlighted by the establishment in May 1993 of the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY). This tribunal was established by Security Council
resolution 827 under its Article 29 which allows it to
set up "subsidiary bodies" necessary to fulfill its
peacekeeping tasks. It is more than doubtful that the
framers of the United Nations statutes had a criminal
tribunal in mind, and many jurists consider resolution
827 to be an usurpation of legislative and judicial
powers by the Security Council. In fact, this act went
contrary to over forty years of study, within the
framework of the United Nations, of the possibilities for
setting up an international penal tribunal, whose
jurisdiction would be established by international treaty
allowing States to transfer part of their sovereign
rights to the tribunal. The Security Council's ICTY went
over the heads of the States concerned and simply imposed
its authority on them, without their consent.
Last April 5, as NATO was bombing Yugoslavia, the ICTY's
presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald (a former U.S.
federal judge in Texas) told the Supreme Court that the
Tribunal "benefited from the strong support of concerned
governments and dedicated individuals such as Secretary
Albright. As the permanent representative to the United
Nations, she had worked with unceasing resolve to
establish the Tribunal. Indeed, we often refer to her as
the `mother of the Tribunal'".
Because it is also located in The Hague, very many
well-informed people confuse the Tribunal with the
International Court of Justice, or at least believe that,
like the ICJ, the ICT is a truly independent and
impartial judicial body. Its many supporters in the media
say so, and so do its statutes. Article 32 of its
governing statute says the Tribunal's expenses shall be
borne by the regular budget of the United Nations, but
this has been persistently violated. As Toronto lawyer
Christopher Black points out, "the tribunal has received
substantial funds from individual States, private
foundations and corporations". The United States has
provided personnel (23 officials lent by the Departments
of State, Defense and Justice as of May 1996), equipment
and cash contributions. More money has been granted the
Tribunal by financier George Soros' Open Society
Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the United
States Institute for Peace, set up in 1984 under the
Reagan administration and funded by Congressional
appropriations, with its board of directors appointed by
the U.S. President.
The Tribunal is vigorously supported by the Coalition for
International Justice (CIJ), based in Washington and The
Hague, founded and funded by George Soros' Open Society
Foundation and a semi-official U.S. lawyers' group called
CEELI, the Central and East European Law Institute, set
up to promote the replacement of socialist legal systems
with free market ones, according to Christopher Black.
Last May 12, ICTY president Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, in a
speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, said that:
"The U.S. government has very generously agreed to
provide $500,000 and to help to encourage other States to
contribute. However, the moral imperative to end the
violence in the region is shared by all, including the
corporate sector. I am pleased, therefore, that a major
corporation has recently donated computer equipment worth
three million dollars, which will substantially enhance
our operating capacity."
Moreover, during the bombing, Clinton obtained a special
$27 million appropriation to help the Tribunal,
especially in collecting anti-Serb testimony from
Albanian refugees along the borders of Kosovo. Finally,
Clinton has offered a bounty of $5 million for the arrest
of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Ethnic Divisions, Unified Empires
An extremely significant feature of the humanitarian
intervention policy is its emphasis on collective in
contrast to individual rights.
"In the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet empire,"
runs the summary of Self-Determination in the New World
Order, "new nations are emerging rapidly, and more and
more ethnic groups are pushing for independence or
autonomy." So the question is "how the United States
should respond". The authors "propose criteria for
decision makers who are weighing whether to support
groups seeking self-determination, to offer political
recognition, or to intervene with force."
This approach has practically nothing to do with
democracy, and everything to do with empire construction.
Although the words "democracy" and "democratic" are still
used, they tend increasingly to be without meaning other
than to designate favoured client leaders or groups in
countries of interest to the United States. Certainly,
Hashim Thaqi, the U?K leader who counts Madeleine
Albright's spokesman James Rubin (husband of CNN's
Christiane Amanpour) among his fans (28), is scarcely
more "democratic" than Milan Milutinovic, elected
President of Serbia, indicted with Milosevic by
Albright's "International War Crimes Tribunal". In fact,
the selection of particular groups, ethnic or social, as
clients, is the traditional way in which a conquering
empire can reshape social structures and replace former
elites with its own.
The imperial project is becoming increasingly open.
Protectorates are being established in Bosnia and Kosovo,
President Clinton is vigorously calling for the illegal
overthrow of the legally elected Yugoslav president.
Totally disregarding the feelings and wishes of the real,
live people who live there, Robert Kaplan announced (29)
that "there are two choices in the Balkans -- imperialism
or anarchy. To stop the violence, we essentially have to
act in the way the great powers in the region have always
acted: as pacifying conquerors." Like the Romans and the
Austrian Habsburgs, "motivated by territorial
aggrandizement for their own economic enrichment,
strategic positions and glory."
Merely to suggest that the United States might "intervene
with force" on behalf of an ethnic group seeking
self-determination is to cause trouble. There are
potentially hundreds of such groups not only in the
former Soviet Republics but throughout Africa and Asia.
The prospect of U.S. military intervention will, on the
one hand, encourage potential secessionist leaders to
push their claims to the point of "humanitarian crisis",
in order to bring in the Superpower on their side. By the
same token, it will encourage existing states to suppress
such movements brutally and decisively in order to
prevent precisely that intervention. A vicious cycle will
be created, enabling the single Superpower to fish
selectively in troubled waters.
The concept of "ethnic group" rests on the notion of
"identity". If individual identity is problematic, group
identity is even more so. That is, just as individuals
may have multiple or changing "identities", groups may
have changing compositions as people come and go from one
"identity" group to another. Especially in the modern
mobile world, ethnic identity is therefore a highly
questionable basis for claim to political recognition in
the form of an independent State. The forceful
affirmation of "ethnic identity" tends to strengthen
traditional patriarchal structures in places such as
Kosovo, at the expense of individual liberation. Stress
on ethnic identity enforces stereotypes, mafioso
structures and leadership by "godfathers".
Foreign policy based on ethnic identity has notorious
antecedents: it was precisely the policy employed by
Adolf Hitler to justify his conquest of the same Eastern
European territories that Brzezinski now watches so
attentively. Both the takeover of Czechoslovakia and the
invasion of Poland were officially justified by the need
to protect allegedly oppressed German minorities from the
cruel Czechs and Poles. The British government's
understanding for Herr Hitler's concern about Germans in
Czechoslovakia is the real "Munich". Before invading
Poland, Hitler had the SS manufacture an "incident" in
which wicked Poles stormed an innocent German-language
radio station in order to desecrate it with their
barbarous Slav language. The dead body left on the scene
to authenticate the incident was in fact a prison convict
in costume.
In Yugoslavia, Hitler "liberated" not only Germans but
also and especially Croats and (in conjunction with
fascist Italy) Albanians, long selected as the proper
Randv?lker to receive German protection, the better to
crush the main historic adversary, the Serbs, the people
who more than any other had fought for independence from
Empires. (The Serbs themselves as they became "Yugoslavs"
were less and less unified around Serbian identity, even
if they have continued to pay for it.)
Making policy by distinguishing between "friend" and
"enemy" peoples is pure Hitlerism, and this is what the
Anglo-American NATO leaders are now doing, while
ironically pretending to reject "Munich".
History As Melodrama
The media that recount Balkan ghost stories to the
"children" (30) back in NATOland rarely go into detail
about the peculiarities of these various customs and
situations. Popular culture has prepared audiences for a
simpler version. The pattern is the same as in disaster
movies, outer space movies, etc: there is always the trio
of classic melodrama: wicked villain, helpless victim
(maiden in distress) and heroic rescuer. Same plot. Over
and over. Only in the Abramowitz humanitarian war plan,
the trio is composed of ethnic entities or nationalities.
There is the "good" ethnic group, all victims, like the
Kosovar Albanians. Then there is the "bad" ethnic group,
all racist hatred, ethnic cleansing and even "genocide".
And finally, of course, there is Globocop to the rescue:
NATO with its stealth bombers, cruise missiles and
cluster blade bombs, its depleted uranium and graphite
power-plan busters. A bit of fireworks, like the car
chase at the end of the movie.
The whole concept of ethnic war as pretext for U.S.
military intervention implies this division of humanity
between "good" and "bad" nationalities, between
"oppressor" and "victim" peoples. Since this is rarely
the case, the story is told by analogy with the famous
exceptional cases where the categories fit: Hitler and
the Jews being the obvious favourite. Every new villain
is a "Hitler", every new ethnic secessionist group to be
used as pretext for new NATO bases is the victim of a
potential "Holocaust". At this rate, the two terms will
cease to be proper nouns and become general terms for the
new global Guignol.
Starting with the pretense of militant anti-racism,
"humanitarian intervention" finishes with a new racism.
To merit all those bombs, the "bad" people must be
tarnished with collective guilt. At the G8 summit in
Cologne in June, Tony Blair clearly adopted the doctrine
of collective guilt when he declared that there could be
no humanitarian aid for the Serbs because of the dreadful
way they had treated the Kosovar Albanians. With their
incomparable self-righteousness, the Anglo-American
commanders are leading this new humanitarian crusade to
extremes of inhumanity.
Footnotes
(1) Jim Hoagland, "Developing a Doctrine of Humanitarian
Warfare", International Herald Tribune, June 28, 1999.
(2) A former U.S. Ambassador to Thailand, Abramowitz
served as Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence
and Research in the Reagan administration. In January
1986, he took part in an interesting mission to Beijing
alongside top CIA officials with the purpose of
persuading China to support supplying Stinger missiles to
Islamic Afghan rebels in order to keep up pressure on the
Soviet Union, even as Gorbachev was trying to end the
Cold War. In the mid-1990s, he was part of a blue ribbon
panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations which
advised the Clinton Administration to loosen restrictions
on CIA covert operations such as dealing with criminals,
disguising agents as journalists, and targeting
unfriendly heads of State.
(3) John B. Roberts, "Roots of Allied Farce", The
American Spectator, June 1999.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Morton H. Halperin & David J. Scheffer with Patricia
L. Small, Self-Determination In the New World Order,
Carnegie Endowment, Washington,D.C., 1992; page 80.
(6) Ibid, p.105.
(7) Ibid, p.107.
(8) Ibid, p.110.
(9) Charles Trueheart, "Serbs and Kosovars Get Nudge From
Their Hosts To Speed Up Peace Talks", International
Herald Tribune/Washington Post, February 9, 1999: "On
Monday, the Kosovo Albanians won a small tactical victory
when their American advisers, initially barred by
conference hosts, were allowed to visit them at the
chateau. They included two former U.S. diplomats, Morton
Abramowitz and Paul Williams."
(10) John B.Roberts, op.cit.
(11) Steven Erlanger, "Winning Friends for Foreign
Policy: Albright's First 100 Days", The New York Times,
14 May 1997.
(12) "Il n'y a pas de paradoxe. J'ai mis au point cette
doctrine en accord avec le pr?sident Carter, car c'?tait
la meilleure fa?on de d?stabiliser l'Urss. ?a a march?."
L'Ev?nement du jeudi, 14 January 1998.
(13) Le Nouvel observateur, 14 January 1998, reported by
AFP.
(14) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard,
BasicBooks, New York, 1997, p.78.
(15) Kaplan's 1993 book Balkan Ghosts was notoriously
read by President Clinton, who, however, had to be chided
later by the author for having drawn the wrong
conclusion. That is, Clinton's initial conclusion was to
stay out of the Balkans, whereas Kaplan has, he
explained, always been an interventionist.
(16) New York Times/International Herald Tribune, 23
February 1999.
(17) Robert D.Kaplan, "Why the Balkans Demand Amorality",
The Washington Post, 28 February 1999.
(18) Steve Niva, "Between Clash and Co-Optation: US
Foreign Policy and the Specter of Islam", Middle East
Report, Fall 1998.
(19) The Washington Post, 28 February 1999.
(20) Stern, 4 March 1999.
(21) In mid-April, 1999, the International Association of
Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) obtained and
distributed to news media official documents from the
German foreign office showing that in the months leading
up to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the foreign office
had repeatedly informed administrative courts of the
various German L?nder that there was no persecution of
ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or the rest of Serbia.
Example: Intelligence report from the Foreign Office,
January 12, 1999, to the administrative Court of Trier,
"Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked
to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of
Kosovo is still not involved in armed conflict. Public
life in cities like Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan, etc.
has, in the entire conflict period, continued on a
relatively normal basis." The "actions of the security
forces [were] not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians
as an ethnically defined group, but against the military
opponent and its actual or alleged supporters." These
reports were published in the German daily junge welt on
24 April 1999.
(22) Richard Cohen, "The Winner in the Balkans Is the
KLA", Washington Post/International Herald Tribune, 18
June 1999.
(23) Richard Holbrooke, To End a War, Random House, New
York, 1998, p.103.
(24) "The OSCE KVM: autopsy of a mission", statement
delivered by Ambassador Gabriel Keller, principal deputy
head of mission, to the watch group on May 25, 1999.
(25) Italian military participant "Romanus", in LiMes
2/99, cited by il manifesto, 19 June 1999.
(26) La Libert?, Gen?ve, 22 April 1999, and Balkan-Infos
No.33, Paris, May 1999.
(27) Ulisse, "Come gli Americani hanno sabotato la
missione dell'Osce", LiMes, supplemento al n.1/99, p.113,
L'Espresso, Rome, 1999.
(28) "Throughout the Kosovo crisis, Mr.Rubin personally
wooed Hashim Thaci, the ambitious leader of the Kosovo
Liberation Army", the Wall Street Journal reported on
June 29, 1999, even going so far as to "jokingly promise
that he would speak to Hollywood friends about getting
Mr.Thaci a movie role."
(29) Robert D.Kaplan, "Why the Balkans Demand Amorality",
The Washington Post, 28 February 1999.
(30) Peter Gowan, in "The Twisted Road to Kosovo", Labour
Focus on Eastern Europe, Number 62, Spring 1999, explains
(p.76) that the foreign policy elite discuss the sordid
realities of power politics in a closed arena, and "not
in front of the children", that is, the citizenry of the
NATOland countries, who are regaled with versions that
appeal to their values and ideals.
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(2. fine)
Military intervention may be justified "when a
self-determination claim triggers an armed conflict that
becomes a humanitarian crisis", wrote Scheffer and
Halperin.
The much-praised non-violent movement of Ibrahim Rugova
could not meet this criterion. It failed precisely
because it was not a movement for political equality but
a movement for secession. A non-violent movement for
political equality can find many active ways to
illustrate its exclusion and press its demands for
inclusion. But the goals of the Albanian movement were
not inclusion but complete independence from the existing
State. To show their rejection of Serbia, Kosovo
Albanians in the Rugova period refused to use the
democratic rights they had, boycotted elections, refused
to pay taxes, and even set up their own parallel schools
and public health service. The odd thing is that this
movement of passive resistance was met for the most part
by passive resistance on the part of the Serbian State,
which allowed Dr Rugova to go about his business
(obviously in defiance of Serbian laws) as "President of
the Republic of Kosova", let people get away with not
paying taxes and did not force children to attend Serbian
schools. Certainly, there were numerous instances of
police brutality, although their extent is hard to judge,
inasmuch as Kosovar Albanian Human Rights Groups
notoriously exaggerated such incidents in order to claim
that their people were being brutally oppressed -- a
claim which was not accepted by the German government
(21), incidentally, despite its support to the separatist
movement. But in reality, internal separatism was too
easy. The two communities grew ever farther apart, but
peacefully. There was an impasse.
That impasse was broken by the U?K/KLA, acting with the
backing of the United States. The strategy was summed up
by Richard Cohen (22):
The KLA had a simple but effective plan. It would kill
Serbian policemen. The Serbs would retaliate, Balkan
style, with widespread reprisals and the occasional
massacre. The West would get more and more appalled,
until finally it would, as it did in Bosnia, take action.
In effect, the United States and much of Europe would go
to war on the side of the KLA.
It worked.
This version perhaps gives the KLA/U?K a little too much
credit. The United States has been watching Kosovo
closely for years, and there are strong indications that
it both passively and actively assisted the armed rebels
in their humanitarian sting operation. The KLA did indeed
kill Serbian policemen, as well as a number of civilians,
including ethnic Albanians who failed to boycott the
Serbian state. But in between these killings and the Serb
retaliation, "Balkan style", there was a very significant
encouragement from Richard Gelbard, acting as U.S.
proconsul for former Yugoslavia. Normally, Gelbard's
visits to Belgrade were marked by utterances berating
Serbian authorities for not doing Washington's bidding in
one respect or another. But on February 23, 1998, Gelbard
visited Pristina and declared publicly that the KLA/U?K
was indeed "unquestionably a terrorist organization".
To the Serbs, this simply seemed to be recognition of
what to them was an obvious fact. Naively believing that
the United States was, as it continued to declare,
sincerely opposed to "international terrorism", Serbian
authorities took this remark as a green light to do what
any government normally does in such circumstances: send
in armed police to repress the terrorists. After all,
they were not hard to find. Unlike guerrillas in most
conflicts, they made no effort to conceal their
whereabouts but openly proclaimed that they were hanging
out in a number of villages in the Drenica hill region.
Far from heading for the hills when the police
approached, the U?K let civilians who didn't want to get
shot head for the hills while they themselves hunkered
down at home, sometimes with a few remaining family
members, and shot it out with police. This suicidal
tactic may have stemmed from the fact that Albanian homes
often double as fortresses in the traditional blood
feuds, but could not withstand Serbian government fire
power. In any case, the results were enough dead
Albanians in their villages to enable Madeleine Albright
and her chorus of media commentators to cry "ethnic
cleansing". It was not "ethnic cleansing", it was a
classic anti-insurgency operation. But that was enough
for the trap to start closing.
It is easy to imagine how the same scenario could enfold
again in some remote area of the "Eurasian Balkans",
where folk customs are not frightfully different from
those of the Albanians.
How to Get the Job of U.N. Secretary General
The Abramowitz-Albright policy for Yugoslavia has been
used as the event, the fait accompli, to complete a major
institutional shift of power. Institutions based on the
principle of decision-making equality between nations
(the United Nations, its agencies, and the OSCE) have
been drastically weakened. Others, effectively under U.S.
control (NATO, the International Criminal Tribunal), have
enlarged their scope, under the heading of a vague new
entity, the "international community".
The first target of this shift has of course been the
United Nations. Already weakened by the successful U.S.
undermining of U.N. agencies such as UNESCO and UNCTAD
which threatened to promote alternative and more
egalitarian concepts of "globalization", the United
Nations has been reduced by the conflict in Yugoslavia to
a rubber stamp to be used or ignored by the United States
as it chooses.
Certainly, responsibility for weakening the United
Nations is widely shared among world powers, but the
United States' role in this demolition enterprise has
nevertheless been outstanding. Far from trying to help
the United Nations seek an even-handed solution to the
Yugoslav crisis, the Clinton administration used its
influence to secure decisions of benefit to its own
chosen clients, the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanian
secessionists. In Bosnia, United Nations forces were
given impossible missions: hanging around deceptively
declared -- deceptively because never demilitarized --
"safe areas", as fighting continued. Their inevitable,
not to say programmed, failure could be, and has been,
trumpeted as "proof" that only NATO can carry out a
proper peace-keeping mission.
A significant high point in the United States' reduction
of the United Nations to a pliant tool came on August 30,
1995, when the United Nations momentarily relinquished
its control over Bosnian peace-keeping to NATO, aka the
Pentagon, in order to let the United States bomb the
Bosnian Serbs.
For Washington, the primary significance of this bombing
had less to do with the people of Bosnia than with U.S.
power. According to Richard Holbrooke, this was correctly
grasped by columnist William Pfaff who wrote the next
day: "The United States today is again Europe's leader;
there is no other."
In his memoir To End a War, Richard Holbrooke recounted
this proud achievement and lavishly praised the United
Nations official who made it possible: the Ghanaian
diplomat Kofi Annan, then in charge of peacekeeping
operations.
Madeleine Albright, at the time the U.S. ambassador to
the United Nations, was carrying on a "vigorous campaign"
in favour of bombing the Serbs. Luck smiled:
"fortunately, Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali was
unreachable [...], so she dealt instead with his best
deputy, Kofi Annan, who was in charge of peacekeeping
operations. At 11:45 a.m., New York time, came a big
break: Annan informed Talbott and Albright that he had
instructed the U.N.'s civilian officials and military
commanders to relinquish for a limited period of time
their authority to veto air strikes in Bosnia. For the
first time in the war, the decision on the air strikes
was solely in the hands of NATO -- primarily two American
officers [...]"
"Annan's gutsy performance in those twenty-four hours was
to play a central role in Washington's strong support for
him a year later as the successor to Boutros
Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations.
Indeed, in a sense Annan won the job on that day"(23).
Bosnia was the main reason for getting rid of
Boutros-Ghali. "More than any other issue, it was his
performance on Bosnia that made us feel he did not
deserve a second term -- just as Kofi Annan's strength on
the bombing in August had already made him the private
favorite of many American officials", Holbrooke
explained. "Although the American campaign against
Boutros-Ghali, in which all our key allies opposed us,
was long and difficult [...] the decision was correct,
and may well have saved America's role in the United
Nations."
How to Sabotage the OSCE
With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was widely
favoured to succeed both the dismantled Warsaw Pact and
NATO as an all-inclusive institution to ensure security,
resolve conflicts and defend human rights in Europe. This
naturally encountered opposition from all those who
wanted to preserve and expand NATO, and with it, the
leading U.S. role in Europe -- that is, from many
important officials in many NATO countries, especially
Britain and the Netherlands, as well as the United States
itself.
On the eve of the Kosovo war, the tandem of Richard
Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright once again moved to
cripple a rival to NATO and clear the way for NATO
bombing.
On October 13, 1998, under threat of NATO bombing, U.S.
envoy Richard Holbrooke got Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic to sign a unilateral deal to end security
operations against armed rebels. The agreement was to be
monitored by 2,000 foreign "verifiers" provided under the
auspices of the OSCE. From the start, opinions in Europe
were divided as to whether this Kosovo Verification
Mission (KVM) marked an advance for the OSCE or a kiss of
death, designed to prove the organization's impotence and
leave NATO as the uncontested arbiter of conflicts in
Europe.
The mission's fate was sealed in favour of the second
alternative when the European majority in the OSCE was
somehow persuaded to accept U.S. diplomat William Walker
to head the KVM. Walker was a veteran of Central American
"banana republic" management, who had collaborated with
Oliver North in illegally arming the "Contras" and had
covered up murderous state security operations in El
Salvador as U.S. ambassador there during the Reagan
administration.
Walker brought in 150 professional mercenaries from the
Arlington, Virginia-based DynCorp which had already
worked in Bosnia, drove around in a vehicle flying the
American flag, and did everything to confirm what his
French deputy, Ambassador Gabriel Keller, described as
the "wide-spread conviction in Serbian public opinion
that the OSCE was working under cover for NATO, [...]
that we acted with a hidden agenda" (24).
That impression was shared by many members of the KVM. A
number of Italians, whose comments were published
anonymously in the geostrategic review LiMes, accused the
Americans of "sabotaging the OSCE mission". Said one:
"The mission in my view had two primary aims. One was to
infiltrate personnel into the theatre with intelligence
tasks and for special forces activities (preparatory work
for a predetermined war). The other was to give the world
the impression that everything had been tried and thus
create grounds for public consent to the aggression we
perpetrated"(25).
According to Swiss verifier Pascal Neuffer: "We
understood from the start that the information gathered
by OSCE patrols during our mission were destined to
complete the information that NATO had gathered by
satellite. We had the very sharp impression of doing
espionage work for the Atlantic Alliance"(26).
KVM members have criticized Walker and his British chief
of operations, Karol (John) Drewienkiewicz, for rejecting
any cooperation with Serb authorities, for blocking
diplomatic means to ensure human rights, for controlling
the mission's information flow, and most serious of all,
for using the mission to make contact with U?K rebels and
train them to guide NATO to targets in the subsequent
bombing (27). Since the Serbs were quite aware of this
activity, as soon as the bombing began on March 24, Serb
security forces set out to root out all suspected U?K
indicators. These operations are very probably at the
heart of what NATO has described as ethnic cleansing.
However, prior to the bombing, KVM members testify to a
low level of violence, as well as a pattern of U?K
provocations. According to Keller, "every pullback by the
Yugoslav army or the Serbian police was followed by a
movement forward by [U?K] forces [...] OSCE's presence
compelled Serbian government forces to a certain
restraint [...] and U?K took advantage of this to
consolidate its positions everywhere, continuing to
smuggle arms from Albania, abducting and killing both
civilians and military personnel, Albanians and Serbs
alike."
By the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999, an
increasingly audible split was taking place within the
KVM between Walker and most of the Europeans. Every
incident was an occasion for Walker and the U.S. State
Department to denounce the Serbs for breaking the truce,
and to accuse Milosevic of violating his commitment. The
Europeans saw things differently: the Albanian rebels,
with U.S. encouragement, were systematically provoking
Serb attacks in order to justify NATO coming in on their
side of the conflict.
In mid-January, Walker settled the score with his
European critics by bringing the world media over to his
side. This was the political significance of the famous
"Racak massacre". On January 15, Serb police had carried
out a pre-announced operation, accompanied by observers
and television cameras, against U?K killers believed to
be hiding out in the village of Racak. As the Serbs swept
into the village, the U?K gunmen took refuge on
surrounding high ground and began to fire on the police,
as TV footage showed. But the Serbs had sent forces
around behind them, and many U?K fighters were trapped
and shot. After the Serb forces withdrew that afternoon,
the U?K again took control of the village, and it was
they who led Walker into the village the next day to see
what they described as victims of a massacre. It may be,
as Serb authorities claimed and many Europeans tended to
believe, that the victims were in fact killed in the
shootout reported by the police, and then aligned to give
the appearance of a mass execution, or "massacre".
In any case, the extremely emotional public reaction by
the high-profile head of the KVM, condemning the Serbs
for "a crime against humanity", "an unspeakable atrocity"
committed by Serbs "with no value for human life", ended
any possible pretense of neutrality of the OSCE mission.
Walker's accusations were quickly taken up by NATO
politicians and editorialists. A complex conflict was
reduced to a simple opposition between Serbian
perpetrators of massacres and innocent Albanian civilian
victims. The U?K and its provocative murders of policemen
and civilians were to all intents and purposes invisible.
Presented as a gratuitous atrocity, "Racak" became the
immediate justification for NATO war against Yugoslavia.
In Kosovo itself, KVM members have testified, after Racak
the Serbs were totally convinced that the OSCE was
working for NATO and began to prepare for war, while the
U?K became still more aggressive. KVM members have also
complained of the fact that Walker evacuated the mission
to Macedonia on March 20, five days before the bombing
began. This way, no outside observers were there to see
exactly what did happen when the bombing began, much less
try to prevent it. Walker's leadership had effectively
removed all pressure or incentive for either side to show
restraint.
"In the history of international missions it would be
hard to find such a chaotic and tragically ambiguous
enterprise", concluded an Italian participant.
How to Obtain Justice
The importance of crimes in this new world order was
highlighted by the establishment in May 1993 of the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY). This tribunal was established by Security Council
resolution 827 under its Article 29 which allows it to
set up "subsidiary bodies" necessary to fulfill its
peacekeeping tasks. It is more than doubtful that the
framers of the United Nations statutes had a criminal
tribunal in mind, and many jurists consider resolution
827 to be an usurpation of legislative and judicial
powers by the Security Council. In fact, this act went
contrary to over forty years of study, within the
framework of the United Nations, of the possibilities for
setting up an international penal tribunal, whose
jurisdiction would be established by international treaty
allowing States to transfer part of their sovereign
rights to the tribunal. The Security Council's ICTY went
over the heads of the States concerned and simply imposed
its authority on them, without their consent.
Last April 5, as NATO was bombing Yugoslavia, the ICTY's
presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald (a former U.S.
federal judge in Texas) told the Supreme Court that the
Tribunal "benefited from the strong support of concerned
governments and dedicated individuals such as Secretary
Albright. As the permanent representative to the United
Nations, she had worked with unceasing resolve to
establish the Tribunal. Indeed, we often refer to her as
the `mother of the Tribunal'".
Because it is also located in The Hague, very many
well-informed people confuse the Tribunal with the
International Court of Justice, or at least believe that,
like the ICJ, the ICT is a truly independent and
impartial judicial body. Its many supporters in the media
say so, and so do its statutes. Article 32 of its
governing statute says the Tribunal's expenses shall be
borne by the regular budget of the United Nations, but
this has been persistently violated. As Toronto lawyer
Christopher Black points out, "the tribunal has received
substantial funds from individual States, private
foundations and corporations". The United States has
provided personnel (23 officials lent by the Departments
of State, Defense and Justice as of May 1996), equipment
and cash contributions. More money has been granted the
Tribunal by financier George Soros' Open Society
Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the United
States Institute for Peace, set up in 1984 under the
Reagan administration and funded by Congressional
appropriations, with its board of directors appointed by
the U.S. President.
The Tribunal is vigorously supported by the Coalition for
International Justice (CIJ), based in Washington and The
Hague, founded and funded by George Soros' Open Society
Foundation and a semi-official U.S. lawyers' group called
CEELI, the Central and East European Law Institute, set
up to promote the replacement of socialist legal systems
with free market ones, according to Christopher Black.
Last May 12, ICTY president Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, in a
speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, said that:
"The U.S. government has very generously agreed to
provide $500,000 and to help to encourage other States to
contribute. However, the moral imperative to end the
violence in the region is shared by all, including the
corporate sector. I am pleased, therefore, that a major
corporation has recently donated computer equipment worth
three million dollars, which will substantially enhance
our operating capacity."
Moreover, during the bombing, Clinton obtained a special
$27 million appropriation to help the Tribunal,
especially in collecting anti-Serb testimony from
Albanian refugees along the borders of Kosovo. Finally,
Clinton has offered a bounty of $5 million for the arrest
of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Ethnic Divisions, Unified Empires
An extremely significant feature of the humanitarian
intervention policy is its emphasis on collective in
contrast to individual rights.
"In the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet empire,"
runs the summary of Self-Determination in the New World
Order, "new nations are emerging rapidly, and more and
more ethnic groups are pushing for independence or
autonomy." So the question is "how the United States
should respond". The authors "propose criteria for
decision makers who are weighing whether to support
groups seeking self-determination, to offer political
recognition, or to intervene with force."
This approach has practically nothing to do with
democracy, and everything to do with empire construction.
Although the words "democracy" and "democratic" are still
used, they tend increasingly to be without meaning other
than to designate favoured client leaders or groups in
countries of interest to the United States. Certainly,
Hashim Thaqi, the U?K leader who counts Madeleine
Albright's spokesman James Rubin (husband of CNN's
Christiane Amanpour) among his fans (28), is scarcely
more "democratic" than Milan Milutinovic, elected
President of Serbia, indicted with Milosevic by
Albright's "International War Crimes Tribunal". In fact,
the selection of particular groups, ethnic or social, as
clients, is the traditional way in which a conquering
empire can reshape social structures and replace former
elites with its own.
The imperial project is becoming increasingly open.
Protectorates are being established in Bosnia and Kosovo,
President Clinton is vigorously calling for the illegal
overthrow of the legally elected Yugoslav president.
Totally disregarding the feelings and wishes of the real,
live people who live there, Robert Kaplan announced (29)
that "there are two choices in the Balkans -- imperialism
or anarchy. To stop the violence, we essentially have to
act in the way the great powers in the region have always
acted: as pacifying conquerors." Like the Romans and the
Austrian Habsburgs, "motivated by territorial
aggrandizement for their own economic enrichment,
strategic positions and glory."
Merely to suggest that the United States might "intervene
with force" on behalf of an ethnic group seeking
self-determination is to cause trouble. There are
potentially hundreds of such groups not only in the
former Soviet Republics but throughout Africa and Asia.
The prospect of U.S. military intervention will, on the
one hand, encourage potential secessionist leaders to
push their claims to the point of "humanitarian crisis",
in order to bring in the Superpower on their side. By the
same token, it will encourage existing states to suppress
such movements brutally and decisively in order to
prevent precisely that intervention. A vicious cycle will
be created, enabling the single Superpower to fish
selectively in troubled waters.
The concept of "ethnic group" rests on the notion of
"identity". If individual identity is problematic, group
identity is even more so. That is, just as individuals
may have multiple or changing "identities", groups may
have changing compositions as people come and go from one
"identity" group to another. Especially in the modern
mobile world, ethnic identity is therefore a highly
questionable basis for claim to political recognition in
the form of an independent State. The forceful
affirmation of "ethnic identity" tends to strengthen
traditional patriarchal structures in places such as
Kosovo, at the expense of individual liberation. Stress
on ethnic identity enforces stereotypes, mafioso
structures and leadership by "godfathers".
Foreign policy based on ethnic identity has notorious
antecedents: it was precisely the policy employed by
Adolf Hitler to justify his conquest of the same Eastern
European territories that Brzezinski now watches so
attentively. Both the takeover of Czechoslovakia and the
invasion of Poland were officially justified by the need
to protect allegedly oppressed German minorities from the
cruel Czechs and Poles. The British government's
understanding for Herr Hitler's concern about Germans in
Czechoslovakia is the real "Munich". Before invading
Poland, Hitler had the SS manufacture an "incident" in
which wicked Poles stormed an innocent German-language
radio station in order to desecrate it with their
barbarous Slav language. The dead body left on the scene
to authenticate the incident was in fact a prison convict
in costume.
In Yugoslavia, Hitler "liberated" not only Germans but
also and especially Croats and (in conjunction with
fascist Italy) Albanians, long selected as the proper
Randv?lker to receive German protection, the better to
crush the main historic adversary, the Serbs, the people
who more than any other had fought for independence from
Empires. (The Serbs themselves as they became "Yugoslavs"
were less and less unified around Serbian identity, even
if they have continued to pay for it.)
Making policy by distinguishing between "friend" and
"enemy" peoples is pure Hitlerism, and this is what the
Anglo-American NATO leaders are now doing, while
ironically pretending to reject "Munich".
History As Melodrama
The media that recount Balkan ghost stories to the
"children" (30) back in NATOland rarely go into detail
about the peculiarities of these various customs and
situations. Popular culture has prepared audiences for a
simpler version. The pattern is the same as in disaster
movies, outer space movies, etc: there is always the trio
of classic melodrama: wicked villain, helpless victim
(maiden in distress) and heroic rescuer. Same plot. Over
and over. Only in the Abramowitz humanitarian war plan,
the trio is composed of ethnic entities or nationalities.
There is the "good" ethnic group, all victims, like the
Kosovar Albanians. Then there is the "bad" ethnic group,
all racist hatred, ethnic cleansing and even "genocide".
And finally, of course, there is Globocop to the rescue:
NATO with its stealth bombers, cruise missiles and
cluster blade bombs, its depleted uranium and graphite
power-plan busters. A bit of fireworks, like the car
chase at the end of the movie.
The whole concept of ethnic war as pretext for U.S.
military intervention implies this division of humanity
between "good" and "bad" nationalities, between
"oppressor" and "victim" peoples. Since this is rarely
the case, the story is told by analogy with the famous
exceptional cases where the categories fit: Hitler and
the Jews being the obvious favourite. Every new villain
is a "Hitler", every new ethnic secessionist group to be
used as pretext for new NATO bases is the victim of a
potential "Holocaust". At this rate, the two terms will
cease to be proper nouns and become general terms for the
new global Guignol.
Starting with the pretense of militant anti-racism,
"humanitarian intervention" finishes with a new racism.
To merit all those bombs, the "bad" people must be
tarnished with collective guilt. At the G8 summit in
Cologne in June, Tony Blair clearly adopted the doctrine
of collective guilt when he declared that there could be
no humanitarian aid for the Serbs because of the dreadful
way they had treated the Kosovar Albanians. With their
incomparable self-righteousness, the Anglo-American
commanders are leading this new humanitarian crusade to
extremes of inhumanity.
Footnotes
(1) Jim Hoagland, "Developing a Doctrine of Humanitarian
Warfare", International Herald Tribune, June 28, 1999.
(2) A former U.S. Ambassador to Thailand, Abramowitz
served as Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence
and Research in the Reagan administration. In January
1986, he took part in an interesting mission to Beijing
alongside top CIA officials with the purpose of
persuading China to support supplying Stinger missiles to
Islamic Afghan rebels in order to keep up pressure on the
Soviet Union, even as Gorbachev was trying to end the
Cold War. In the mid-1990s, he was part of a blue ribbon
panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations which
advised the Clinton Administration to loosen restrictions
on CIA covert operations such as dealing with criminals,
disguising agents as journalists, and targeting
unfriendly heads of State.
(3) John B. Roberts, "Roots of Allied Farce", The
American Spectator, June 1999.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Morton H. Halperin & David J. Scheffer with Patricia
L. Small, Self-Determination In the New World Order,
Carnegie Endowment, Washington,D.C., 1992; page 80.
(6) Ibid, p.105.
(7) Ibid, p.107.
(8) Ibid, p.110.
(9) Charles Trueheart, "Serbs and Kosovars Get Nudge From
Their Hosts To Speed Up Peace Talks", International
Herald Tribune/Washington Post, February 9, 1999: "On
Monday, the Kosovo Albanians won a small tactical victory
when their American advisers, initially barred by
conference hosts, were allowed to visit them at the
chateau. They included two former U.S. diplomats, Morton
Abramowitz and Paul Williams."
(10) John B.Roberts, op.cit.
(11) Steven Erlanger, "Winning Friends for Foreign
Policy: Albright's First 100 Days", The New York Times,
14 May 1997.
(12) "Il n'y a pas de paradoxe. J'ai mis au point cette
doctrine en accord avec le pr?sident Carter, car c'?tait
la meilleure fa?on de d?stabiliser l'Urss. ?a a march?."
L'Ev?nement du jeudi, 14 January 1998.
(13) Le Nouvel observateur, 14 January 1998, reported by
AFP.
(14) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard,
BasicBooks, New York, 1997, p.78.
(15) Kaplan's 1993 book Balkan Ghosts was notoriously
read by President Clinton, who, however, had to be chided
later by the author for having drawn the wrong
conclusion. That is, Clinton's initial conclusion was to
stay out of the Balkans, whereas Kaplan has, he
explained, always been an interventionist.
(16) New York Times/International Herald Tribune, 23
February 1999.
(17) Robert D.Kaplan, "Why the Balkans Demand Amorality",
The Washington Post, 28 February 1999.
(18) Steve Niva, "Between Clash and Co-Optation: US
Foreign Policy and the Specter of Islam", Middle East
Report, Fall 1998.
(19) The Washington Post, 28 February 1999.
(20) Stern, 4 March 1999.
(21) In mid-April, 1999, the International Association of
Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) obtained and
distributed to news media official documents from the
German foreign office showing that in the months leading
up to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the foreign office
had repeatedly informed administrative courts of the
various German L?nder that there was no persecution of
ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or the rest of Serbia.
Example: Intelligence report from the Foreign Office,
January 12, 1999, to the administrative Court of Trier,
"Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked
to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of
Kosovo is still not involved in armed conflict. Public
life in cities like Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan, etc.
has, in the entire conflict period, continued on a
relatively normal basis." The "actions of the security
forces [were] not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians
as an ethnically defined group, but against the military
opponent and its actual or alleged supporters." These
reports were published in the German daily junge welt on
24 April 1999.
(22) Richard Cohen, "The Winner in the Balkans Is the
KLA", Washington Post/International Herald Tribune, 18
June 1999.
(23) Richard Holbrooke, To End a War, Random House, New
York, 1998, p.103.
(24) "The OSCE KVM: autopsy of a mission", statement
delivered by Ambassador Gabriel Keller, principal deputy
head of mission, to the watch group on May 25, 1999.
(25) Italian military participant "Romanus", in LiMes
2/99, cited by il manifesto, 19 June 1999.
(26) La Libert?, Gen?ve, 22 April 1999, and Balkan-Infos
No.33, Paris, May 1999.
(27) Ulisse, "Come gli Americani hanno sabotato la
missione dell'Osce", LiMes, supplemento al n.1/99, p.113,
L'Espresso, Rome, 1999.
(28) "Throughout the Kosovo crisis, Mr.Rubin personally
wooed Hashim Thaci, the ambitious leader of the Kosovo
Liberation Army", the Wall Street Journal reported on
June 29, 1999, even going so far as to "jokingly promise
that he would speak to Hollywood friends about getting
Mr.Thaci a movie role."
(29) Robert D.Kaplan, "Why the Balkans Demand Amorality",
The Washington Post, 28 February 1999.
(30) Peter Gowan, in "The Twisted Road to Kosovo", Labour
Focus on Eastern Europe, Number 62, Spring 1999, explains
(p.76) that the foreign policy elite discuss the sordid
realities of power politics in a closed arena, and "not
in front of the children", that is, the citizenry of the
NATOland countries, who are regaled with versions that
appeal to their values and ideals.
Enjoyed this article? Send it to a friend!
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UN GIUBILEO ETNICAMENTE PULITO
I devoti che quest'anno giungono a Roma nella speranza di lavare la
propria coscienza da tutte le colpe commesse potranno notare che, nella
lista delle lingue in cui confessarsi, o seguire le visite guidate,
appare la "lingua croata" e mai il croatoserbo, o serbocroato. La
operazione di revisionismo e "repulisti culturale" da parte di Santa
Romana Chiesa, impegnata a sostenere la divisione dei Balcani e delle
genti che ci vivono, continua dunque e si evidenzia in ogni occasione.
Visitando la Chiesa di San Marcello al Corso si potra' scoprire una
lapide, apposta nel 1996, dedicata a tale Giorgio Baglivi nato nel 1668
a Dubrovnik/Ragusa in... Croazia (quando la Croazia non esisteva, e dal
punto di vista geografico Dubrovnik era definita al massimo "citta'
dalmata" o "illirica"), a cura dell'Accademia delle Scienze e delle Arti
della Croazia. La suddetta Accademia ha collaborato certamente anche a
preparare la mostra di Arte Sacra Croata dal titolo "Croati, arte, fede
e cultura", aperta nel periodo dell'inaugurazione dell'Anno Santo del
2000, nella quale opere di artisti di lingua e cultura latina e
istro-veneta (Francesco da Milano, Nicola da Fiorentino, Lorenzo Lotto,
Tintoretto, Giovanni Lanfranco, e persino cimeli paleocristiani
precedenti all'arrivo degli Slavi su quelle terre) vengono spacciate
come tesori della cultura "croata".
Assolutamente da non perdere, per il turista come per i fedeli -
ustascia o meno - e' comunque la visita della Chiesa di San Girolamo
degli Illiri, all'inizio di via Tomacelli, all'interno del complesso
(edificato durante il fascismo) che ospita la Confraternita di San
Girolamo. Dal punto di vista artistico la chiesa di per se non offre
moltissimo, ma all'interno c'e' sempre qualche curiosita' che vale la
pena notare (ad esempio i santini con l'effigie del beato Alojzije
Stepinac). Essa poi da l'occasione di fermarsi un attimo a riflettere e
raccogliersi spiritualmente volgendo il pensiero, ad esempio, ai giorni
in cui il criminale nazista Ante Pavelic veniva ospitato tra quelle
mura, durante la sua permanenza a Roma in clandestinita' mentre fuggiva
dalla Jugoslavia (Croazia?) ancora grondante di sangue, verso
l'Argentina di Peron (si veda ad es. il libro "Ratlines" della Newton
Compton), grazie ai buoni uffici di Pio XII.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
I devoti che quest'anno giungono a Roma nella speranza di lavare la
propria coscienza da tutte le colpe commesse potranno notare che, nella
lista delle lingue in cui confessarsi, o seguire le visite guidate,
appare la "lingua croata" e mai il croatoserbo, o serbocroato. La
operazione di revisionismo e "repulisti culturale" da parte di Santa
Romana Chiesa, impegnata a sostenere la divisione dei Balcani e delle
genti che ci vivono, continua dunque e si evidenzia in ogni occasione.
Visitando la Chiesa di San Marcello al Corso si potra' scoprire una
lapide, apposta nel 1996, dedicata a tale Giorgio Baglivi nato nel 1668
a Dubrovnik/Ragusa in... Croazia (quando la Croazia non esisteva, e dal
punto di vista geografico Dubrovnik era definita al massimo "citta'
dalmata" o "illirica"), a cura dell'Accademia delle Scienze e delle Arti
della Croazia. La suddetta Accademia ha collaborato certamente anche a
preparare la mostra di Arte Sacra Croata dal titolo "Croati, arte, fede
e cultura", aperta nel periodo dell'inaugurazione dell'Anno Santo del
2000, nella quale opere di artisti di lingua e cultura latina e
istro-veneta (Francesco da Milano, Nicola da Fiorentino, Lorenzo Lotto,
Tintoretto, Giovanni Lanfranco, e persino cimeli paleocristiani
precedenti all'arrivo degli Slavi su quelle terre) vengono spacciate
come tesori della cultura "croata".
Assolutamente da non perdere, per il turista come per i fedeli -
ustascia o meno - e' comunque la visita della Chiesa di San Girolamo
degli Illiri, all'inizio di via Tomacelli, all'interno del complesso
(edificato durante il fascismo) che ospita la Confraternita di San
Girolamo. Dal punto di vista artistico la chiesa di per se non offre
moltissimo, ma all'interno c'e' sempre qualche curiosita' che vale la
pena notare (ad esempio i santini con l'effigie del beato Alojzije
Stepinac). Essa poi da l'occasione di fermarsi un attimo a riflettere e
raccogliersi spiritualmente volgendo il pensiero, ad esempio, ai giorni
in cui il criminale nazista Ante Pavelic veniva ospitato tra quelle
mura, durante la sua permanenza a Roma in clandestinita' mentre fuggiva
dalla Jugoslavia (Croazia?) ancora grondante di sangue, verso
l'Argentina di Peron (si veda ad es. il libro "Ratlines" della Newton
Compton), grazie ai buoni uffici di Pio XII.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
* Meglio ladri che rossi?
* Risultati delle elezioni in Russia (Solidaire)
* Putin, la spia innamorata dell'Occidente (Jef Bossuyt)
---
RUSSIA: MEGLIO LADRI CHE ROSSI
"La gran parte della campagna elettorale e’ stata spesa a bombardare la
Cecenia; un’altra a svillaneggiare i nemici di Eltsin [il sindaco di
Mosca Luzhkov (centro-sinistra) è stato accusato in diretta di omicidio;
al segretario del partito di maggioranza relativa, il comunista
Zjuganov, e' stato impedito di apparire in televisione sia prima che
dopo il voto] sulle televisioni pubbliche e private controllate dagli
amici di Eltsin [meglio: dai suoi padroni, come il
superbanchiere-supermafioso Berezovskij]. La famiglia’ - la figlia, i
generi, i grand commis e i nuovi ricchi ingrassati all’ombra del
presidente - ha finalmente trovato il candidato che garantirà il suo
futuro (...): Vladimir Putin"
Cosi’ scriveva Ugo TRAMBALLI sul “Sole 24 Ore” del 21\XII sui risultati
delle elezioni-farsa in Russia. Un improvviso scatto etico da parte del
quotidiano della Confindustria, a dispetto del fatto che per Vittorio
TORREMBINI, presidente dell’Associazione imprenditori in Russia (stessa
pagina), "queste elezioni siano un segno di vitalità democratica
positivo per coloro che vogliono lavorare e investire" ?
Niente paura! Continua Tramballi: "Non dobbiamo stupirci che il Paese
sia guidato da ex spie. Dove i servizi non sono deviati, esservi
appartenuti e’ un attestato di patriottismo. Ne’ deve indignare l’uso
elettorale di una guerra e di un popolo (i Ceceni), dei canali
televisivi e dei legami di famiglia. La Russia oggi e’ una cleptocrazia
[in greco: un ‘dominio di ladri’], il che e’ sempre un po’ meglio di
quando era una dittatura ideologica con la pretesa di esportare nel
mondo un modello politico..."
Tutto a posto, dunque. Ladri, fascisti, mafiosi, massacratori - si';
comunisti - no! Il ‘modello politico’ lo abbiamo esportato noi a loro:
il
‘dominio dei ladri’, appunto. [G.C.]
---
Roger ROMAIN
a/conseiller communal
B6180 COURCELLES
sites web : http://www1.brutele.be/users/r.romain
http://www1.brutele.be/users/r.romain/enbref.html
Elections en Russie
Beaucoup d?argent pour faire gagner Poutine
Les élections russes, organisées juste avant la Noël, ont conforté la
position des forces de droite à la Douma
(parlement). Quelques mois auparavant, le groupe entourant le président
Eltsine fondait le parti de l?Unité. Une
campagne médiatique sans précédent allait permettre à ce parti
d?engranger presque un quart des suffrages. A
gauche, les partis de Viktor Tioulkine et de Viktor Anpilov
recueillaient un total de 1,8 million de voix.
Jef Bossuyt
En juillet, les sondages étaient particulièrement catastrophiques pour
le Kremlin. 35% des salaires étaient inférieurs au
minimum vital de 872 roubles (1.308 FB). Les bombardements de l?Otan en
Yougoslavie avaient profondément humilié
la Russie, le Premier ministre Stepachine avait été forcé d?aller
mendier à New York un nouveau prêt du Fonds Monétaire
International. Tous ces éléments contribuaient à indisposer les Russes
vis-à-vis de l?équipe en place au Kremlin.
Le 2 juillet, cette équipe décidait d?inverser la vapeur en mettant sur
pied un état-major électoral. Dans la foulée, Serghei
Siojgou, ministre des Urgences, devenait le patron du tout nouveau parti
de l?Unité. Depuis lors, c?est tous les jours
qu?on allait le voir, grimé en pompier, éteindre des incendies, sauver
des blessés, distribuer repas chauds, couvertures et
matelas. Une image facile, car le Kremlin contrôle une bonne part de la
presse. Boris Berezovski, le banquier attaché au
Kremlin, était déjà actionnaire de la chaîne de TV ORT. Désormais, il
détient également 15% des parts du journal le plus
important, le Kommersant Daily. Le sponsor de la chaîne NTV, qui a
poussé celle-ci à soutenir les candidats de
l?opposition Loutchkov et Primakov, a eu maille à partir avec
l?inspection des impôts et les banques.
Autre point fort de la campagne électorale, la nomination de Poutine au
poste de Premier ministre. Sur-le-champ,
celui-ci lançait une campagne militaire destinée à traquer les
terroristes tchétchènes. Le groupe Eltsine profitait de
l?occasion pour le présenter comme un homme décidé, peu enclin à faire
des concessions aux séparatistes tchétchènes et à
l?ingérence étrangère. Sa popularité a donc grimpé en flèche. Dans un
même temps, on filmait Loutchkov, candidat de
l?opposition, en compagnie d?un homme d?affaire tchétchène, en suggérant
qu?il conspirait avec les terroristes de Grozny.
Alors que la guerre en Tchétchénie s?intègre dans la stratégie des
Etats-Unis pour démanteler la Russie, le régime Eltsine
a détourné la colère populaire contre les Tchétchènes, préservant ses
amis de Washington.
Outre le bassinage médiatique, il y a eu la pression administrative. Les
listes de candidats du parti de l?Unité étaient
truffées de fonctionnaires, de chefs d?entreprises, de pique-assiettes
du Kremlin, chargés tous de faire voter leurs ouailles
pour le parti de l?Unité. Résultat des courses, le nouveau parti a
récolté 23% des voix.
Ce faisant, le score total des partis de droite ralliés au gouvernement
(Unité, Patrie, Forces de Droite; Jirinovski,
Yabloko) atteignait 56% et leur accordait environ 70% des sièges de la
Douma. Dans les élections bourgeoises, où les
facteurs déterminants sont l?argent et la manipulation médiatique, le
peuple choisit lui-même ses exploiteurs. Pas un
seul travailleur ne siégera à la nouvelle Douma.
___________________
1,8 million de voix pour les révolutionnaires russes
103 millions de Russes pouvaient se rendre aux urnes. 61 millions
d?entre eux l?ont fait effectivement.
Le Parti Communiste Russe des Travailleurs (PCRT) de Viktor Tioulkine a
obtenu 1.427.447 voix. Le Bloc Stalinien
pour l?Union Soviétique de Viktor Anpilov en a reçu 327.364. Soit au
total 1.816.619 pour la gauche. Certains candidats
du PCRT ont obtenu des scores particulièrement élevés. Ainsi, Anatoli
Ouchakov, 51.000 voix (20,5%) parmi les
travailleurs du pétrole de Tchoumen. A Leningrad, Vladimir Grigoriev a
récolté 22.600 voix (10,7%).
La haute responsable syndicale Tamara Bedernikova, du secteur
Quadrichromie de Leningrad, était candidate du PCRT.
Elle raconte: 'Notre imprimerie compte 500 personnes. Une firme privée
voulait nous reprendre, mais avec 200
travailleurs seulement. Nous nous sommes battus en Justice. Notre usine
était propriété fédérale de l?Etat, le ministère
devait donc autoriser la privatisation et cela n?a pas eu lieu. Nous
savons bien qui se trouve derrière: Piatnik, une boîte
autrichienne. Elle veut nous reprendre, puis nous liquider, car nous
sommes ses principaux concurrents. Nous
fabriquons les plus belles cartes à jouer au monde. Malgré tous les
bâtons dans les roues, notre entreprise poursuit ses
activités.
Lorsque je me suis présentée comme candidate PCRT, certains travailleurs
ont dit: ?Ouais, imagine que tu sois élue. Tu
vas déménager à Moscou, et puis au revoir!? Mais je continue à habiter
ici. Jamais auparavant je n?ai fait de politique,
mais il faut bien que quelqu?un les représente. Mes parents
travaillaient dans cet atelier, et mon grand-père aussi. Mon
père a participé à la libération de Berlin avec l?armée rouge. Il a reçu
une sale blessure par balle et est revenu
quasiment sourd. Après la guerre, il a été responsable politique à
l?usine. Manifestement, il faut que je poursuive la
tradition, non?' (J.B.)
___________________
Les résultats des élections
1. Parti Communiste. Parti réformiste, n?est communiste que de nom.
Dirigeant: Ziouganov. 24,3% des voix.
2. Parti de l?Unité. Parti du président Eltsine sous direction de
Sioygou. 23,2%.
3. Patrie. Parti social-démocrate de Loutchkov et Primakov. 13,1%.
4. Forces de Droite. Libéraux de droite sous la direction de Kyrienko.
8,6%.
5. Bloc Jirinovski. Parti nationaliste de droite, soutien à Eltsine.
6,1%.
6. Yabloko. Parti pro-américain et ouvertement procapitaliste sous la
direction de Yavlinski. 6,0 %.
7. Parti Communiste Russe des Travailleurs (PCRT). Parti
marxiste-léniniste sous la direction de Viktor Tioulkine.
2,23%.
14. Bloc Stalinien pour l?Union Soviétique. Parti marxiste-léniniste
sous la direction de Viktor Anpilov. 0,61%.
Lu dans
SOLIDAIRE du 5 janvier 2000
---
>
> Poutine, l?espion qu?aimait l?Occident
>
> Vladimir Poutine, le nouveau président russe, est-il un faucon? Un
> officier KGB menant une guerre acharnée en Tchétchénie? Un homme que
> les Occidentaux doivent prendre avec des pincettes? Une enquête sur sa
> carrière balaie vite fait cette image façonnée par nos médias: la race
> Poutine est aussi servile pour l?Occident que la race Eltsine.
>
> Jef Bossuyt
>
> De 1982 à 1986, Poutine est espion du KGB en Allemagne de l?Est. A
> partir de 1985, son équipe a comme tâche d?y imposer la perestroïka,
> la nouvelle politique de Gorbatchev. Concrètement, cela signifie que
> les troupes soviétiques doivent quitter ce qui est toujours la RDA et
> que ce pays doit engager des réformes économiques d?inspiration
> libérale.
>
> Mais le chef de fil des communistes est-allemands, Erich Honecker, y
> est opposé. Les espions russes recrutent alors des opposants en vue
> d?un putsch1. Deux mois plus tard, le Mur de Berlin tombe?
>
> Début des années 90, Poutine devient assistant de Sobtsiak, maire de
> Léningrad. Il mène les privatisations, vend bâtiments et entreprises
> de la ville au capital national et étranger. Dans les crémeries de
> Léningrad, on trouve désormais du yaourt Früchtegut en provenance de
> Bavière. Les kolkhozes (coopératives) ne doivent plus fournir de lait:
> elles dépérissent. Thane Gustafson, directeur du Cambridge Eurasia
> Energy Program (EU), décrit Poutine comme un homme 'habitué à traiter
> avec des sociétés occidentales'2.
>
> Tombeur de Mur et expert ès privatisations
>
> Mi-1999, le président Eltsine devient un danger pour la stabilité du
> régime pro-occidental de Russie. 35% des salaires sont passés sous le
> minimum vital. Et les bombardements de l?Otan en Yougoslavie ont
> profondément humilié la Russie. Il devient urgent de trouver la relève
> du chef du Kremlin. 'Le remplacement d?Eltsine par Poutine était déjà
> préparé six mois d?avance', confiera Gleb Pavlovski, conseiller
> privilégié d?Eltsine et de Poutine.3
>
> La décision est en effet prise en juillet 1999, lors du forum
> économique d?été à Salzbourg (Autriche)4. Le cénacle se compose
> d?investisseurs étrangers, de chefs d?Etat de l?Europe de l?Est, de
> hauts dignitaires autrichiens et de la crème des politiciens russes
> les plus pro-occidentaux: Tchoubaïs, Kirienko et Rijkov.
>
> En août 1999, Poutine devient Premier ministre et passe à
> l?avant-scène. Il déclare mener une guerre chirurgicales contre les
> rebelles tchétchènes. Les victimes civiles ne sont pas montrées. En
> décembre, son parti d?unité nouvellement constitué gagne les élections
> parlementaires. On décide alors de le lancer comme président
> intérimaire jusqu?aux élections présidentielles anticipées de mars
> 2000. Le délai maximum durant lequel on peut maintenir sa popularité?
>
> La meilleure manière de perdre la guerre
>
> Juste après l?abdication d?Eltsine, un journal américain écrit: 'Il y
> a quelques années, la démission d?Eltsine aurait choqué et alarmé
> Washington. Aujourd?hui, l?ambiance est plutôt au soulagement.'5 Dans
> le secteur de l?énergie, les investisseurs américains sont même
> enthousiastes: 'C?est une bonne nouvelle pour les investisseurs car
> ils sont favorables à ce Poutine pragmatique. Cela met un terme à
> notre incertitude. Le marché des actions a fait un bond de 25 % quand
> il a gagné les élections parlementaires, et c?est un deuxième bond en
> avant.'6 Madeleine Allbright, secrétaire d?Etat américaine aux
> Affaires étrangères, définit elle Poutine comme 'une personne pouvant
> réaliser quelque chose'7.
>
> Clinton et Allbright protestent bien contre la guerre en Tchétchénie,
> mais ils sont conscients que leurs intérêts au Kremlin ne peuvent être
> mieux servis que par Poutine. La manière dont celui-ci mène la guerre
> est en effet la meilleure pour la perdre. Il admet des observateurs en
> Tchétchénie qui préparent le terrain pour des interventions depuis
> l?Occident. Il se garde bien de s?en prendre aux mercenaires en chef,
> Basaev et Chatab. Mais n?hésite pas à bombarder la population des
> villages.
>
> Le président de l?Ingouchie, région voisine de la Tchétchénie, a la
> formule suivante: 'S?il y a des terroristes dans une maison, pourquoi
> détruis-tu alors toute la maison? Lorsque les réfugiés tchétchènes
> reviendront, ils ne le pardonneront jamais. Combien de temps encore
> l?armée russe pourra-t-elle payer une telle campagne? C?est la voie
> directe pour perdre tout le Caucase'.8
>
> 1 Berliner Zeitung, cité dans Le Soir, 11 janvier 2000. ? 2
> Cambridge, Massachussets, 31 décembre 1999. ? 3 De Standaard, 3
> janvier 2000. ? 4 Newsline, 2 juillet 1999 et ORT-tv-nouvelles, 3
> juillet 1999. ? 5 Los Angeles Times, 1 janvier 2000. ? 6
> Cambridge, Massachussets, 31 décembre 1999. ? 7 AP, Washington,
> 31 décembre 1999. ? 8 Pratislava?s Pravda, 28 décembre 1999.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
* Risultati delle elezioni in Russia (Solidaire)
* Putin, la spia innamorata dell'Occidente (Jef Bossuyt)
---
RUSSIA: MEGLIO LADRI CHE ROSSI
"La gran parte della campagna elettorale e’ stata spesa a bombardare la
Cecenia; un’altra a svillaneggiare i nemici di Eltsin [il sindaco di
Mosca Luzhkov (centro-sinistra) è stato accusato in diretta di omicidio;
al segretario del partito di maggioranza relativa, il comunista
Zjuganov, e' stato impedito di apparire in televisione sia prima che
dopo il voto] sulle televisioni pubbliche e private controllate dagli
amici di Eltsin [meglio: dai suoi padroni, come il
superbanchiere-supermafioso Berezovskij]. La famiglia’ - la figlia, i
generi, i grand commis e i nuovi ricchi ingrassati all’ombra del
presidente - ha finalmente trovato il candidato che garantirà il suo
futuro (...): Vladimir Putin"
Cosi’ scriveva Ugo TRAMBALLI sul “Sole 24 Ore” del 21\XII sui risultati
delle elezioni-farsa in Russia. Un improvviso scatto etico da parte del
quotidiano della Confindustria, a dispetto del fatto che per Vittorio
TORREMBINI, presidente dell’Associazione imprenditori in Russia (stessa
pagina), "queste elezioni siano un segno di vitalità democratica
positivo per coloro che vogliono lavorare e investire" ?
Niente paura! Continua Tramballi: "Non dobbiamo stupirci che il Paese
sia guidato da ex spie. Dove i servizi non sono deviati, esservi
appartenuti e’ un attestato di patriottismo. Ne’ deve indignare l’uso
elettorale di una guerra e di un popolo (i Ceceni), dei canali
televisivi e dei legami di famiglia. La Russia oggi e’ una cleptocrazia
[in greco: un ‘dominio di ladri’], il che e’ sempre un po’ meglio di
quando era una dittatura ideologica con la pretesa di esportare nel
mondo un modello politico..."
Tutto a posto, dunque. Ladri, fascisti, mafiosi, massacratori - si';
comunisti - no! Il ‘modello politico’ lo abbiamo esportato noi a loro:
il
‘dominio dei ladri’, appunto. [G.C.]
---
Roger ROMAIN
a/conseiller communal
B6180 COURCELLES
sites web : http://www1.brutele.be/users/r.romain
http://www1.brutele.be/users/r.romain/enbref.html
Elections en Russie
Beaucoup d?argent pour faire gagner Poutine
Les élections russes, organisées juste avant la Noël, ont conforté la
position des forces de droite à la Douma
(parlement). Quelques mois auparavant, le groupe entourant le président
Eltsine fondait le parti de l?Unité. Une
campagne médiatique sans précédent allait permettre à ce parti
d?engranger presque un quart des suffrages. A
gauche, les partis de Viktor Tioulkine et de Viktor Anpilov
recueillaient un total de 1,8 million de voix.
Jef Bossuyt
En juillet, les sondages étaient particulièrement catastrophiques pour
le Kremlin. 35% des salaires étaient inférieurs au
minimum vital de 872 roubles (1.308 FB). Les bombardements de l?Otan en
Yougoslavie avaient profondément humilié
la Russie, le Premier ministre Stepachine avait été forcé d?aller
mendier à New York un nouveau prêt du Fonds Monétaire
International. Tous ces éléments contribuaient à indisposer les Russes
vis-à-vis de l?équipe en place au Kremlin.
Le 2 juillet, cette équipe décidait d?inverser la vapeur en mettant sur
pied un état-major électoral. Dans la foulée, Serghei
Siojgou, ministre des Urgences, devenait le patron du tout nouveau parti
de l?Unité. Depuis lors, c?est tous les jours
qu?on allait le voir, grimé en pompier, éteindre des incendies, sauver
des blessés, distribuer repas chauds, couvertures et
matelas. Une image facile, car le Kremlin contrôle une bonne part de la
presse. Boris Berezovski, le banquier attaché au
Kremlin, était déjà actionnaire de la chaîne de TV ORT. Désormais, il
détient également 15% des parts du journal le plus
important, le Kommersant Daily. Le sponsor de la chaîne NTV, qui a
poussé celle-ci à soutenir les candidats de
l?opposition Loutchkov et Primakov, a eu maille à partir avec
l?inspection des impôts et les banques.
Autre point fort de la campagne électorale, la nomination de Poutine au
poste de Premier ministre. Sur-le-champ,
celui-ci lançait une campagne militaire destinée à traquer les
terroristes tchétchènes. Le groupe Eltsine profitait de
l?occasion pour le présenter comme un homme décidé, peu enclin à faire
des concessions aux séparatistes tchétchènes et à
l?ingérence étrangère. Sa popularité a donc grimpé en flèche. Dans un
même temps, on filmait Loutchkov, candidat de
l?opposition, en compagnie d?un homme d?affaire tchétchène, en suggérant
qu?il conspirait avec les terroristes de Grozny.
Alors que la guerre en Tchétchénie s?intègre dans la stratégie des
Etats-Unis pour démanteler la Russie, le régime Eltsine
a détourné la colère populaire contre les Tchétchènes, préservant ses
amis de Washington.
Outre le bassinage médiatique, il y a eu la pression administrative. Les
listes de candidats du parti de l?Unité étaient
truffées de fonctionnaires, de chefs d?entreprises, de pique-assiettes
du Kremlin, chargés tous de faire voter leurs ouailles
pour le parti de l?Unité. Résultat des courses, le nouveau parti a
récolté 23% des voix.
Ce faisant, le score total des partis de droite ralliés au gouvernement
(Unité, Patrie, Forces de Droite; Jirinovski,
Yabloko) atteignait 56% et leur accordait environ 70% des sièges de la
Douma. Dans les élections bourgeoises, où les
facteurs déterminants sont l?argent et la manipulation médiatique, le
peuple choisit lui-même ses exploiteurs. Pas un
seul travailleur ne siégera à la nouvelle Douma.
___________________
1,8 million de voix pour les révolutionnaires russes
103 millions de Russes pouvaient se rendre aux urnes. 61 millions
d?entre eux l?ont fait effectivement.
Le Parti Communiste Russe des Travailleurs (PCRT) de Viktor Tioulkine a
obtenu 1.427.447 voix. Le Bloc Stalinien
pour l?Union Soviétique de Viktor Anpilov en a reçu 327.364. Soit au
total 1.816.619 pour la gauche. Certains candidats
du PCRT ont obtenu des scores particulièrement élevés. Ainsi, Anatoli
Ouchakov, 51.000 voix (20,5%) parmi les
travailleurs du pétrole de Tchoumen. A Leningrad, Vladimir Grigoriev a
récolté 22.600 voix (10,7%).
La haute responsable syndicale Tamara Bedernikova, du secteur
Quadrichromie de Leningrad, était candidate du PCRT.
Elle raconte: 'Notre imprimerie compte 500 personnes. Une firme privée
voulait nous reprendre, mais avec 200
travailleurs seulement. Nous nous sommes battus en Justice. Notre usine
était propriété fédérale de l?Etat, le ministère
devait donc autoriser la privatisation et cela n?a pas eu lieu. Nous
savons bien qui se trouve derrière: Piatnik, une boîte
autrichienne. Elle veut nous reprendre, puis nous liquider, car nous
sommes ses principaux concurrents. Nous
fabriquons les plus belles cartes à jouer au monde. Malgré tous les
bâtons dans les roues, notre entreprise poursuit ses
activités.
Lorsque je me suis présentée comme candidate PCRT, certains travailleurs
ont dit: ?Ouais, imagine que tu sois élue. Tu
vas déménager à Moscou, et puis au revoir!? Mais je continue à habiter
ici. Jamais auparavant je n?ai fait de politique,
mais il faut bien que quelqu?un les représente. Mes parents
travaillaient dans cet atelier, et mon grand-père aussi. Mon
père a participé à la libération de Berlin avec l?armée rouge. Il a reçu
une sale blessure par balle et est revenu
quasiment sourd. Après la guerre, il a été responsable politique à
l?usine. Manifestement, il faut que je poursuive la
tradition, non?' (J.B.)
___________________
Les résultats des élections
1. Parti Communiste. Parti réformiste, n?est communiste que de nom.
Dirigeant: Ziouganov. 24,3% des voix.
2. Parti de l?Unité. Parti du président Eltsine sous direction de
Sioygou. 23,2%.
3. Patrie. Parti social-démocrate de Loutchkov et Primakov. 13,1%.
4. Forces de Droite. Libéraux de droite sous la direction de Kyrienko.
8,6%.
5. Bloc Jirinovski. Parti nationaliste de droite, soutien à Eltsine.
6,1%.
6. Yabloko. Parti pro-américain et ouvertement procapitaliste sous la
direction de Yavlinski. 6,0 %.
7. Parti Communiste Russe des Travailleurs (PCRT). Parti
marxiste-léniniste sous la direction de Viktor Tioulkine.
2,23%.
14. Bloc Stalinien pour l?Union Soviétique. Parti marxiste-léniniste
sous la direction de Viktor Anpilov. 0,61%.
Lu dans
SOLIDAIRE du 5 janvier 2000
---
>
> Poutine, l?espion qu?aimait l?Occident
>
> Vladimir Poutine, le nouveau président russe, est-il un faucon? Un
> officier KGB menant une guerre acharnée en Tchétchénie? Un homme que
> les Occidentaux doivent prendre avec des pincettes? Une enquête sur sa
> carrière balaie vite fait cette image façonnée par nos médias: la race
> Poutine est aussi servile pour l?Occident que la race Eltsine.
>
> Jef Bossuyt
>
> De 1982 à 1986, Poutine est espion du KGB en Allemagne de l?Est. A
> partir de 1985, son équipe a comme tâche d?y imposer la perestroïka,
> la nouvelle politique de Gorbatchev. Concrètement, cela signifie que
> les troupes soviétiques doivent quitter ce qui est toujours la RDA et
> que ce pays doit engager des réformes économiques d?inspiration
> libérale.
>
> Mais le chef de fil des communistes est-allemands, Erich Honecker, y
> est opposé. Les espions russes recrutent alors des opposants en vue
> d?un putsch1. Deux mois plus tard, le Mur de Berlin tombe?
>
> Début des années 90, Poutine devient assistant de Sobtsiak, maire de
> Léningrad. Il mène les privatisations, vend bâtiments et entreprises
> de la ville au capital national et étranger. Dans les crémeries de
> Léningrad, on trouve désormais du yaourt Früchtegut en provenance de
> Bavière. Les kolkhozes (coopératives) ne doivent plus fournir de lait:
> elles dépérissent. Thane Gustafson, directeur du Cambridge Eurasia
> Energy Program (EU), décrit Poutine comme un homme 'habitué à traiter
> avec des sociétés occidentales'2.
>
> Tombeur de Mur et expert ès privatisations
>
> Mi-1999, le président Eltsine devient un danger pour la stabilité du
> régime pro-occidental de Russie. 35% des salaires sont passés sous le
> minimum vital. Et les bombardements de l?Otan en Yougoslavie ont
> profondément humilié la Russie. Il devient urgent de trouver la relève
> du chef du Kremlin. 'Le remplacement d?Eltsine par Poutine était déjà
> préparé six mois d?avance', confiera Gleb Pavlovski, conseiller
> privilégié d?Eltsine et de Poutine.3
>
> La décision est en effet prise en juillet 1999, lors du forum
> économique d?été à Salzbourg (Autriche)4. Le cénacle se compose
> d?investisseurs étrangers, de chefs d?Etat de l?Europe de l?Est, de
> hauts dignitaires autrichiens et de la crème des politiciens russes
> les plus pro-occidentaux: Tchoubaïs, Kirienko et Rijkov.
>
> En août 1999, Poutine devient Premier ministre et passe à
> l?avant-scène. Il déclare mener une guerre chirurgicales contre les
> rebelles tchétchènes. Les victimes civiles ne sont pas montrées. En
> décembre, son parti d?unité nouvellement constitué gagne les élections
> parlementaires. On décide alors de le lancer comme président
> intérimaire jusqu?aux élections présidentielles anticipées de mars
> 2000. Le délai maximum durant lequel on peut maintenir sa popularité?
>
> La meilleure manière de perdre la guerre
>
> Juste après l?abdication d?Eltsine, un journal américain écrit: 'Il y
> a quelques années, la démission d?Eltsine aurait choqué et alarmé
> Washington. Aujourd?hui, l?ambiance est plutôt au soulagement.'5 Dans
> le secteur de l?énergie, les investisseurs américains sont même
> enthousiastes: 'C?est une bonne nouvelle pour les investisseurs car
> ils sont favorables à ce Poutine pragmatique. Cela met un terme à
> notre incertitude. Le marché des actions a fait un bond de 25 % quand
> il a gagné les élections parlementaires, et c?est un deuxième bond en
> avant.'6 Madeleine Allbright, secrétaire d?Etat américaine aux
> Affaires étrangères, définit elle Poutine comme 'une personne pouvant
> réaliser quelque chose'7.
>
> Clinton et Allbright protestent bien contre la guerre en Tchétchénie,
> mais ils sont conscients que leurs intérêts au Kremlin ne peuvent être
> mieux servis que par Poutine. La manière dont celui-ci mène la guerre
> est en effet la meilleure pour la perdre. Il admet des observateurs en
> Tchétchénie qui préparent le terrain pour des interventions depuis
> l?Occident. Il se garde bien de s?en prendre aux mercenaires en chef,
> Basaev et Chatab. Mais n?hésite pas à bombarder la population des
> villages.
>
> Le président de l?Ingouchie, région voisine de la Tchétchénie, a la
> formule suivante: 'S?il y a des terroristes dans une maison, pourquoi
> détruis-tu alors toute la maison? Lorsque les réfugiés tchétchènes
> reviendront, ils ne le pardonneront jamais. Combien de temps encore
> l?armée russe pourra-t-elle payer une telle campagne? C?est la voie
> directe pour perdre tout le Caucase'.8
>
> 1 Berliner Zeitung, cité dans Le Soir, 11 janvier 2000. ? 2
> Cambridge, Massachussets, 31 décembre 1999. ? 3 De Standaard, 3
> janvier 2000. ? 4 Newsline, 2 juillet 1999 et ORT-tv-nouvelles, 3
> juillet 1999. ? 5 Los Angeles Times, 1 janvier 2000. ? 6
> Cambridge, Massachussets, 31 décembre 1999. ? 7 AP, Washington,
> 31 décembre 1999. ? 8 Pratislava?s Pravda, 28 décembre 1999.
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