'Fight Smart' Update - 11 December 2005

Don't Take the Bait - Fight Smart
ANIMATED 911 SUMMARY - CLICK HERE
Who is the enemy?

Gotovina Arrest
US Covert Participation In Yugoslav Civil War
In Violation Of International Law
Will The Truth Come Out In the Hague?
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATGotovina.htm
Or Will It Be Buried?

US Ally General Ante Gotovina Indicted At The Hague For Alleged Crimes In Yugoslav Civil War During US Backed 'Operation Storm' Arrested By Spanish Police 7 December 2005

Will This Man Now Spill The Beans On
US Covert Participation In Yugoslav Civil War
Or Has He Done A Deal In Return For His Silence?

"Instead of being holed up in a remote village, he was caught at a posh restaurant, dining out in the open with a companion. And the alias he used had been widely known for years. Gotovina's easy arrest has prompted a flurry of speculation in Croatia: Did he strike a deal?... Many in Croatia are convinced that Gotovina, who joined the French Foreign Legion at the age of 18 and fought in Africa and Latin America in the '70s and '80s before joining Croatian troops in 1991, was too experienced to allow himself to be caught.... There was also speculation that a Croatian businessman disclosed his whereabouts in return for authorities dropping criminal charges against him. Hrvoje Petrac, who allegedly financed Gotovina's hiding, was arrested in Greece in September."
Gotovina capture: Arrest or surrender?
CNN/Associated Press, 10 December 2005

"A Croatian general considered to be one[of] the UN war crimes tribunal's most sought-after suspects has been arrested in a luxury restaurant in the Canary Islands after more than four years on the run.... Mr Gotovina has been at large since the tribunal accused him in 2001 of the wartime atrocities during the 1995 offensive code-named 'Operation Storm'....  The Hague indictment alleges that General Gotovina 'participated in a joint criminal enterprise, the common purpose of which was the forcible and permanent removal of the (Croatian) Serb population ... ' "
Croatian war crimes suspect arrested in Tenerife
Times Online, 8 December 2005

So Will  United States Government Personnel Be Indicted Too
For Their Participation In 'Operation Storm'?

"President Mesic of Croatia is promising that his Government will co-operate fully in trials of Croatians accused of atrocities during its independence war.... The country’s relations with Europe have also become stronger in recent years, as evidence of alleged American involvement in the ruthless campaign to drive Serbs from the region has begun to emerge.... 200,000 Serbs [were] driven from the Krajina region during the 1995 Croatian offensive.... Croatia, however, cannot arrest the most wanted Croatian, General Ante Gotovina, because he is hiding in neighbouring Bosnia.... Another major obstacle is American concern that if General Gotovina is arrested he may carry out a threat to disclose the previously unknown extent of US covert involvement in the Krajina offensive...."
Croatia in pledge to help war crime trials
London Times, 14 June 2003

"Americans in military uniform, operating from a cream-colored trailer near the runway, directed the GNAT-750 drone to photograph Serb troop positions and weapons emplacements. The images were transmitted back to base, analyzed and then passed on to the Pentagon. According to top Croat intelligence officials, copies were also sent to the headquarters of the Croatian general in command of  'Operation Storm.'... Now the successful CIA operation is about to become defense exhibit A in a war-crimes case at The Hague tribunal.  Last month prosecutors announced the indictment of General Gotovina for atrocities committed during and after Operation Storm, including the murder of 150 Krajina Serbs, the forced displacement of as many as 200,000 others and the torching of thousands of homes.... Now a NEWSWEEK investigation has shown that U.S. intelligence cooperation with Croatia went far deeper than Washington has ever acknowledged. According to Miro Tudjman, son of the late president Franjo Tudjman and head of the Croatian counterpart to the CIA in the mid-1990s, the United States provided encryption gear to each of Croatia's regular Army brigades. He says the CIA also spent at least $10 million on Croatian listening posts to intercept telephone calls in Bosnia and Serbia. 'All our [electronic] intelligence in Croatia went online in real time to the National Security Agency in Washington,' says Tudjman. 'We had a de facto partnership.' American officials familiar with intelligence issues confirm that the CIA operated drones from a base near Zadar on the Adriatic coast, during and after Operation Storm... And the country's former intelligence chiefs have decided to speak out about their ties to the United States as a way of vouching for Gotovina's innocence. 'I always said that the only people in Croatia who know everything are the Americans,' says Markica Rebic, the former head of military intelligence. When Gotovina stands trial, some of those Americans may be asked to testify about their country's role in an ugly conflict."
What Did the CIA Know?
NEWSWEEK, 21 August 2001

"It is common for the ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia] to offer reduced sentences (five years in one case) to men convicted of hideous crimes, mass murder [where it serves the interest of the great powers].... The use of anonymous witnesses is now very widespread, as is the frequency of the ‘closed sessions’: a glance at the ICTY transcripts shows pages and pages blanked out because sensitive issues have been discussed in court — sensitive, that is, to the security interests of the Great Powers which control it, the USA in first place. The ICTY’s nadir came last December, when the former supreme commander of Nato, Wesley Clark, testified in the Milosevic trial; the court agreed to let the Pentagon censor its proceedings, and the transcripts were not released until Washington had given the green light. So much for the ICTY’s transparency and independence....."
Let Slobbo speak for himself
The Spectator, 10 July 2004

The Capture Of Gotovina - How And Why

"A Croatian general charged with war crimes has been arrested in Spain, the UN's chief war crimes prosecutor says. Ante Gotovina - the third most-wanted suspect from the Balkan wars - was held in the Canary Islands on Wednesday. Gen Gotovina, 50, is accused over the death of about 150 Serb civilians during a Croatian offensive in 1995. He has been jailed by a Spanish judge and could be extradited to The Hague as early as Friday. His lawyer said his client would probably plead not guilty. He has denied responsibility in the past, his lawyer added. The Croatian government's failure to arrest the general had hampered the country's entry talks with the European Union.... He was flown to Madrid on Thursday and taken to the High Court, where a judge read him the charges against him. Gen Gotovina was indicted for crimes against humanity by the war crimes tribunal in 2001. He is alleged to have failed to prevent the murder of 150 Serbs killed by shooting, stabbing or burning during Operation Storm, the August 1995 push against Serb forces in Croatia's Krajina region. The indictment also accuses him of co-ordinating a campaign of plunder and looting throughout operations in ethnically Serb areas of the region."
Croatian Fugitive General Arrested
BBC Online, 8 December 2005

"One of the most wanted war criminals is being shielded by the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican hierarchy, the United Nations' chief prosecutor for former Yugoslavia said yesterday. Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the UN international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said she believed that Gen Ante Gotovina was being sheltered in a Franciscan monastery in his native Croatia... She said: 'I have information he is hiding in a Franciscan monastery and so the Catholic Church is protecting him. I have taken this up with the Vatican and the Vatican refuses totally to co-operate with us.' In July, Mrs del Ponte travelled to Rome to share her intelligence with the Vatican's 'foreign minister', Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo. He refused to help, telling her the Vatican was not a state and thus had 'no international obligations' to help the UN to hunt war criminals. Mrs del Ponte complained: 'They said they have no intelligence and I don't believe that. I think that the Catholic Church has the most advanced intelligence services.'... In February, the Balkan intrigue took a poisonous turn for Britain when the general's allies inside Croat intelligence 'outed' several war crimes investigators in Croatia as serving MI6 and United States intelligence officers.... Archbishop Lajolo had even refused an appeal for the Vatican to act as a secret back-channel of communication to the Croatian Church, she said. 'I asked to have an interlocutor in the Vatican, so I can share the information that I have, but no, no possibility.' Mrs del Ponte survived a Mafia assassination attempt during her career as a Swiss federal prosecutor. She now works in The Hague, protected by armed UN guards.... Mrs del Ponte finally wrote to the Pope directly. Several weeks later, she has received no reply. At the Vatican, Monsignor Maurizio Bravi, the private secretary to Archbishop Lajolo, confirmed that the meeting with Mrs del Ponte had taken place. But he said: 'I cannot give you any information on this.' Back in The Hague, Mrs del Ponte was asked if she felt the Church was motivated by historic links to the Croatian nationalist cause or out of a desire to avoid the secular world. 'I don't want to envisage an answer to your question,' she said. 'But my disappointment is big.'"
Vatican accused of shielding 'war criminal'
Daily Telegraph, 20 September 2005

"... Ms del Ponte wrote to Pope Benedict XVI in July this year in an effort to secure the Vatican's co-operation, her spokeswoman told the BBC News website. The Pope has yet to reply to the prosecutor's request for a meeting, the spokeswoman said."
War crimes chief accuses Vatican
BBC, 20 September 2005

"Del Ponte travelled to Rome in July to share her intelligence with the Vatican State Secretary, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo. He refused to help, telling her the Vatican was not a state and thus had no international obligations to help the UN to hunt war criminals, she was quoted as saying. The press release issued by Navarro-Valls explains the course of the July meeting between Del Ponte and Lajolo. Responding to her request for information, Msgr. Lajolo explained that the State Secretariat was not a body of the Holy See which could in an institutionalised manner cooperate with courts."
The Vatican Awaiting Precise Information From Del Ponte
Croatian News Agency-HINA, 21 September 2005

"The Vatican has rigorously denied accusations that the Croatian Catholic church is at present protecting under its wing the presumed war criminal General Ante Gotovina. Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor at the International Tribunal, who has caused so many war criminals’ hearts to flutter, has launched this particular bombshell, much annoying the Vatican. Meanwhile, the Bishop’s Conference in Croatia spent the weekend 24/25 September in urgent debate in Lisbon, discussing how they will counter the prosecutor’s thesis.... Zagreb insists that the elusive general is not in Croatia, though the indefatigable del Ponte says he certainly is, hiding somewhere between Croatia and the Croatian zones of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In late September del Ponte gave an interview to a sensationalist British newspaper in which she affirmed that ‘according to information I have received, Gotovina is hiding in a Franciscan monastery, which means protection by the Vatican. This is why I have directed my inquiries directly at the Vatican, but those responsible there have refused to collaborate.’ Carla went on to say that she has appealed directly to the Pope, Benedict XVI, but it is obvious the Pope does not find her appealing, and thus stalemate is reached."
Carla del Ponte re-surfaces
Tenerife News, 18 November 2005

"A Croatian tycoon, jailed in Greece and fighting extradition to Zagreb which wants his help in the search for indicted war criminal General Ante Gotovina, said on Tuesday he did not know where the fugitive general was. Hrvoje Petrac, 50, who is waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether he should be extradited, said two officials from the Hague war crimes tribunal had met him in prison and offered to free him if he provided information on the wanted general.... One of Petrac's lawyers, Spiros Alfantakis, said his client's life would be in danger if he were extradited. 'There is a very high risk he will be submitted to torture or degrading or humiliating treatment during the interrogation as well as his incarceration in the prison of Zagreb,' Alfantakis said. 'Unless his extradition is overruled, his life as well as his future in general is in danger,' he said. The hearing on his appeal against an extradition order has been postponed for a week until a Croatian-speaking interpreter could be found..... Petrac was tried in absentia in Croatia and sentenced to six years in prison for masterminding the kidnap of a 12-year-old boy and extorting money from his family. He was arrested by the Greek coast guard in August on an international warrant."
Croatian tycoon says can't help find Gotovina
Reuters, 8 November 2005

"Greece's Supreme Court has ordered the extradition of a Croatian businessman wanted in connection with fugitive war crimes suspect General Ante Gotovina. Hrvoje Petrac, 50, who was arrested in August in Greece, was sentenced by a Zagreb court in absentia earlier this year to six years for kidnapping a boy.... Petrac claims he could be tortured if returned to Croatia. The tycoon was sentenced in absentia for kidnapping the son of a former Croatian deputy defence minister and holding him to ransom."
Greek court rules against Croat
BBC Online, 22 November 2005

"Two weeks ago he was sunning himself in Mauritius. Last night Ante Gotovina, the former Croatian general arrested while dining in a luxury hotel in Tenerife, was languishing in jail, waiting for a flight to The Hague....   The net tightened after the arrest in Greece in August this year of a Croat businessman suspected of helping to finance his fugitive lifestyle. However, the trail was cold until police received a tip from Interpol in September that Mr Gotovina was staying in an hotel in the Canaries."
War crimes suspect's four years of high life on run
London Times, 10 December 2005

"Instead of being holed up in a remote village, he was caught at a posh restaurant, dining out in the open with a companion. And the alias he used had been widely known for years. Gotovina's easy arrest has prompted a flurry of speculation in Croatia: Did he strike a deal?... Many in Croatia are convinced that Gotovina, who joined the French Foreign Legion at the age of 18 and fought in Africa and Latin America in the '70s and '80s before joining Croatian troops in 1991, was too experienced to allow himself to be caught.... There was also speculation that a Croatian businessman disclosed his whereabouts in return for authorities dropping criminal charges against him. Hrvoje Petrac, who allegedly financed Gotovina's hiding, was arrested in Greece in September."
Gotovina capture: Arrest or surrender?
CNN/Associated Press, 10 December 2005

Why Gotovina Was Caught Now

"Brussels had made Gotovina's capture a main condition for starting membership talks, which finally started in October. German newspaper commentators believe his arrest should greatly help Zagreb in its ambitions to join the EU."
Gotovina Arrest Aids Croatia's EU Bid
Der Speigel, 9 December 2005

US Covert Participation In 'Operation Storm'

"On 4 August 1995, the Republic of Croatia launched a military offensive known as 'Oluja' or 'Storm' ('Operation Storm'), with the objective of re-taking the Krajina region. Ante GOTOVINA was the overall operational commander of the Croatian forces that were deployed as part of Operation Storm in the southern portion of the Krajina region... During and after Operation Storm, at all times relevant to this Amended Indictment, Ante GOTOVINA, with others including Ivan CERMAK, Mladen MARKAC and President Franjo TUDMAN, participated in a joint criminal enterprise, the common purpose of which was the forcible and permanent removal of the Serb population from the Krajina region, including by the plunder, damage or outright destruction of the property of the Serb population, so as to discourage or prevent members of that population from returning to their homes and resuming habitation. The crimes enumerated in Counts 1 and 3 to 6 of this Amended Indictment were within the common purpose of the joint criminal enterprise."
THE PROSECUTOR OF THE TRIBUNAL AGAINST ANTE GOTOVINA - AMMENDED INDICTMENT - CASE NO: IT-01-45-I
THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA,  19 FEBRUARY 2004

"The Croatian World Congress sent a letter last week demanding that Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), open a criminal investigation into Mr. Clinton and other top officials of his administration [including George Tenet of the CIA] for 'aiding and abetting indicted Croatian Gen. Ante Gotovina in a 1995 Croatian military operation known as ´Operation Storm.´... Secretly supported by the Clinton administration, Croatian forces launched a massive three-day military offensive - known as 'Operation Storm' - on Aug. 4, 1995, in which Croatia recovered territories occupied by rebel Serbs following Zagreb´s drive for independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.... The Croatian World Congress said the U.S. administration gave the green light for the operation and provided diplomatic and political support for it."
Balkans tribunal turns to Clinton
Washington Times, 8 July 2002

"Croatia said yesterday that it had frozen the assets of General Ante Gotovina, No 3 on the most-wanted list of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. His case threatens to derail the country’s attempt to join the EU. The move apparently came in response to widespread anger over the repeated and deliberate sabotaging by Croatian officials of efforts by Western intelligence services to find General Gotovina. Information has been leaked from the Croatian Government, helping the general to remain at large.... General Gotovina, 49, commanded Operation Storm in August 1995, when Croatian forces, newly armed and trained by American advisers and private military contractors, recaptured almost all of Serb-occupied territory in three days. Tens of thousands of civilians fled their homes, at least 150 were killed and hundreds more disappeared, while Croatian forces plundered and looted at will. The Croatians say that the West’s tough stand smacks of hypocrisy. Operation Storm had the support of the United States and Europe."
Croatia acts against fugitive 'hero'
London Times, 15 March 2005

What Did The CIA's George Tenet
Know About US Covert Operations In Yugoslavia?
Click Here

"Of course I know, they cooperated well, these aircraft were also used. During the Kosovo operation Croatia also cooperated successfully as a partner of NATO and the USA. The US is reluctant to give any of its intelligence reports - that has been our experience so far. As for whether it will give any documents now, it is up to the Hague tribunal and the USA."
Former Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mate Granic
Former Croatian minister confirms CIA's involvement in 1995 military operation
HRT1 TV, Zagreb, in Serbo-Croat 1730 gmt 20 Aug 01 [Translation]

"The complaint filed today [by the Croatian World Congress] alleges that the US officials aided Gen. Gotovina and the Croatian Army ('HV') in Operation Storm by violating a UN arms embargo and allowing Croatia to obtain weapons... US officials established a CIA base inside of Gen. Gotovina's military base which provided the US officials with real-time video footage of events transpiring on the ground during Operation Storm (and thus imputing to them knowledge of events on the ground), but also from which they could provide such intelligence data to General Gotovina to assist him in conducting Operation Storm.  If General Gotovina carried out a pre-planned campaign to deport 150,000 to 200,000 Croatian Serb civilians, then the CIA base was not only used to provide knowledge to US officials of such a plan and course of conduct on the part of General Gotovina, but was also used to assist General Gotovina in achieving the goals of his alleged plan.  The US officials gave the green light for the Operation and provided diplomatic and political support for it.  The US officials at all times had the ability to halt the military operation.  Accordingly, the US officials named in the complaint should be indicted for having aided and abetted General Gotovina."
CROATIAN WORLD CONGRESS FILES COMPLAINT WITH HAGUE PROSECUTOR DEL PONTE
TO INVESTIGATE US OFFICIALS, INCLUDING WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON
Croatian World Congress, Press Release, 4 July 2002

"The battle in question--Operation Storm--was vetted and approved by US leaders up to Clinton himself, according to a complaint submitted by the Croatian World Congress to Carla del Ponte, the tribunal's chief prosecutor. US forces even provided secret military aid, charged the CWC. Thus 'evenhanded justice' requires that Clinton stand in the dock shoulder to shoulder with Gotovina, said the group's complaint. It's unlikely that UN security troops will be marching a handcuffed ex-President out of his Harlem offices any time soon. The Hague prosecutor's office simply filed the complaint without comment."
Disorder in the Court
Air Force Magazine Online (US), October 2002, Vol 85, No 10

"....it was impossible for Milosevic to accept the Rambouillet agreement because what it asked him to do was allow Nato to use Serbia as a part of the Nato organisation. Sovereignty would have been lost over it. He couldn’t accept that.  I think what Nato did by bombing Serbia actually precipitated the exodus of the Kosovo Albanians into Macedonia and Montenegro. I think the bombing did cause the ethnic cleansing.  I’m not sticking up for the Serbs because I think they behaved badly and extremely stupidly by removing the autonomy of Kosovo, given them by Tito, in the first place. But I think what we did made things very much worse and what we are now faced with is a sort of ethnic cleansing in reverse. The Serbs are now being cleared out. I think it’s a great mistake to intervene in a civil war. I don’t think [Milosevic] is any more a war criminal than President Tudjman of Croatia who ethnically cleansed 200,000 Serbs out of Kyrenia [Krajina]. Nobody kicked up a fuss about that. I think we are a little bit selective about our condemnation of ethnic cleansing, in Africa as well as in Europe"
Interview with Lord Carrington, Former British Foreign Secretary
Saga Magazine, September 1999

" A small group at the head of America's foreign policy elite intervened covertly in what it had previously called 'Europe's problem'.... Its easy answer for Bosnia's ills was 'lift and strike' - re-arm the Bosniaks (mostly Bosnian Muslims) and Croats and bomb the Serbs. ... The air drops were only the tip of the iceberg. A team of retired US officers planned the bloody Croatian 'liberation' of the Kraijina and the subsequent invasion of western Bosnia by the Croatian Army in the summer of 1995. ….... "
Allies and lies
BBC Online, 22 June 2001

Caspian Sea Oil Transit Routes
And US Covert Operations In Yugoslavia

"This is about America's energy security. It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."
Bill Richardson 1998, US energy secretary, on US policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil
'A discreet deal in the pipeline - Nato mocked those who claimed there was a plan for Caspian oil'
Guardian, 15 February 2001

It's The US Economy Stupid!

“How much should we spend on the armed services? ... My view is we don’t spend on you, we invest in you. The men and women in the armed services are not a drain on our economic strength. Indeed you safeguard it. You’re not a burden on our economy, you are the critical foundation for growth.”
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
addressing US troops at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, 5 June 2001
US Defense Department Press Release

Happy Days Building Empire In The Balkans With The Terrorists Linking up in Kosovo in 1999
Left: Hashim Thaci, Head of the KLA - a State Department designated terrorist organisation, closely linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda Right: US General Wesley Clark, NATO Supreme Commander	Above: Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State, greets KLA Hashim Thaci

"I know a terrorist when I see one and these men are terrorists."
United States special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, speaking about the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) 1998
BBC Online, 28 June 1998

"... the KLA is closely involved with Terrorist organizations motivated by the ideology of radical Islam, including assets of Iran and of the notorious Osama bin-Ladin".
The Kosovo Liberation Army: Does Clinton Policy Support Group with Terror, Drug Ties?
Republican Policy Committee of the US Senate, 31 March 1999

"British and American special forces teams are working undercover in Kosovo with the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army to identify Serbian targets for Nato bombing raids....The SAS is also advising the rebels at their strongholds in northern Albania, where the KLA has launched a major recruitment and training operation. According to high-ranking KLA officials, the SAS is using two camps near Tirana, the Albanian capital, and another on the Kosovan border to teach KLA officers how to conduct intelligence-gathering operations on Serbian positions....It is the latest evidence of the growing co-operation between Nato and the KLA, a movement once denounced by the West's leaders as 'terrorists'...alliance spokesman James Shea enthusiastically predicted that the KLA would 'rise from the ashes' and play an increasingly important role in the current campaign... The alliance is now quietly drafting the KLA into its war against Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader. It is even considering plans to train them and ease the arms embargo on Yugoslavia to supply them with weapons such as mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.... They are negotiating for a long-term training deal with Military and Professional Resources International, a mercenary company run by former American officers who operate with semi-official approval from the Pentagon and played a key role in building up Croatia's armed forces... From their remaining enclaves within Kosovo and reconnaissance missions staged from Albania, the rebels already use satellite and cellular telephones to provide Nato with details on Serbian targets."
SAS teams move in to help KLA 'rise from the ashes'
Sunday Telegraph, 18 April 1999

"The US government’s favourite private security service has trained both sides in the latest ethnic flare-up in the Balkans. Only two years ago the rag-tag Kosovar Albanian rebels were taken in hand by the Virginia-based company of professional soldiers, Military Professional Resources Incorporated. An outfit of former US marines, helicopter pilots and special forces teams, MPRI’s missions for the US government have run from flying Colombian helicopter gunships to supplying weapons to the Croatian army. Among its most recent tasks - training the Macedonian army, now shooting it out with the Albania guerrillas in and around the farming village of Tanusevce, just across the border from Kosovo...in 1998 and 1999 MPRI was tasked with training and assisting the ethnic Albanians of the Kosovo Liberation Army in their struggle against the oppressive regime of the then-president, Slobodan Milosevic. MPRI sub-contracted some of the training programme to two British private security companies, ensuring that between 1998 and June 1999 the KLA was being armed, trained and assisted in Italy, Turkey, Kosovo and Germany by the Americans, the German external intelligence service and former and serving members of Britain’s 22 SAS Regiment... Two years later, and a wave of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo’s remaining Serbs at the hands of ethnic Albanians has left nearly 1,000 people murdered in 18 months."
Private US firm training both sides in Balkans
The Scotsman, March 02, 2001

"KLA members were trained by the [British] SAS before it was disbanded after the Kosovan war..."
Albanians held for massacre of Serbs
Guardian, 29 March 2001

"America has started secret negotiations with the Kosovo Liberation Army about supplying it with specialist weapons to attack Serb ground forces in Kosovo...The strategy...has echoes of earlier covert operations by Washington to supply arms to the Contras or the Bosnian Muslims... the State Department, which last year was willing to accept descriptions of the KLA as terrorist criminals but now appears to view it as an organisation it can do business with."
US opens secret talks on arming KLA
Daily Telegraph, 12 April 1999

War Crimes In Yugoslavia - US And UK Face Embarrassment At The Hague - 11 July 2004

NATO Bombings Lead To Ethnic Cleansing
Of Serbs, Jews, And Other Non-Albanians From Kosovo
And Flooding Of Europe With Albanian Drug Traffic

"On April 8 [1999] the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany [PDS], an opponent of the war, issued a report describing an alleged CIA covert operation named 'Operation Roots' aimed at sowing ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia to encourage its breakup. .... The report also asserts that the KLA was founded by the CIA with funding was funneled through drug-smuggling operations in Europe."
Fun Facts About Our New Allies
The Progressive Review, Washington, 22 June 1999

"Jiri Dienstbier, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for former Yugoslavia, has officially accused the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army of ethnically cleansing Kosovo and working for the creation of Greater Albania, reported Zëri on page six. 'What the KLA is doing in Kosovo has nothing to do with retaliation for what Serb authorities did. It is about the realization of a plan of ethnic cleansing, for destabilization of the entire region and creation of a Great Albania,' said Dienstbier in a press briefing in Geneva.... In the report that he delivered to the UN Commission for Human Rights Wednesday, Dienstbier said that KFOR and UNMIK had reached none of their objectives in Kosovo. 'The only existing administration is the KLA which leads in different ways. One of those is the transfer of KLA fighters to the Kosovo Protection Corps under the auspices of UNMIK, and the other is to turn Kosovo into a European base for heroin,' said Dienstbier, adding that five tons of heroin per month go through Kosovo heading for Western Europe. He also said that there were no functioning courts and an insufficient number of international police officers, but that all KLA members who applied for the KPC were given uniforms automatically. According to Dienstbier, NATO SACEUR General Wesley Clark blames the UN for the situation in Kosovo, while the UN is saying that there would be a completely different situation in Kosovo if NATO hadn't officially recognized the KLA. The UN Special Rapporteur also said that it would be a big mistake if Kosovo would become independent, adding that already it is ethnically cleansed. Dienstbier warned the West not to support Hashim Thaçi and his associates, saying that in Kosovo there were enough normal and clever people who are against extremist solutions. According to Dienstbier, the only way to solve the Kosovo problem is to respect the UN Security Council resolution 1244. He also accused NATO of bombing innocent people and destroying industry, which was not producing weapons."
United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo
Division of Public Information, Local Media Monitoring, 31 March 2000

"A more revealing report was released April 8 by Jurgen Reents, press spokes person for the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany. The PDS received almost as many votes as the Green Party, which is part of Germany's ruling coalition. The PDS has actively opposed the NATO war on Yugoslavia. Reents said the report came from someone who holds a 'strictly confidential and high position in the offices of the German government.' The report came through a Catholic priest who has kept the individual's identity secret but has verified the person's authenticity. The report asserts that top NATO, U.S., British and German officials are 'utterly lying in public concerning almost all the facts in regard to the Balkan War.' ...The report says that the German government knows NATO consciously created the refugee crisis. For example, the report says, NATO has targeted and destroyed nearly every fresh-water facility in Kosovo. It also asserts that there are KLA units in Kosovo--one is entirely U.S. mercenaries, the other German mercenaries--who report to the military commands of those countries. Perhaps most revealing is the report's description of a CIA covert operation cynically named 'Operation Roots.' It is aimed at sowing ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia to encourage its breakup. The report says that this operation has been going on 'since the beginning of Clinton's presidency.' It is a joint operation with the German secret service, which has also sought to destabilize Yugoslavia. .. The report asserts that the KLA was founded by the CIA. And the funding was funneled through drug-smuggling operations in Europe. The authenticity of this report cannot be independently verified at this time. But much of it is consistent with what is already known. It helps to expose the real forces behind the war on Yugoslavia and shows who are the true aggressors."
Who's The KLA? - German document reveals secret CIA role
Workers World Service, 29 April 1999

"Most Americans could not do the political calculus to equate Afghan warlords and Sicilian mafia with the heroin in their cities. But when the CIA used the same covert tactics, with similar compromises, to fight the Contra war in Central America, simple proximity sparked controversy and forced a succession of investigations - first by the press, then Congress, and, ultimately, the agency's own inspector general. After decades of denial, the CIA's investigation would document, in surprising detail, the dynamics of its cold war alliances with drug lords... The end of the cold war did not erase the bitter legacy of the CIA's Afghan adventure, nor did it end the agency's alliances with drug lords..... During the 1990s, Afghanistan's soaring opium harvest knitted Centra Asia, Russia, and Europe into a vast illicit market of arms, drugs, and money laundering... Across these vast distances with poor communications, ad hoc alliances within and among ethnic diasporas provided critical criminal linkages [including] Kosovars scattered from Geneva to Macedonia... In 1990, Swiss Federal Police launched Operation Benjamin, which uncovered an arms-heroin traffic with Kosovo and, eight years later, reported that Albanians dominated heroin distribution in all cantons. A Kosovar diaspora based in Skopje, Pristina, and Tirana smuggled heroin across the Adriatic Sea. In Western Europe, Albanian exiles used drug profits to ship Czech and Swiss arms back to Kosovo for the separatist guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1997-98, these Kosovar drug syndicates armed the KLA for a revolt against Belgrade's army... Even after the 1999 Kumanovo agreement settled the Kosovo conflict, the UN administration of the province, preoccupied with mediating ethnic conflict, allowed a thriving heroin traffic along this northern route from Turkey. The former commanders of the KLA, both local clans and aspiring national leaders, continued to dominate the transit traffic through the Balkans, battling Serbian police for control of strategic smuggling corridors. The most militant of these local commanders, Muhamed Xhemajli, had reportedly been a major drug dealer in Switzerland before joining the KLA in 1998. In May 2001, Italian peacekeepers in KFOR seized a truck-load of heavy weapons, including 52 rocket launchers and five SAM-7 ground-to-air missiles, near the Kosovo border believed destined for Albanian guerrillas inside southern Serbia. According to Croatina police sources, Albanian syndicates had probably bartered heroin for these arms from Croatian criminals, many of them former army officers."
The Politics of Heroin - CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade
Alfred W. McCoy, Lawrence Hill Books, 2003

"During the Kosovo operation Croatia also cooperated successfully as a partner of NATO and the USA. The US is reluctant to give any of its intelligence reports - that has been our experience so far. As for whether it will give any documents now, it is up to the Hague tribunal and the USA."
Former Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mate Granic
Former Croatian minister confirms CIA's involvement in 1995 military operation
HRT1 TV, Zagreb, in Serbo-Croat 1730 gmt 20 Aug 01 [Translation]

"Four years after it was 'liberated' by a NATO bombing campaign, Kosovo has deteriorated into a hotbed of organized crime, anti-Serb violence and al-Qaeda sympathizers, say security officials and Balkan experts. Though nominally still under UN control, the southern province of Serbia is today dominated by a triumvirate of Albanian paramilitaries, mafiosi and terrorists. They control a host of smuggling operations and are implementing what many observers call their own brutal ethnic cleansing of minority groups, such as Serbs, Roma and Jews. In recent weeks, UN officials ordered the construction of a fortified concrete barrier around the UN compound on the outskirts of the provincial capital Pristina. This is to protect against terrorist strikes by Muslim extremists who have set up bases of operation in what has become a largely outlaw province. Minority Serbs, who were supposed to have been guaranteed protection by the international community after the 78-day NATO bombing campaign ended in the spring of 1999, have abandoned the province en masse. The last straw for many was the recent round of attacks by ethnic Albanian paramilitaries bent on gaining independence through violence. Attacks on Serbs in Kosovo, a province of two million people, have risen sharply. According to statistics collected by the UN criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague, 1,192 Serbs have been killed, 1,303 kidnapped and 1,305 wounded in Kosovo this year. In June, 1999, just after the NATO bombing, 547 Serbs were killed and 932 were kidnapped.... Serbs, who now make up 5% of the population of Kosovo, down from 10% before the NATO campaign, are the main targets of the paramilitary groups. Last week, Harri Holkeri, the province's UN leader, suspended two generals and 10 other officers, all members of an ethnic Albanian offshoot of the Kosovo Liberation Army, an insurgent group that emerged in the late 1980s to fight Serb security forces.Mr. Holkeri made his decision -- the strongest UN response to violence in the province so far -- after a UN inquiry into the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). Although the civilian defence organization is supposed to help local residents, over the past four years, its mostly ethnic Albanian military officials have been involved in violent confrontations with Serbs.The inquiry found last April's bomb attack on a Kosovo railway was the work of the KPC... Moreover, Kosovo has turned into one of Europe's biggest hubs for drug trafficking and terrorism.Al-Qaeda has set up bases in the province, which has become an important centre for heroin, cigarette, gasoline and people smuggling. The Albanian mafia and paramilitary groups, which security officials say are closely tied to al-Qaeda militants in the region, also oversee smuggling. More than 80% of Western Europe's heroin comes through Kosovo, where several drug laboratories have been set up, Interpol officials say."
Crime, terror flourish in 'liberated' Kosovo
National Post, Canada, 10 December 2003

"Each day brings new reports of atrocities against Serbs... The rebels are governing the way Al Capone ran Chicago. Not just Serbs, but Albanian shopkeepers are looted.... Baton Haxhui, the editor of an Albanian newspaper, charges, 'Each day it is becoming more dangerous to think and speak independently'.... Terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden running around with AK-47s and anti-tank weapons is bad enough. Worse, Thaci's boys aren't just killers and kleptos, but mafioso who are neck-deep in the drug trade.... More than 40 percent of the heroin reaching Western Europe moves through the province, which sits astride the major distribution route from Turkey to the West.... Belgrade had contained the problem. But under KLA management, Kosovo has become a drug lord's paradise.... Is it for this that we rained death and devastation on Yugoslavia for 11 weeks -- not for democracy or human rights or to end ethnic cleansing, but so Kosovo could be cleansed of non-Albanians and turned into a narcotics superstore under the benevolent direction of Hashim (aka, 'Snake') Thaci?"
Serbs suffer under western eyes
Jewish World Review Aug. 2, 1999 /20 Av 5759

".... I think what Nato did by bombing Serbia actually precipitated the exodus of the Kosovo Albanians into Macedonia and Montenegro. I think the bombing did cause the ethnic cleansing.  I’m not sticking up for the Serbs because I think they behaved badly and extremely stupidly by removing the autonomy of Kosovo, given them by Tito, in the first place. But I think what we did made things very much worse and what we are now faced with is a sort of ethnic cleansing in reverse. The Serbs are now being cleared out."
Interview with Lord Carrington, Former British Foreign Secretary
Saga Magazine, September 1999

"As President Clinton prepares to visit to Kosovo, it is common to see and hear things here that don't fit with the tidy fictions proffered by NATO and White House officials....'The whole thing is a very bad joke,' explains a candid intelligence officer with the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). ..Although NATO and UNMIK have been careful to avoid any public insinuation that the KLA may be prevaricating and holding back a significant stockpile of weapons, a spokesman for NATO estimates that peacekeepers confiscate about 100 illegal weapons, explosives and magazines of ammunition each day...Yet 'anyone who thinks that the violence will end once the last Serb has been driven out of Kosovo is living an illusion,' recently warned Veton Surroi, publisher of the main Albanian-language newspaper in Kosovo, Koha Ditore. 'The violence will simply be redirected against other Albanians.' Already, the senior officials of the KLA, who signed the disarmament agreement with NATO, have carried out assassinations, arrests and purges within their own ranks and of potential rivals. One campaign, in which as many as six KLA commanders were murdered, was reportedly directed by the KLA's top man, Hashim Thaci, and two of his lieutenants, Azem Syla and Xhavit Haliti....It still lurks everywhere in Kosovo. Ethnic Albanians complain that KLA henchmen regularly demand that shopkeepers pay 'liberation taxes' to finance the KLA's continued, and often illicit, activities. Even more worrisome, according to a soon-to-be-released report by the International Crisis Group, there are as many killings right now in Kosovo as there were before NATO intervened, when Yugoslav authorities were trying to smash the KLA....[the] goal of creating a multi-ethnic society in Kosovo is being undermined by the KLA in a multitude of ways, especially with the ethnic cleansing of not only Serbs but Gorans, Romas, Jews, Croats and even Albanians who are not strenuous enough in their intolerance of non-Albanians..."
The Real Kosovo
The Washington Times, 23 November 1999

"I mean Kosovo is just one of the points of destabilization of Yugoslavia... I want people to know the truth about what happened here.... The United States, for its own geopolitical reasons, deliberately encouraged the secessionist tendency among Albanians, used them against the Yugoslav government in order to destabilize the Balkans.... One book has a great hold over Kosovo Albanians. It's called the 'Canon of Leke Dukagjiniis'. It's a 15th century text that spells out codes of behavior. It goes into great detail on how to carry out blood feuds, when and whom it is proper to kill. It lays out the proper methods to use when killing, rules and regulations and so on. And this Canon is alive among Albanians today, especially since the fall of communism. This is an intensely tradition-oriented culture. Blood feud is a constant threat for Albanians.... By methodically killing those who refused to support them, the KLA was striking a deep fear among Albanians: the refusal of one Clan member to obey could lead to revenge against his entire clan. And now the KLA had NATO bombers to enforce blood feud. ... [the KLA] knew their own people, their fears, their traditions. They knew that if they could prove they were deadly, the clan leaders would fall in line. Now they live in a society dominated by gangsters. None of this would have happened were it not for years of effort by the United States."
Cedomir Prlincevic, President of the Jewish Community in Pristina, and Chief Archivist of Kosovo
Interview with 'Emperors Clothes', 3 December 2000

".... former Ottawa policeman Derek Chappell and his partner, Barry Fletcher, an ex-New Orleans cop, told me about their frustration [in 2003] in trying to control the ongoing inter-ethnic violence in this war-ravaged Balkan province [Kosovo].... Since NATO forces first entered Kosovo and Serbian security forces withdrew in June 1999, the majority of the terror attacks have been committed by Albanian extremists against Serbs and other ethnic minorities. The result has been the expulsion of nearly 240,000 non-Albanians from Kosovo.... In accordance with the 1999 peace agreement, the KLA was to be demilitarized and converted into a humanitarian assistance organization known as the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). The wartime leader of the KLA, General Agim Ceku, remains employed under UN direction as the head of the 'new' KPC. Of course, the KLA never did turn in its arsenal of heavy weapons and, under the guidance of Ceku, has remained a military formation numbering 2,000 regular forces and 3,000 reservists.... Despite public denials, the UN police are also aware of the fact that Ceku's KPC are directly involved with the acts of terrorism being conducted throughout the region.... When asked why the UN, to date, has not removed Ceku from his post and sent him to The Hague for his previous war crimes, the American police officer just shrugs and says 'politics.' This double standard no doubt will not sit well with Canadian soldiers who witnessed the atrocities committed by Ceku."
Extremist on UN's payroll
Halifax Herald (Canada), 2 June 2003

".... the political war for Kosovo's future has only just started. And in the meantime, absolutely nobody here is getting any happier. The worst of it is, we don't know who to blame any more."
Kosovan Albanian student
Guardian, 29 May 2003

"Western pro-intervention forces are growing increasingly frustrated with The Hague, which they consider to be a weak tribunal. Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte's failure to win a total victory over Slobodan Milosevic -- the inquisition's big prize -- remains a sore spot.... UNMIK and Western governments are trying to avoid a perceived failure in Kosovo. The widely criticized mission has overlooked the elimination of non-Albanian minorities by vengeful militias, the destruction of priceless cultural relics (for example, over 110 Serbian Orthodox churches), and the explosive increase in the drug, weapon and cigarette business, as well as in human trafficking and prostitution.... Macedonia's civil war of 2001 was sustained and led by Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) veterans in Kosovo. Kosovo-based extremists from the Albanian National Army (ANA) have committed several deadly attacks this year, and have explicitly announced their desire to cleanse northern and western Macedonia of its 'Slav colonizers,' as they call Macedonians. In the end, while granting Kosovo independence might cause future regional upheaval and mafia rule in an economically unviable territory, the West views this as the least dangerous outcome. This is not the result of some grand and sagacious strategy. Rather, UNMIK is primarily looking out for its own safety. While Serbian and Macedonian concerns can be and have been ignored safely, the Albanians are different. Only the unexpected can be expected from them. Their long memories and long history of militancy are clearly intimidating the Western interim government. Appeasing them is thus essential for the safety of the current local administration -- but also for those Western leaders who believed that the NATO bombing campaign was a wise enterprise."
The Return of The Hague Tribunal and the West's Dilemma in Kosovo
The Power and Interest News Report, 1 November 2003

"Though Gen. Clark is right to say the Albanians of Kosovo were liberated from Serb oppression, he says nothing about the Kosovo Serbs, 180,000 of whom had to run for their lives as the Albanians took their revenge. Far from ending ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Gen. Clark's war only set off another round. The result has been to establish a new, ethnically cleansed, fiercely nationalistic mini-state in the Balkans -- and a pretty unpleasant one at that. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, and a NATO garrison of more than 12,000 troops, Kosovo today is still a poor, dangerous, unstable place. The remaining Serbs live in fear. Last summer, in a sign of the times, someone opened up with a machine gun on a group of Serb boys swimming in a stream, killing two and wounding four."
General Clark's Kosovo is a mess
Globe and Mail, 2 January 2004

"A UN court in Kosovo has sentenced twelve ethnic Albanians to up to 30 years imprisonment for a revenge murder of five-member [Albaninan] family in 2001 in one of the biggest trials in the province since the end of 1998-99 war. After 115 sessions and interrogation of some 50 witnesses during a 17-month long trial, a three-member UN panel in the district court in the eastern town Gnjilane sentenced the group to a total of 185 years imprisonment for the murder of ethnic Albanian Hamez Hajra, his wife and their three children.... The murder, believed to be a revenge against the victim -- allegedly considered as a collaborator with the Serb regime of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic -- shocked the province in 2001. The non-governmental group, the Humanitarian Law Center -- which monitors the trials in Kosovo -- has said it had evidence that Hajra had been supposed to testify in an unidentified war crimes case a day after he and his family were murdered brutally. However, this was not officially confirmed."
Kosovo court sentences 12 ethnic Albanians to 30-year imprisonment for revenge murder
AFP, 7 April 2005

US Backed Islamic Terrorism
In The Balkans
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/balkansUSbackterrorism.htm