'The Special Relationship'
US And UK Backed Islamic Terrorism
In The Balkans
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/balkansusbackterrorism.htm

PRESS REPORTS

"You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."
George W.Bush
CNN, 6 November 2001

"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

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

"During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the US funded large numbers of jihadists through Pakistan's secret intelligence service, the ISI. Later the US wanted to raise another jihadi corps, again using proxies, to help Bosnian Muslims fight to weaken the Serb government's hold on Yugoslavia. Those they turned to included Pakistanis in Britain. According to a recent report by the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, a contingent was also sent by the Pakistani government, then led by Benazir Bhutto, at the request of the Clinton administration. This contingent was formed from the Harkat-ul- Ansar (HUA) terrorist group and trained by the ISI. The report estimates that about 200 Pakistani Muslims living in the UK went to Pakistan, trained in HUA camps and joined the HUA's contingent in Bosnia. Most significantly, this was 'with the full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence agencies'. As the 2002 Dutch government report on Bosnia makes clear, the US provided a green light to groups on the state department list of terrorist organisations, including the Lebanese-based Hizbullah, to operate in Bosnia - an episode that calls into question the credibility of the subsequent 'war on terror'. For nearly a decade the US helped Islamist insurgents linked to Chechnya, Iran and Saudi Arabia destabilise the former Yugoslavia. The insurgents were also allowed to move further east to Kosovo. By the end of the fighting in Bosnia there were tens of thousands of Islamist insurgents in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo; many then moved west to Austria, Germany and Switzerland.  Less well known is evidence of the British government's relationship with a wider Islamist terrorist network. During an interview on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo. Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings. According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected by MI6. One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised by the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated Omar Saeed Sheikh..... This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit. Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought for questioning by the US about 9/11."
Michael Meacher, former UK Environment Minister
Britain now faces its own blowback
Guardian, 10 September 2005

"The UK Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) was also aware of the American secret arms supplies to the ABiH [the Bosnian Muslim Army]. According to a British intelligence official, the DIS never made an issue of them, so as not to further damage the sensitive relationship with the US services. An internal DIS analysis concluded that the arms were delivered via 'a different network', and that the entire operation was probably led by the NSC [National Security Council].....  the DIS received a direct order from the British government not to investigate this affair. This was not permitted for the simple reason that the matter was too sensitive in the framework of American-British relations. The DIS also obtained intelligence on the secret supplies to the ABiH from the German military intelligence service and the Bundesnachrichtendienst, because some of the flights departed from Frankfurt. However, no American-German alliance existed in the matter of clandestine support to the ABiH."
Srebrenica - A Safe Area?
Appendix II - Intelligence and the war in Bosnia 1992 – 1995: The role of the intelligence and security services
Chapter 4, Secret arms supplies and other covert actions
Report Published on Behalf of The Dutch Government, 10 April 2002

"The 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, directed by the US general Wesley Clark, was said to be stopping an alleged 'genocide' by the Serbs in Kosovo (some 2,000 bodies were later exhumed, a horrifying number but far short of the 100,000 the US predicted). The US goal was to assist the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Yet the year before, the US state department had branded the KLA a terrorist organisation, financing its operations from the heroin trade and funds from Islamic countries and individuals, including Osama bin Laden. As James Bissett, the former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, has subsequently reported: 'This did not stop the US from arming and training KLA members in Albania and sending them back into Kosovo to assassinate Serbian mayors, ambush Serbian policemen and intimidate hesitant Kosovo Albanians ... Despite a UN arms embargo, and with the support of the US, arms, ammunition and thousands of fighters were smuggled into Bosnia to help the Muslims ... Bin Laden and his network were also active in Kosovo, and KLA members trained in his camps in Afghanistan and Albania.' According to reports in April 1999, assistance was also provided by Britain's SAS. Through much of the 1990s, US support for Islamic militants in former Yugoslavia was backed up by covert US airdrops of arms, especially at Tuzla in northern Bosnia. These took place in the face of Operation Deny Flight, the UN-imposed and Nato-policed no-fly zone over Bosnia. The US House of Representatives also failed to authorise the war under the War Powers Act, making it illegal (shades of Iraq). But the airdrops were only the tip of the iceberg. Retired US officers heading Military Professional Resources Inc, a private paramilitary firm based in Virginia, planned the bloody Croatian 'liberation' of the Serb-held Krajina enclave, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of 200,000 Serbs.  US goals in the use of the KLA as a proxy force, similar to the funding of the Contras against the leftwing Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s, were partly to remove Milosevic and break up Yugoslavia as one of the remaining Communist regimes. But related motives were to break Russia's monopoly over oil and gas transport routes and secure pro-western governments in the strategic Black Sea-Caspian Sea oil-rich basin. A crucial oil corridor, called the Trans-Balkan pipeline, designed to become the main route to the west for oil and gas extracted in central Asia, was to run from the Black Sea to the Adriatic via Bulgaria, Macedonia near the border with Kosovo, and Albania. Another was to run across Serbia to Adriatic ports in Croatia and Italy, fed by a pipeline running from a Black Sea port in Romania. The implications of this are stark."
Michael Meacher, former UK Environment Minister
The path to friendship goes via the oil and gas fields
Guardian, 27 March 2004

NATO Fraud - There Was No Genocide In Kosovo - Click Here

Overview
'Our Terrorists'

"The Clinton administration followed up by providing strong support to the KLA, even though it was known that the KLA supported the Muslim mujahadeen. Despite that knowledge, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had the KLA removed from the State Department list of terrorists. This action paved the way for the United States to provide the KLA with needed logistical support. At the same time, the KLA also received support from Iran and Usama bin Laden, along with 'Islamic holy warriors' who were jihad veterans from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Swiss journalist Richard Labeviere, in his book, 'Dollars for Terror,' said that the international Islamic networks linked to bin Laden received help from U.S. intelligence community. Indeed, Chechen sources claim that U.S. intelligence also aided them in their opposition to Russia. Given that U.S. policy in the post-Cold War period has not only been anti-Russian but anti-Iranian, the United States worked closely with Pakistan's predominantly Sunni Inter-Services Intelligence organization. Through ISI, the United States recruited Sunni mujahadeen by staging them in Chechnya to fight in Bosnia and later in Kosovo."
F.Michael Maloof, former Pentagon Counterterrorism Adviser
Iran subversion in Balkans
G2 Bulletin, 25 September 2006
(Who is Michael Maloof? - Click Here)

"The Balkans´ uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden´s al Qaeda network. By feeding off the region´s impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe´s backyard. For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part. These activities have been exhaustively researched by Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the U.S. House of Representatives´ Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.... The overnight rise of heroin trafficking through Kosovo -- now the most important Balkan route between Southeast Asia and Europe after Turkey -- helped also to fund terrorist activity directly associated with al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Opium poppies, which barely existed in the Balkans before 1995, have become the No. 1 drug cultivated in the Balkans after marijuana. Operatives of two al Qaeda-sponsored Islamist cells who were arrested in Bosnia on Oct. 23 were linked to the heroin trade, underscoring the narco-jihad culture of today´s post-war Balkans.... By early 1998 the U.S. had already entered into its controversial relationship with the KLA to help fight off Serbian oppression of that province. While in February the U.S. gave into KLA demands to remove it from the State Department´s terrorism list, the gesture amounted to little. That summer the CIA and CIA-modernized Albanian intelligence (SHIK) were engaged in one of the largest seizures of Islamic Jihad cells operating in Kosovo. Fearing terrorist reprisal from al Qaeda, the U.S. temporarily closed its embassy in Tirana and a trip to Albania by then Defense Secretary William Cohen was canceled out of fear of an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a 'jihad' in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan. Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with 'freedom fighter' Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America´s special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists. With the future status of Kosovo still in question, the only real development that may be said to be taking place there is the rise of Wahhabi Islam -- the puritanical Saudi variety favored by bin Laden -- and the fastest growing variety of Islam in the Balkans."
Al Qaeda´s Balkan Links
Wall St Journal, 1 November 2001
(European Edition)

"... the Albanian security situation reflects the volatility of the clan-based rivalries and the related narco-trafficking and criminal activities which are linked with global terrorism. But by admitting this as the basis for the need to move [US] facilities out of Albania, the US would then have to admit that this terrorism-related criminal activity, and particularly narco-trafficking, is intrinsically linked into the al-Qaida and Iranian-backed terrorist infrastructure of the region, and into the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which now, under new names, controls the Serbian province of Kosovo.... no-one in the State Department or Defense Department is willing to admit that US support for this terrorist and narco-trafficking base of Albanians in 1999 -- when the US led NATO into attacks on Serbia in order to assist the KLA -- was wrong. This is part of the distortion of US foreign and strategic policy: no-one will admit that they made a mistake. There are many Congressmen on Capitol Hill who understand that this distortion exists with regard to Balkan policy.  But equally, there are politicians in both major parties who supported the KLA during the 1990s, so that today it is impossible for a Republican-controlled Bush White House and Congress to attack the logic and merit of the 1999 war, waged against Serbia by the then-Democratic Party-controlled Clinton White House. It is difficult for the White House, for example, to criticize the 1990s support by the Clinton Administration for the al-Qaida -linked KLA without also opening up to criticism some senior members of the Republican Party..... The fact that the US has been forced to remove its assets from Albania, despite the quiet manner in which this has been undertaken, is just one indication of the ongoing degradation of the situation there. And yet the US still refuses to acknowledge that this is integrally linked with the Albanian-based terrorism underway in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, or that it is at the very heart of the creation of what is already a criminal sub-state in Kosovo, which is directly under the control of the KLA...."
Special Report; US Policy in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean: Time to Stop Choosing Sides, and to Start Choosing Strategic Interests
Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, 13 April  2005

"If Senator Kennedy wants to talk about fraud [in relation to the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq], he ought to talk..... about what he and President Clinton told us in 1999 when they told us to bomb innocent Serbs, we'd find 100 thousand mass graves. Those mass graves were never found. They lied to the America people to justify the aerial bombardment campaign."
Congressman Curt Weldon (R) Pennsylvania on 'Hardball with Chris Matthews'
NBC News, 19 September 2003

Press Reports On False Claims Of Genocide By Serbs In Kosovo  - Click Here

"General Sir Michael Rose, the former United Nations military commander in Bosnia.... said false facts about the war in Bosnia were being fed to Congress.... he was visited by General John Galvin, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe who had been appointed by President Clinton to advise on a new structure for the Bosnian Army. General Rose said: 'We were escorted by a woman from the US Embassy who, in my view, was the most hostile American I met during all my time in Bosnia.' As they flew by helicopter towards Tuzla in the north, she pointed at all the destroyed villages high in the Zvijezda mountains and 'exclaimed excitedly' to General Galvin: 'Look at what the criminal Serbs have done.' In fact, General Rose said, they were Bosnian Croat villages ethnically cleansed by the Muslim forces. Later when they visited Mostar in the south where the Croats had virtually destroyed the Muslim sector in the eastern part of the town, the US official 'planted her hands on her ample hips' and cried: 'Well, at least this was done by the criminal Serbs.' General Rose said the woman burst into tears when it was pointed out that the Croats had been to blame. 'The fact was not lost on Galvin,' he said."
US bugged me in Bosnia, says General Rose
London Times, 10 November 1998

"The War on Terror suffered a major blow three years before it was ever announced. It happened when the people of this democracy [in America] were misled into attacking the sovereign, emerging post-Communist democracy of Yugoslavia - over rumors of genocide and ethnic cleansing that proved false.  In so doing, we put the final touch on delivering the Balkans to al Qaeda. Today we are being asked to seal that historical blunder, whose repercussions seven years later are only escalating as those we 'rescued' turn their weapons against UN and NATO forces. While NATO spends most of its time rooting out terror cells in Kosovo and Bosnia—which served as the logistics bases for the London and Madrid bombings--the 2006 deadline to complete our eagerly forgotten debacle and determine the province’s final status is fast approaching.... [Deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji], according to the December issue of the Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy journal, is the man who supplied the Semtex-like explosives used in the London and Madrid attacks.  But to perpetuate the version of events we were sold from the beginning, all these connections have gone purposefully unmade by our nation’s 'journalists,' who were gung-ho supporters of our 1999 offensive against a historical ally and the culmination of our pro-terror policies in 1990s Yugoslavia.... Only Britain's Sky News has caught on, in December airing a segment entitled 'The Hidden Army of Radical Islam,' about Bosnia, where there is 'growing radicalization' and a base for Al Qaeda:  'In the heart of Europe, thousands of Arab fighters. Zenica [Bosnia], 1995. They come to wage holy war in support of the Bosnian Army. [Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic shown welcoming the mujahadeen.] ...They committed many atrocities; the tapes Sky News has obtained include beheadings and signs of torture. …This isn’t just about history; it's about now. Western intelligence agencies are now pressing the Bosnians to look into exactly where these people are and what they are doing, and asking have any of these men been in contact with the three young Bosnian Muslims arrested last month on terrorism charges. ...In Sarajevo now the influence of Saudi ideas can be found all over the city. ...Radical Islam is attempting to plant deep roots in the community. …The seeds for change were planted back in 1995.'... The narration continues: 'There were some serious players sent to Bosnia, among them the man who planned 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohamed...'  A similar picture began to emerge in Kosovo, where the late Wall St. Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was uncovering that 'Ethnic-Albanian militants, humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off each other to give genocide rumors credibility.' The anti-Serb propaganda which misled Americans throughout  the 90s and which Daniel Pearl was debunking continues to guide our perceptions and foreign policy in the Balkans today. But despite the media’s blackout on the subject of Balkans terror--including by Pearl's own Wall St. Journal--more and more Americans have been scratching their heads, wondering why we forcibly precluded the Serbs from doing in their own backyard what we’ve gone halfway around the globe to do.... For the past four years, the Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has been finding what multiple international forensic teams have found--that claims of Serb 'atrocities' were exaggerated and often invented. It turns out we confused an attempt to create an Islamic 'Greater Albania' with one to create a 'Greater Serbia.' Surely if the latter were Slobodan Milosevic’s goal, he would have started by ethnically cleansing the nearly 300,000 Muslims of Serbia. Though he built his career in whatever dirty ways Tito's Yugoslavia allowed, he was the least of the Balkans' villains. For most Serbs, he was not a hero until he was called upon to defend an entire nation at the Hague. Now that Milosevic is dead, we are spared the worldwide riots that would have ensued had the tribunal mustered the courage to issue a verdict based on the evidence. And we can all sleep comfortably as the disproved charges are accepted as history.... In early 2001, German TV broadcast a report titled 'It Began with a Lie,' which publicized the findings of the observer force Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)  that no genocide had taken place in Kosovo. The revelations set off a huge public debate in Germany, a member of the NATO coalition, after the public realized their country had been party to a hoax, and they held the responsible politicians’ feet to the fire. It’s long past time that we also set the record straight on what we 'achieved' in the Balkans -- and change course. As the world closes in on the Serbs again this year, we must stop bin Laden from establishing a terror state in Europe. We know from Madrid and London that we’ll pay for it with our own blood. In fact, we already have."
A Balkan Base For Al Qaeda?
FrontPageMagazine, 20 March 2006

"American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] before Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia. The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians... Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander..."
CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army
Sunday Times , 12 March 2000

"General Wesley Clark, the former Nato commander and presidential hopeful, will testify next month at the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic under conditions of strict censorship and confidentiality imposed by the United States. Washington is believed to be fearful of potentially damaging revelations about its Balkan realpolitik during the 1990s and in the Bosnian War. General Clark, who is seeking the Democratic Party nomination for President, will be one of the highest-profile witnesses to take the stand. The former Nato commander directed the alliance's 78-day bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999, after Serbian forces had launched an onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists. General Clark will testify on December 15 and 16. Public galleries will be closed and the broadcast system that transmits the proceedings on the internet and on closed-circuit television will be shut down. The conditions of General Clark's testimony include a 48-hour delay to enable the US Government to review the transcript and seek the court's consent to censor parts on the ground of national security. Two US representatives will attend the sessions. The three-judge panel hearing Mr Milosevic's case agreed to the conditions, which are unique, because they decided that they were justified by the potential importance of General Clark's testimony, Jim Landale, the tribunal spokesman, said. In his cross-examination of General Clark, Mr Milosevic could reveal sensitive information about the West's diplomatic and military strategy for dealing with the crisis in the Balkans."
General Clark to testify against Milosevic
London Times, 20 November 2003

"The retired General who had been refusing to declare himself a Democrat or Republican is now declaring himself a Democratic presidential candidate. But more important than his party affiliation is Wesley Clark's bizarre view on how to fight terrorism. The media refer to Clark's impressive military credentials but they fail to note that his main accomplishment under President Clinton was presiding over the establishment of a base for radical Islamic terrorism, including Osama bin Laden, in Kosovo... Clark, who has been making headlines by claiming that the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq was a misjudgment based on scanty evidence, ran Clinton's NATO war against Yugoslavia on behalf of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The House of Representatives failed to authorize the war under the War Powers Act, making it illegal. Thousands of innocent people in Serbia, Yugoslavia's main province, were killed to stop an alleged 'genocide' by Yugoslavia that was not in fact taking place. Investigations determined that a couple thousand had died in the civil war there.... The 1998 State Department human rights report had described the KLA as a group that tortured and abducted people and made others 'disappear.' Yet a photograph was taken of Clark and [KLA leader] Thaki with their hands together in a gesture of solidarity. The KLA's ties to Osama bin Laden were also well-known and reported.... Another Democratic presidential candidate, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, has tried to prohibit funding for the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), the successor to the KLA now being protected by U.N. troops as a result of the outcome of the conflict. Kucinich said an internal United Nations Report found the KPC responsible for violence, extortion, murder and torture.... Clark's presidential decision suggests that he believes the media will not ask him about supporting the same extremist Muslim forces in Kosovo that militarily attacked us on 9/11. He's right: during interviews on ABC's Good Morning America and the NBC Today show on September 17, the subject didn't come up. "
Wesley Clark's Ties To Muslim Terrorists
Accuracy in Media, 17 September 2003

"I read the latest reports concerning a recent Executive Order that hands the CIA a black bag in the Balkans for engineering a military coup in Serbia, for interrupting communications, for tampering with bank accounts, freezing assets abroad and training the Kosovo Liberation Army in terrorist tactics, such as how to blow up buildings. How this is intended to help establish a democracy in Serbia or Kosovo hasn't been explained. Nor has the failure to substantially demilitarize the KLA been explained. Nor has the reverse ethnic cleansing taking place in Kosovo by the KLA while NATO rules the province been explained."
Democrat Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ohio
The Progressive, Vol 63, No.8, August 1999

Full Archive Of Press And Other Reports
US And UK Backed Islamic Terrorism In The Balkans

"The UK Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) was also aware of the American secret arms supplies to the ABiH [the Bosnian Muslim Army]. According to a British intelligence official, the DIS never made an issue of them, so as not to further damage the sensitive relationship with the US services. An internal DIS analysis concluded that the arms were delivered via 'a different network', and that the entire operation was probably led by the NSC [National Security Council].....  the DIS received a direct order from the British government not to investigate this affair. This was not permitted for the simple reason that the matter was too sensitive in the framework of American-British relations. The DIS also obtained intelligence on the secret supplies to the ABiH from the German military intelligence service and the Bundesnachrichtendienst, because some of the flights departed from Frankfurt. However, no American-German alliance existed in the matter of clandestine support to the ABiH."
Srebrenica - A Safe Area?
Appendix II - Intelligence and the war in Bosnia 1992 – 1995: The role of the intelligence and security services
Chapter 4, Secret arms supplies and other covert actions
Report Published on Behalf of The Dutch Government, 10 April 2002

"The US goal was to assist the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Yet the year before, the US state department had branded the KLA a terrorist organisation, financing its operations from the heroin trade and funds from Islamic countries and individuals, including Osama bin Laden. As James Bissett, the former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, has subsequently reported: 'This did not stop the US from arming and training KLA members in Albania and sending them back into Kosovo to assassinate Serbian mayors, ambush Serbian policemen and intimidate hesitant Kosovo Albanians ... Despite a UN arms embargo, and with the support of the US, arms, ammunition and thousands of fighters were smuggled into Bosnia to help the Muslims ... Bin Laden and his network were also active in Kosovo, and KLA members trained in his camps in Afghanistan and Albania.' According to reports in April 1999, assistance was also provided by Britain's SAS. Through much of the 1990s, US support for Islamic militants in former Yugoslavia was backed up by covert US airdrops of arms, especially at Tuzla in northern Bosnia. These took place in the face of Operation Deny Flight, the UN-imposed and Nato-policed no-fly zone over Bosnia. The US House of Representatives also failed to authorise the war under the War Powers Act, making it illegal (shades of Iraq). But the airdrops were only the tip of the iceberg. Retired US officers heading Military Professional Resources Inc, a private paramilitary firm based in Virginia, planned the bloody Croatian 'liberation' of the Serb-held Krajina enclave, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of 200,000 Serbs.   US goals in the use of the KLA as a proxy force, similar to the funding of the Contras against the leftwing Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s, were partly to remove Milosevic and break up Yugoslavia as one of the remaining Communist regimes. But related motives were to break Russia's monopoly over oil and gas transport routes and secure pro-western governments in the strategic Black Sea-Caspian Sea oil-rich basin. A crucial oil corridor, called the Trans-Balkan pipeline, designed to become the main route to the west for oil and gas extracted in central Asia, was to run from the Black Sea to the Adriatic via Bulgaria, Macedonia near the border with Kosovo, and Albania. Another was to run across Serbia to Adriatic ports in Croatia and Italy, fed by a pipeline running from a Black Sea port in Romania. The implications of this are stark."
Michael Meacher, former UK Environment Minister
The path to friendship goes via the oil and gas fields
Guardian, 27 March 2004

"A new and potentially explosive Great Game is being set up and few in Britain are aware of it. There are many players: far more than the two - Russia and Britain - who were engaged a century ago in imperial rivalry in central Asia and the north-west frontier. And the object this time is not so much control of territory. It is the large reserves of oil and gas in the Caucasus, notably the Caspian basin. Pipelines are the counters in this new Great Game. There are plans for pipe-lines through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria, Macedonia - and Albania. Traditional rivalries between east and west are complicated by other threats - from Chechen separatists, Kurds, Albanian guerrilla groups, the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh and, throughout the region, Islamic groups whose activities are causing deep concern to Moscow, Tehran and Washington alike. 'In addition to instability and conflict in the Caucasus and parts of central Asia, there is a longer-term fear that Russia may rebuild its military capabilities, perhaps under a strongly nationalist regime,' notes Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, in his recent book, Losing Control. Such a fear he adds, 'rarely recognises the significance of a near-endemic Russian perception that Nato expansion and US commercial interests in the Caspian basin are part of a strategic encroachment into Russia's historic sphere of influence'. This is the region both west and east have their eyes on. It is rich in untapped oil and gas while US reserves are running down, China is desperate for more oil, and no one outside the Gulf wants to rely on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Iraq - which have the biggest oil reserves. Oil is the bait as the US, Russia, Turkey, Iran - and Nato - jockey for alliances, power and influence in this highly combustible but, for most people, little-known, region. The EU is now getting in on the act. 'The European Union cannot afford to neglect the southern Caucasus. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan form a strategic corridor linking southern Europe with central Asia,' Chris Patten, the European external relations commissioner, and Anna Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister, told Financial Times readers last month before the first high-level EU visit to the region. 'There is perhaps as much oil under the Caspian sea as under the North sea and a huge amount of gas there and in central Asia - good news for energy-hungry Europe,' they said. Soon after the EU visit, Georgia's president, Eduard Shevardnadze, welcomed European and US support for the 'Great Silk Road idea'. The plan, backed by Washington and American oil companies, including Chevron, is for a pipeline taking Turkmenistan and Kazakh oil to Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, through Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, and through eastern Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Russia is desperate to maintain oil flows through its territory. Iran wants a pipeline running from the Caspian due south. China wants one going due east. There is also a plan, backed by the US, for a pipeline running from the Bulgarian Black sea port of Burgas through Macedonia to the Albanian Adriatic port of Vlore. The idea is for Caspian oil to be shipped to Burgas by tanker from the Black sea ports of Novorossiysk in Russia and Supsa in Georgia.... While the US and Nato - and now the EU - hold out the prospect of untold wealth for the Caucasian states of the former Soviet Union, the west will also have an important economic stake in Albania and Macedonia. The US already seems to take the view that all Serbs are bad and all Albanians good. The implications for Kosovo, a Serbian province with an overwhelming ethnic Albanian population, and for Macedonia, with armed groups from Kosovo stirring up trouble among the ethnic Albanian population, are potentially immense....Watch this space."
The new Great Game - East and west are jockeying for influence in the Caucasus. The prize is oil and gas
Guardian, 5 March 2001

“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

"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

"During the 1999 Balkans war, some of the critics of Nato's intervention alleged that the western powers were seeking to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian sea. This claim was widely mocked.... [However] For the past few weeks, a freelance researcher called Keith Fisher has been doggedly documenting a project which has, as far as I can discover, has been little-reported in any British, European or American newspaper. It is called the Trans-Balkan pipeline, and it's due for approval at the end of next month. Its purpose is to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian sea. The line will run from the Black sea port of Burgas to the Adriatic at Vlore, passing through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. It is likely to become the main route to the west for the oil and gas now being extracted in central Asia. It will carry 750,000 barrels a day: a throughput, at current prices, of some $600m a month. The project is necessary, according to a paper published by the US Trade and Development Agency last May, because the oil coming from the Caspian sea 'will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the Bosphorus as a shipping lane'. The scheme, the agency notes, will 'provide a consistent source of crude oil to American refineries', 'provide American companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor', 'advance the privatisation aspirations of the US government in the region' and 'facilitate rapid integration' of the Balkans 'with western Europe'...."
'A discreet deal in the pipeline - Nato mocked those who claimed there was a plan for Caspian oil'
Guardian, 15 February 2001

"Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia have given the go ahead for the construction of a $1.2bn oil pipeline that will pass through the Balkan peninsula. The project aims to allow alternative ports for the shipping of Russian and Caspian oil, that normally goes through the Bosphorus straits.   It aims to transport 750,000 daily barrels of oil. The pipeline will be built by the US-registered Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation (AMBO). The pipeline will run for nearly 900 kilometres from the Bulgarian port of Burgas, over the Black Sea to the Albanian city of Vlore on the Adriatic coast, crossing Macedonia.... According to AMBO president Edward Ferguson, work on the pipeline will begin in 2005 and it is expected to be ready in three or four years. He added that the company had already raised about $900m from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) - a US development agency - the Eximbank and Credit Suisse First Boston, among others."
Go-ahead for Balkan oil pipeline
BBC Online, 28 December 2004

"On June 2, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency announced it had awarded the $588,000 grant to Bulgaria to carry out a feasibility study for the pipeline. Under the proposed plan, Caspian oil would be shipped by tanker from the Black Sea ports of Novorossiysk in Russia and from Supsa in former Soviet Georgia and then pumped by overland pipeline across Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania to waiting European consumers. 'The continuing conflicts in Yugoslavia have made [the proposed trans-Balkan line] appear impractical in past years. But the prospect that the U.S. government would guarantee security in the region ... now makes it a much more attractive proposition. This grant represents a significant step forward for this policy (of multiple pipeline routes) and for U.S. business interests in the Caspian region,' said TDA Director J. Joseph Grandmaison. The decision came shortly before NATO and Russia reached agreement on how to force an end to the Kosovo conflict. The decision has raised speculation among regional experts that it may be part of a larger economic development plan envisioned by the Clinton administration to stabilize the southern Balkans after the massive dislocations and infrastructure damage caused by the Serbian repression in Kosovo and the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Serbia. The new strategic importance of the trans-Balkans region to U.S. policy makers could now justify its designation as a Main Export Pipeline for Caspian oil. The continuing conflicts in Yugoslavia have made it appear impractical in past years. But the prospect that the U.S. government would guarantee security in the region and also provide financial guarantees now makes it a much more attractive proposition... The Bulgaria-Macedonia-Albania route has already won support in Moscow and from the Chevron-led Caspian Pipeline Consortium that is developing the Caspian-Kazakhstan oil deposits. The main export line for Caspian crude will run through Russian territory to the Black Sea deposit at Novorossiysk and then by oil tankers to consumers."
Looking at Balkans route for Caspian crude
United Press International, 23 June 1999

"The `AMBO' Corporation (Pound Ridge, NY) has announced, on 17th January 1997, that Mr. E.L. (Ted) Ferguson - formerly Director of Oil & Gas Development for Europe and Africa for `Brown & Root Energy Services' has joined `AMBO' as President & CEO.... The `AMBO' Corporation (an acronym for the `Albanian- Macedonian-Bulgarian Oil Corporation') is the project developer of the 826 million $ Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline which will carry crude oil from the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Bourgas to the Albanian Adriatic Sea port of Vlor....The feasibility study for `AMBO's ` Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline, conducted by the international engineering company of `Brown & Root Ltd.' in London.... The resulting pipeline will become a part of the region's critical East-West corridor infrastructure which includes highway, railway, gas and fiber optic telecommunications lines. This pipeline will bring oil directly to the European market by eliminating tanker traffic through the ecologically sensitive waters of the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas."
M I L S N E W S
Skopje, 23 January, 1997

"Mediterranean refiners are suffering shortages of crude oil as Turkish security restrictions and bad weather cause a traffic jam of tankers carrying Russian oil through the straits of the Bosporus and Dardanelles... The congestion threatens a supply crunch similar to that experienced by European refiners during the Gulf war of 1991.... The jam has forced Russian producers to halt one pipeline sending oil to the Black Sea because storage tanks are full and tanker loadings are delayed. 'The Bosporus problem is hitting very hard,' said one refiner in Spain. The transit route of the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, one of the most important export points for Russia, Europe's biggest supplier, is known for problems and delays. But the delays this year are compounded by the fact that refiners can no longer rely on the Iraqi substitute for Russian oil. Kirkuk oil, from Iraq's northern oilfields, resembles Russia's Urals oil. But Kirkuk, which is transported by pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, has not been available since March because of the sabotage of Iraq's section of the pipeline."
Bosporus tanker jam threatens shortage of oil
Financial Times, 11 January 2004

"As Alvaro González, captain of the Bosco Tapias, waited three weeks for a 30-vessel traffic jam to clear so he could begin the treacherous journey through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, he used the time to get his 274-meter oil tanker shipshape.... The reason for the delays, of up to 25 days since the start of the gridlock in the Turkish straits in December, is a mix of environmental, security and geopolitical factors which few industries other than oil face to such a degree....Collisions and groundings are the most frequent accidents for a waterway that at its narrowest point could not fit a tanker lengthwise. The doubling of oil exports from Russia in eight years, and the rush of oil expected from the Caspian have worried Turkish authorities and international oil companies, whose reputations ride on their safety record...This battle over control of the Caspian's oil and natural gas riches has raged since the early 1990s, with the US backing a system of pipelines that would bypass Iran as well as reduce Moscow's grip over countries such as Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan."
Geopolitics slows tankers' passage in busy Bosporus
Financial Times, 11 January 2004

"As the region stabilizes, the Balkans may play an important role as a transit center for Russian and Caspian Sea region oil exports... the region is becoming more important as a transit center for Russian and Caspian Sea region oil exports to Western consumers."
US Energy Information Administration - Statement on Balkans October 2002

"Today, the circumstances which we have created here have changed. Today, it is absolutely necessary to guarantee the stability of Macedonia and its entry into NATO. But we will certainly remain here a long time so that we can also guarantee the security of the energy corridors which traverse this country."
General Michael Jackson, commander of KFOR in Macedonia
Italian daily, Sole 24 Ore, 13 April 1999

"The routes of potential trans-Balkan oil pipelines were laid down according to the interests of their future [EU and US] users....The territory of Yugoslavia (both former and present federation) is significant, therefore, because of its geographic position. Influential American analysts insist on the claim that Yugoslavia is in the immediate neighborhood of a zone of vital US interests - Black Sea/Caspian Sea region. And wherever there are vital US interests, there are NATO troops to protect them. European interests, claim our interlocutors, are even greater, because it is definitely not in the interest of the European Union countries that the key to their supplies is held by someone else....The project SEEL (South East European Line), initiated by the Italian company ENI is actually the corridor for transportation of Caspian oil from Constanta to Trieste, which passes through Serbia and uses the existing system of the Adriatic oil pipeline, all the way to Omisalj... Because of the political situation in Serbia this project was delayed for some better times... Until the fall of Slobodan Milosevic's regime Croatia insisted that the connection with Constanta bypass Serbia by going through Hungary [a less economic route]. However, after October 5 and the political changes in Yugoslavia, the meeting of this same group held in Brussels on October 26 and 27, 2000, expressed support for the transport of Caspian oil following the route from Black Sea, Romania, Yugoslavia and Croatia, respectively from Romanian port Constanta, through Pitesti, and Pancevo to Delnice in Croatia, from where the new pipeline would go towards Trieste and the old one continue to Omisalj on the island of Krk."
Underground Games in Kosovo
Reporter, Banja Luka, Srpska, B-H, February 27, 2001

"The project envisages construction of a new spur from Delnice to Trieste, 100 kilometers long, and conversion of the Omisalj port into the leading spot-market for resale of oil in the Mediterranean [Adriatic]..... One should recall that Milosevic did not end up in the Hague only as a war criminal, but above all because with his policies he stood in the way of a new network of Euro-Asian oil pipelines. His political fate was sealed in Zagreb, where two years ago a large ministerial-business conference of the EU INOGATE program was held. A hundred days later, Milosevic was not in power anymore, and at the time of the signing of a new oil pipeline from Constanta to Trieste he was already on the way to the Hague, supposedly by chance."
Mega Pipeline Becomes Reality
Novi List (Croatian Newspaper), 23 July 2002

"..the Balkans are becoming an important transit center for energy supplies from the Black Sea area and beyond to Europe"
US Energy Information Administration - Previous statement on Balkans now updated with statement of October 2002 (see top)

"The Honorable U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Lawrence Rossin and the Croatian Minister of Economy Hrvoje Vojkovic signed a US$ 202,000 Trade and Development Agency (TDA) grant to fund a feasibility study for an international oil pipeline in Southeast Europe. The Serbian Minister of Mining and Energy, Ms. Kori Udovicki ....took part in the signing ceremony in Zagreb. The oil pipeline would originate in Constanta, Romania go through Serbia and Croatia and end in Trieste, Italy."
Southeastern Europe Business Brief
Volume 7.26, July 26, 2002

"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 claimed that this operation has been going on 'since the beginning of Clinton's presidency.' It was supposedly a joint operation with the German secret service, which also sought to destabilize Yugoslavia. The final objective 'is the separation of Kosovo, with the aim of it becoming part of Albania; the separation of Montenegro, as the last means of access to the Mediterranean; and the separation of the Vojvodina, which produces most of the food for Yugoslavia. This would lead to the total collapse of Yugoslavia as a viable independent state.' 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

"War in the former Yugoslav republics is being fuelled by a massive and complex pattern of weapons shipments to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, funded and organized by Germany. Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy has uncovered a widespread pattern of arms shipments which have been allowed to cross into Croatia and Bosnia with the tacit approval (and sometimes, apparently, direct support) of the governments of Germany and Austria, and possibly other states. As well, Germany has pointedly ignored the movement of German nationals into Croatia and Bosnia to fight against the Serbian residents of those two former Yugoslav states. All of the activity is in direct violation of German and Austrian law as well as being in violation of international embargoes against the supply of weapons to the conflict zone. All of the actions support Germany's traditional ally, Croatia, against the Serbian populations still resident in what is now Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and against the rump of the Yugoslav Federation. The wide collection of information came to Defense & Foreign Affairs from diverse sources, including Defense & Foreign Affairs correspondents. Some, from other sources, came in written form in a variety of languages, without elaboration, often with only partial identification of some of the transactions, companies and weapons involved."
Illegal German Weapons to Croatia and Bosnia Fuel the Balkan Conflict
Defense and Foreign Affairs, Strategic Policy 31 October 1992

"General Sir Michael Rose, the former United Nations military commander in Bosnia.... said false facts about the war in Bosnia were being fed to Congress.... he was visited by General John Galvin, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe who had been appointed by President Clinton to advise on a new structure for the Bosnian Army. General Rose said: 'We were escorted by a woman from the US Embassy who, in my view, was the most hostile American I met during all my time in Bosnia.' As they flew by helicopter towards Tuzla in the north, she pointed at all the destroyed villages high in the Zvijezda mountains and 'exclaimed excitedly' to General Galvin: 'Look at what the criminal Serbs have done.' In fact, General Rose said, they were Bosnian Croat villages ethnically cleansed by the Muslim forces. Later when they visited Mostar in the south where the Croats had virtually destroyed the Muslim sector in the eastern part of the town, the US official 'planted her hands on her ample hips' and cried: 'Well, at least this was done by the criminal Serbs.' General Rose said the woman burst into tears when it was pointed out that the Croats had been to blame. 'The fact was not lost on Galvin,' he said."
US bugged me in Bosnia, says General Rose
London Times, 10 November 1998

"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, April 29, 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

"Albania ... offered NATO and the U.S. an important military outpost in the turbulent southern Balkans (in the 1990-96 period Albania opened its ports and airstrips for U.S. military use and housed CIA spy planes for flights over Bosnia).... The U.S. played a major role in the DP’s 1992 electoral victory, and it then provided the new government with military, economic, and political support. In the 1991-96 period Washington directly provided Albania $236 million in economic aid, making the U.S. the second largest bilateral economic donor (following Italy).....Following Berisha’s visit to the U.S. in March 1991, Washington began supplying direct assistance to the DP, including donations of computers and cars for the 1992 electoral campaign. William Ryerson, the first U.S. ambassador, stood next to Berisha on the podium at election rallies. The U.S. failed to criticize, and at times encouraged, the new president as he purged critics of his policies within the judicial system, police, and the DP—often through illegal means. By 1993 DP loyalists and family members held most of the prominent positions in Albania’s ministries, institutes, universities, and state media. Citing the threat of communism’s return, Berisha successfully instilled fear in the population and discredited his rivals. The U.S. embassy in Albania contributed to the polarization of Albanian politics by refusing to meet most of the opposition parties (former communists as well as others) for the first two years of DP rule. This one-sided view of democratization helped Berisha dismantle most political alternatives, some of which were moderate and truly democratic. Albania had become a strategic outpost in the region, and the U.S. did not want to jeopardize its new control and political influence in the country. In 1992 Washington deployed a Military Liaison Team to the country and started outfitting the Albanian military with nonlethal equipment, technical expertise, and training. Albania was the first East European state to request NATO membership, and in February 1994 it became a member of the NATO-associated Partnership for Peace. Albania has participated in numerous military training operations with the U.S. and other NATO powers, and the CIA has used Albania as a base for air reconnaissance missions over Bosnia. In January 1995, the U.S. Army finished building a radar station in northern Albania for use by the Albanian military. In addition, Albania opened its land, marine, and airport facilities to NATO operations in the former Yugoslavia....In the volatile Balkans, the U.S. is faced with a serious crisis that it helped fuel. The raging anarchy in Albania is both a serious setback for Albania’s democratic development and a threat to regional security. In this regard, the disintegration of police and military forces has resulted in the widespread availability of weapons. These are easily purchased or stolen not only by Berisha’s opponents but also by criminal gangs and terrorist elements both inside and outside Albania. "
Albania
Foreign Policy In Focus, Volume 2, Number 33 May 1997

"For amid the present furore over the no-show of Iraqi WMDs, let us remember that in Kosovo our humanitarian Prime Minister dragged this country into an illegal, US-sponsored war on grounds which later proved to be fraudulent. In 2003 Tony's Big Whopper was that Saddam's WMDs 'could be activated within 45 minutes'. In 1999 it was that Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia was 'set on a Hitler-style genocide equivalent to the extermination of the Jews during World War Two'..... In fact, the Yugoslavs had by February 1999 already agreed to most of the autonomy proposals and had assented to a UN (but not Nato) peacekeeping team entering Kosovo..... It was the unwelcome prospect of Milosevic signing up to a peace deal and thereby depriving the US of its casus belli that caused Secretary of State Albright, with the connivance of Cook, to insert new terms into the Rambouillet accord purposely designed to be rejected by Belgrade. Appendix B to chapter seven of the document provided not only for the Nato occupation of Kosovo, but also for 'unrestricted access' for Nato aircraft, tanks and troops throughout Yugoslavia. The full text of the Rambouillet document was kept secret from the public and came to light only when published in Le Monde Diplomatique on 17 April. By this time, the war was almost a month old...The Kosovan war was, we were repeatedly told, fought 'to stop a humanitarian catastrophe'. 'It is no exaggeration to say that what is happening is racial genocide' - claimed the British Prime Minister - 'something we had hoped we would never again experience in Europe. Thousands have been murdered, 100,000 men are missing and hundreds forced to flee their homes and the country.' The Serbs were, according to the US State Department, 'conducting a campaign of forced population movement not seen in Europe since WW2'....With public support for war faltering, and a Downing Street spokesman talking of a 'public-relations meltdown', it was time for the Lie Machine to go into overdrive.... To date, the total body count of civilians killed in Kosovo in the period 1997-99 is still fewer than 3,000, a figure that includes not only those killed in open fighting and during Nato air strikes, but also an unidentified number of Serbs. Clearly it was an exaggeration - of Munchausenian proportions - for the Prime Minister to describe what happened in Kosovo as 'racial genocide'. In both Kosovo and Iraq, the government's war strategy seems to have been threefold:
1. In order to whip up public support for war, tell lies so outrageous that most people will believe that no one would have dared to make them up.
2. When the conflict is over, dismiss questions about the continued lack of evidence as 'irrelevant' and stress alternative 'benefits' from the military action, e.g., 'liberation' of the people.
3. Much later on, when the truth is finally revealed, rely on the fact that most people have lost interest and are now concentrating on the threat posed by the next new Hitler.
An admission of the government's culpability for the Kosovan war only slipped out in July 2000, when Lord Gilbert, the ex-defence minister, told the House of Commons that the Rambouillet terms offered to the Yugoslav delegation had been 'absolutely intolerable' and expressly designed to provoke war. Gilbert's bombshell warranted scarcely a line in the mainstream British media, which had been so keen to label the Yugoslavs the guilty party a year before."
How the battle lies were drawn
Spectator, 14 June 2003

"Almost before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney called together a group of players to chart out a strategy for the post-Cold War world. The names should be familiar, because they run the present administration: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The goal was to 'shape' the world in order to, in the words of another team member, Zalmay Khalizad (now special envoy to Afghanistan), 'preclude the rise of another global rival for the indefinite future.' In his book 'From Containment to Global Leadership?' Khalizad argues that it is 'vital' to prevent such a rival from developing and 'to be willing to use force if necessary.'.."
Are we on the road to war?
The San Francisco Examiner, 19 April 2002

"The greatest untapped oil reserves in the world are located in the former Soviet republics bordering the Caspian Sea (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan)...... This is the fuel that is feeding renewed militarism and must lead to new wars of conquest .... This is the key to understanding the bellicosity of US foreign policy over the past decade. The bombardment of Yugoslavia is the latest in a series of wars of aggression that have spanned the globe. Though they had certain regional motivations, these wars have been the US response to the opportunities and challenges opened by the demise of the USSR. Washington sees its military might as a trump card that can be employed to prevail over all its rivals in the coming struggle for resources.... For reasons both of world strategy and control over natural resources, the US is determined to secure for itself a dominant role in the former Soviet sphere.... The US House Committee on International Relations has begun holding hearings on the strategic importance of the Caspian region. At one meeting in February 1998, Doug Bereuter [said] Stated US policy goals regarding energy resources in this region,' he continued, 'include fostering the independence of the States and their ties to the West; breaking Russia's monopoly over oil and gas transport routes; promoting Western energy security through diversified suppliers; encouraging the construction of east-west pipelines that do not transit Iran; and denying Iran dangerous leverage over the Central Asian economies.'.... This is the significance of the present military action against Yugoslavia and the growth of militarism generally. Kosovo is a testing ground for wars that will follow in the former Soviet region.... The United States for its part gives the impression of a society on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Public life is punctuated by outbreaks of violence by schoolchildren that have left the country in a state of semi-shock. No explanation, beyond the most banal, has been offered by officials or experts for these explosions of violent anti-social behavior. In their own way, however, they testify to the brutality of contemporary American life and the suppressed antagonisms that lie just under the surface.... The country will continue to be remade as a high-tech garrison, where the bulk of public expenditure will be devoted towards military purposes abroad. Social programs will increasingly be replaced by naked domestic repression."
Why is NATO at war with Yugoslavia? World power, oil and gold
World Socialist Web Site, 24 May 1999

"General Wesley Clark, the former Nato commander and presidential hopeful, will testify next month at the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic under conditions of strict censorship and confidentiality imposed by the United States. Washington is believed to be fearful of potentially damaging revelations about its Balkan realpolitik during the 1990s and in the Bosnian War. General Clark, who is seeking the Democratic Party nomination for President, will be one of the highest-profile witnesses to take the stand. The former Nato commander directed the alliance's 78-day bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999, after Serbian forces had launched an onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists. General Clark will testify on December 15 and 16. Public galleries will be closed and the broadcast system that transmits the proceedings on the internet and on closed-circuit television will be shut down. The conditions of General Clark's testimony include a 48-hour delay to enable the US Government to review the transcript and seek the court's consent to censor parts on the ground of national security. Two US representatives will attend the sessions. The three-judge panel hearing Mr Milosevic's case agreed to the conditions, which are unique, because they decided that they were justified by the potential importance of General Clark's testimony, Jim Landale, the tribunal spokesman, said. In his cross-examination of General Clark, Mr Milosevic could reveal sensitive information about the West's diplomatic and military strategy for dealing with the crisis in the Balkans."
General Clark to testify against Milosevic
London Times, 20 November 2003

"The final toll of civilians confirmed massacred by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo is likely to be under 3,000, far short of the numbers claimed by Nato governments during last year's controversial air strikes on Yugoslavia. When Yugoslav forces withdrew from Kosovo in June last year, Nato spokesmen estimated that the Serbs had killed at least 10,000 civilians. While the bombing was under way William Cohen, the US defence secretary, announced that 100,000 Kosovo Albanian men of military age were missing after being taken from columns of families being deported to Albania and Macedonia. 'They may have been murdered,' he said....The exhumation of less than 3,000 bodies is sure to add fuel to those who say Nato's intervention against Yugoslavia was not 'humanitarian' and that it had other motives ..."
Serb killings 'exaggerated' by west
Guardian, 18 August 2000

"President Clinton has authorised an all-out campaign to topple Slobodan Milosevic, according to sources close to the US Government. Earlier this spring, Mr Clinton signed a secret presidential 'finding' giving the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the green light to try to bring down the Yugoslav president, said sources quoted in the US news-magazine Time. The reported campaign has two tracks, overt and covert....Now, six new radio transmitters outside Serbian territory will beam a 24-hour diet of pro-Western broadcasts to bolster dissident elements. "
'CIA ordered to topple Milosevic': US report
BBC Online, 6 July 1999

"[In order to topple Milosevic] Approximately $30 million, predominantly from America, were channeled into the country [Serbia] via an office in Budapest, in order to equip the opposition for the election campaign with computers, telephones and office materials. Hundreds of election helpers were trained abroad for these tasks."
Helping the Revolution
Der Spiegel, 9 October 2000

"The last time [before Iraq] American bombers were sent over the horizon to rain democracy on a reluctant constituency was in the spring of 1999, when the NATO alliance engaged the hearts and minds of the Serbian government. The regime to be changed was that of Slobodan Milosevic. For 78 days, NATO -- but mostly American bombers -- attacked military and civilian targets throughout Serbia and Montenegro.... The bombings killed almost as many Serbs as the number of Americans who later died in the World Trade Center.... During the week before Djindjic's March 12 assassination, I traveled extensively in the former Yugoslavia, now called the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.... Djindjic had come to power courtesy of the oddest of bed fellows: the U.S. government and local gangsters, who flourished in the 1990s because American sanctions had put legitimate business to the wall. In the beginning, both the United States and the gangsters thought that their interests would best be served with a new government in Serbia, and both agreed to sacrifice Milosevic on the altar of war guilt in The Hague. But more recently, this coalition found itself with conflicting agendas. The gangsters thought that support for Djindjic would exempt them from a summons to the International Criminal Tribunal, but the U.S. made further aid to Serbia conditional on Serbia's serving up more suspects to that court."
Bombing down to Belgrade - An unholy alliance with Serb gangsters
US's Providence Journal, Rhode Island, 4 April 2003

"...there is evidence that underworld groups, controlled by Zoran Djindjic and linked to US intelligence, carried out a series of assassinations of key supporters of the Milosevic regime, including Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic and Zika Petrovic, head of Yugoslav Airlines.... Despite the opposition of most of its citizens, [Djindjic] the 'heralder of democracy' followed the requirements of the 'international community' and after 74 years the name of Yugoslavia disappeared off the political map. The strategic goal of its replacement with a series of weak and divided protectorates had finally been achieved....The lesson from Serbia for today's serial regime changers is a simple one. You can try to subjugate a people by sanctions, subversion and bombs. You can, if you wish, overthrow governments you dislike and seek to impose your will by installing a Hamid Karzai, General Tommy Franks or a Zoran Djindjic to act as imperial consul. But do not imagine that you can then force a humiliated people to pay homage to them."
The quisling of Belgrade
The murdered Serbian prime minister was a reviled western stooge whose economic reforms brought misery
Guardian, 14 March 2003

"The political stakes are high and the financial risks many but the spoils are huge for investors seeking a way to pipe Russian and Caspian oil around the treacherous Turkish straits to the energy-hungry West. Oil producers lost at least $700 million last winter as bad weather and heavy seas kept their tankers stuck for as long as two weeks at the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits —- the only way for sea-bound crude to exit the Black Sea. Delayed for years by political wrangling and environmental fears, several billion-dollar pipeline projects are finally inching toward start dates, with countries and investors around the vast Black Sea vying for pole position. 'An exit-Black Sea pipeline is a necessity, because the oil market requires diversified supplies,' said Max Shein, chief equity strategist at Moscow-based Broker Credit Service..... 'One day the ships will carry the oil to us,' said Nikolov, whose company, the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation (AMBO), aims to link the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Bourgas with Vlore, on Albania’s Adriatic coast. The need is clear: already booming oil production in the Urals and the Caspian Sea regions is expected to double crude traffic through the Turkish straits through 2015. Russia has increased exports by 50 percent since 2001 to become the world’s second largest oil exporter behind Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan expects to more than double its output of 1.3 billion tonnes of crude in the next decade. AMBO hopes to build a 912-km (567-mile) pipeline from Bourgas through Macedonia to Vlore, a deep port accessible to huge tankers. Analysts warn the pipeline’s length and political risks in the region continue to hinder the plan, which originally surfaced in 1994, but Nikolov said a deal could be imminent. 'I expect the final political accord on the pipeline to be endorsed next year,' he said. 'No pipeline will ever lose money. But a pipeline is as much economics as it is politics.'.... Alongside the AMBO plan is a project to run a link between Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta to Italy’s Trieste......"
Black Sea Pipelines Look to Bypass Straits
Reuters, 28 November 2005

"Five countries are expected to sign in January an agreement to build an oil pipeline from Romania to Italy. The project, which includes rehabilitating Romania's Black Sea port Constanta, would cost at least $2.4bn (€2bn, Ł1.4bn), a feasibility study has found. People close to the project said two key oil companies, one international energy group and one state-owned energy company, had expressed interest. Henry Owen, a financial adviser to the project, said the pipeline would feed refineries in south-eastern Europe, Italy, Austria and Bavaria and would send oil to tankers via an existing pipeline from Trieste to the deepwater port at Genoa. It would reduce European dependence on Middle Eastern oil, would be outside Russian control and would help to alleviate some of the congestion in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, analysts said. But they warned that the pipeline faced several competitors and that an agreement could still be scuttled by one of the five states. If the signing ceremony proceeds, the next big hurdle will be reaching agreement on the pipeline tariffs. Ian Woollen, senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, the UK-based consultants, said: 'It is a step forward, but there is still a long way to go. There are a lot of competing options that make more sense logistically and commercially.' Two pipelines that would originate in Burgas, Bulgaria, compete with the so-called Pan-European Pipeline from Constanta to Trieste. One would send oil to Alexandroupolis in Greece, the other to Vlore on Albania's Adriatic coast. Politics plays as much of a role as money. Russia's interest in controlling the region's oil flow, and the US opposing objective in diversifying the power away from Moscow, mix with the broader tug between Asia and Europe, both large markets keen to receive the oil. Meanwhile, Turkey wants to reduce the strain of shipping almost all the region's oil through the dangerously busy Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, but does not want to lose control of the power and the income that comes with being such an important trading gateway. Altogether a dozen pipelines are proposed for the region. The most significant new pipeline is the BP-led Baku to Ceyhan line, expected to open this spring."
Five countries to build joint oil pipeline
Financial Times, 20 December 2005

"The defence lawyers assigned to ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic have asked for the former NATO commander General Wesley Clark to be recalled to the witness stand for further questioning.... In their latest submission, filed on February 10, defence lawyers Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins, whose assistance is imposed on Milosevic against his will, objected to the fact that questioning of Clark at the time was restricted to the contents of a statement he had given to prosecutors. By pressing for such restrictions, they argued, 'The prosecution and the [United States] government structured the appearance of General Clark in the trial in such a way that only issues in support of the prosecution’s case could be adduced.'... The US embassy in The Hague has since written to the court, reminding judges of Washington's desire to protect 'sensitive information and legitimate national interests' and seeking leave to file a lengthier written submission on the matter.'"
Milosevic Lawyers Seek Recall of General Clark
Instituted For War And Peace Reporting, 17 February 2006

"A deal to supply the EU with 10bn cubic metres of Turkmen gas per year from 2009 has been hailed by officials as 'an important step'.  The agreement will boost the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline - planned to reduce reliance on Russian gas, which accounts for a quarter of EU supplies. The Turkmen gas will only make up a small percentage of EU demands and it is not clear how it will reach Europe.  Nabucco is due to be built in 2010 and the first gas will flow in 2013."
EU secures Turkmenistan gas deal
BBC Online, 14 April 2008

Serbia - Four Periods Of American Espionage

Find Out How Similar Dirty Games Are Being Played In The Caucacus
As The Oil Makes Its Way From The Caspian To The Coast Of Yugoslavia
Via The Black Sea Region
Click Here

"Former Croatian General Ante Gotovina stands accused of war crimes in connection with a 1995 military offensive. Some 150 civilians were killed in the advance. Now, it looks like he may have had help from the United States. His trial may not get started before the end of 2006 or the spring of 2007, but already the case against former Croatian general Ante Gotovina promises some surprises. Gotovina, who is accused of being responsible for the murder of at least 150 Serbian civilians and the eviction of some 150,000 Serbs from the Krajina region in August 1995, may have had some American help. Croatian military sources told SPIEGEL that Gotovina had direct though secret support from both the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency in planning and carrying out the 'Storm' offensive, which was designed to retake the Krajina region from the Serbs. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) behind chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte has charged Gotovina and the late Croatian leader Franco Tudjman with committing a 'joint criminal undertaking' with the goal of ethnically cleansing the Serbs from Croatia. In preparing for the offensive, Croatian soldiers were allegedly trained at Fort Irwin in California and the Pentagon purportedly aided in planning the operation. Additional training assistance is said to have come from the American firm Military Professional Resources Incorporated. Immediately prior to the offensive, then-Deputy CIA Director George Tenet allegedly met with Gotovina and Tudjman's son -- then in charge of Croatian intelligence -- for last minute consultations. During the operation, a US aircraft is said to have destroyed Serbian communication and anti-aircraft centers and the Pentagon allegedly passed on information gathered by satellite to Gotovina. Earlier this month, the Zagreb weekly Globus, claiming sources within Gotovina's defense team, alleged that then US President Bill Clinton knew all about the planned offensive. Clinton, the paper alleged, was angry at the Serbs for having overrun the UN protected Bosnian 'safe area' of Srebrenica the previous month and wanted them punished. Gotovina was arrested in early December after having been in hiding for years. The European Union had made his arrest a precondition to resuming accession negotiations with Croatia. Gotovina has pled not guilty to the war crimes charges levied by the Hague tribunal. News reports have indicated that Gotovina's lawyers may be planning to rest his defense on the American participation in the offensive. A recent addition to the Gotovina defense team, though, may alter that strategy. At the insistence of the Pentagon, the American lawyer Greg Kehoe will help defend Gotovina at his trial. If convicted, the former general who many in Croatia still consider a hero could face life in prison."
US Links to Croatian War Crime?
Der Spiegel, 23 January 2006

"The trial could prove embarrassing for Western intelligence services and regional governments if General Gotovina reveals how much support the Croatian military and intelligence services received from the West, especially the United States and the CIA. According to Hrvoje Sarinic, former chief of staff to President Tudjman, who also acted as his secret envoy to Milosevic, the CIA cooperated with General Gotovina and supplied intelligence-gathering equipment before Operation Storm."
Croat general Ante Gotovina stands trial for war crimes
London Times, 11 March 2008

"A Croatian general went into the dock at the war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague yesterday in a keenly awaited case that is effectively putting the Zagreb regime of the 1990s on trial for crimes against humanity in its war against the Serbs.In what is arguably the most important trial staged at the tribunal since Slobodan Milosevic died in custody in The Hague two years ago, General Ante Gotovina faces nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. More than six years after Gotovina was secretly indicted, and four years after he went on the run from international justice, the trial of the 52-year-old former French legionnaire will open a window on the murky and ugly politics of the Balkans in the 1990s, as well as on the roles of the CIA, MI6, and the Pentagon....For the Croats the 72-hour blitz, named Operation Storm, was well-planned military brilliance that routed the Serb forces. Gotovina was a key commander of the operation that led to the Croatian victory. The US was closely involved in it; the CIA used spy planes to expose Serbian plans."
Croat general on trial for war crimes
Guardian, 12 March 2008

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

CIA Uses Belgian Arms Dealer To Supply Iranian Weapons To
Anti-Serb Forces In Croatia

"It has been reported in the Iranian capital, Tehran, that a Belgian citizen arrested on spying charges is a well known international arms dealer. .... informed sources have now confirmed press reports circulating in France and Belgium that the arrested man is a well known Belgian arms dealer, Jacques Monsieur.... Mr Monsieur was apparently no stranger to Iran - he is reported to have played a big role in exporting Iranian arms to Bosnia in the early 1990s as well as to other countries in Africa and elsewhere."
Belgian arms dealer held in Iran
BBC Online, 24 January 2001

"A certain company from Bratislava, Joy Slovakia, was Cappiau's main long-time connection, and it also served as a cover for a Belgian arms dealer, Jacques Monsieur. Monsieur, who is claimed by foreign news media to having smuggled over 650 tons of various weapons at the height of the war in the former Yugoslavia, on his part had numerous contacts with the Belgian, French, American and Israeli intelligence services, and his name was linked to many illegal arms deals with Iran, Congo-Brazzaville and Croatia."
Links between Organized Crime and Croatia's Top Brass
AIM, 16 April 2001

"48 years old, this former officer of the Belgian army [Jacques Monsieur] was of all the wars and all the traffics of weapons of these twenty last years. Before [his] arrest in Iran in November 2000, [he] was the subject of a judicial enquiry on behalf of French justice for deliveries of weapons in Croatia between 1991 and 1995 after the bursting of Yugoslavia. But to the French judge who questioned [him], [he] answered that [he] had the support of the French secret service in this business.... after the end of the war Iran-Iraq (1988) and the bursting of the USSR and Yugoslavia, [he] started to deliver weapons, in particular Iranian, with the Croats and later with the Bosnians. In 1991, the United Nations issued an embargo on the sales of weapons to the belligerents of ex-Yugoslavia. 'I was contacted in Brussels by an agent of the CIA to organize this operation and to deliver weapons to the anti-Serb forces', [he] declared."
[Google Translation From Original French]
Jacques Monsieur condemned in Iran
RFI Actualite, [Date not indicated - Dec 2001?]

"After 18 months spent behind the bars of an Iranian prison, the merchant of weapons Jacques Mister left Teheran. Destination: Brussels.... In Brussels, Jacques Mister was already judged with the last autumn for related facts with his activity. A judgment by default (imprisoned in Teheran, [he] could not answer the convocation of the court) which opens the way with a new lawsuit, in front of the same jurisdiction..... This man impassioned by the horses Lusitanians could then tell the lower parts and the springs of the traffic of weapons. … How [he] settled in France, in 1992, to organize the deliveries of Iranian weapons to the Bosnian soldiers and Croatian during the conflict of Balkans… "
[Google Translation From Original French]
Jacques  Monsieur judged soon in Europe
RFI Actualite, 18 May 2002

"Believed to be among the biggest arms traffickers in Europe, [Jacques] Monsieur had violated a United Nations embargo by shipping arms to Bosnia and Croatia during the long bloody conflict in those countries, with the approval, he later claimed, of both the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Direction de Surveillance de Territoire (DST), the French domestic intelligence service.... In September 2000, Monsieur told a French judge of having been contacted in 1991 in Brussels by the CIA, and, with the blessing of the French DST, of having sent tens of millions of dollars of weapons to Croatia. From 1991 to 1995, he found his best markets in Croatia and Bosnia, even though the two countries were under a United Nations embargo..... Another French magistrate, who is well versed in the Croatian trafficking case, said it was a political operation. 'A decision from on high led, in 1995, to the cancellation of a fourth wave of weapons deliveries to former Yugoslavia,' implying that French au