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Saturday June 5 6:53 PM ET

Serbs Shell Northern Albanian Town
Full Coverage
NATO - Serbia War



TIRANA, Albania (AP) - Serb forces shelled a northern Albanian border town crowded with refugees late Saturday, sending relief workers and townspeople fleeing into cellars, international monitors said.

Eight shells exploded in Kruma, nine miles north of Kukes and about five miles west of the Yugoslav border, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The shelling took place just hours after Yugoslav and NATO generals met on the Macedonian border to discuss the withdrawal of Serb soldiers and police from Kosovo. The state-run Tanjug news agency reported Saturday that Yugoslav officials might sign a withdrawal agreement Sunday.

OSCE spokesman Andrea Angeli said there was no word on casualties and damage because the organization's personnel in the town were stuck in cellars for their own safety.

Angeli said that three shells blasted the nearby village of Nikoliq, injuring three young women.

Yugoslavia's acceptance of the international peace plan for Kosovo has not brought an end to shelling in the border areas, where rebels from the Kosovo Liberation Army are trying to move fighters and supplies into the province to continue their fight for independence.

Late Friday, Serb-led Yugoslav forces shelled several Albanian border villages, injuring two people in Perollaj and killing an 18-year-old woman in the village of Golaj, Angeli said.

The KLA's press service, Kosova Press, also reported Serb attacks around the town of Malisevo, a former rebel stronghold about 21 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Pristina. Kosova Press said Yugoslav forces attacked villages around Malisevo with tanks and mortars.

The report could not be confirmed because no international monitors are in the province and journalists are restricted in their movements.




First contingent of U.S. peace force gets ready to land


http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ws/item/0,1267,11249-11250-29781,00.html


By Michael Kilian
Washington Bureau
June 5, 1999


WASHINGTON--The first American peacekeeping troops to go into Kosovo will be Marines who are now on warships steaming from the Adriatic to the Aegean Sea for landings in Greece and transport through Macedonia into the embattled province, the Pentagon said Friday.

The lead ship, the USS Kearsarge, will be ready to put the Marines ashore on Monday.

Presuming Serbian compliance with NATO conditions, the 2,200-strong Marine Expeditionary Force is to then move swiftly to establish an "American zone" comprising the largely mountainous eastern one-fifth of Kosovo.

Lightly armed, they will initially be outnumbered by Serb forces still in the province, and potentially run the risk of having to fight rogue Serb paramilitary elements--if not Kosovo Liberation Army rebels bent on Kosovo independence.

They will not go in until the Serbs begin pulling out and NATO halts its still-continuing bombing attacks against Serb positions in Kosovo--a process the Pentagon said would take at least two days from the time the Serbs come into compliance.

"The general plan is that, as we have verified firm evidence that withdrawal is under way, the NATO forces will begin to move into Kosovo," said Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon at a Pentagon briefing.

The Serbs will have a week to complete their departure, and are being "allowed and encouraged" to take their tanks and other heavy weapons with them, Bacon said.

Trained for rapid deployment, the Marines are to clear land mines from their sector, open roads and other lines of communication, establish defense perimeters, make preparations for camps and assume control of Kosovo's border with the rest of Serbia. A 15-mile-wide demilitarized "mutual security zone" on the Serbian side is to be established to keep the Serb military out of contact with the peacekeepers.

After that, following a pattern used in the Pacific theater during World War II, the Marines will be replaced by a more permanent and heavily armed and equipped Army force, brought in mostly from bases in Germany.

With other NATO and Russian troops occupying the four other sectors of Kosovo, the hope is that these United Nations-sanctioned international peacekeepers will be able to achieve the same success in ending current hostilities and preventing new ones that a similar mixed force has since 1995 in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

But it won't be easy.

"In the end, a long-term peace enforcement operation will be a mixed blessing for U.S. and NATO forces, which will have to face land mines, hostile Serbs, aggrieved Kosovars and a potentially uncooperative Kosovo Liberation Army," said Joseph Collins, military analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Occupying Kosovo is likely to be far more demanding and risky than enforcing the Dayton accords in Bosnia."

According to Bacon, NATO deliberately left open three major highways connecting the Kosovo cities of Pristina, Pec and Prizren for use by returning Kosovar refugees. Serbian convoys using these to carry out the withdrawal would be spared attack from the air.

"It should be relatively easy for them to move out on these roads," Bacon said.

But, as the peacekeeping preparations proceeded, Serbian soldiers were still fighting KLA rebels, and being attacked by NATO from the air.

Over Thursday and Friday, NATO warplanes struck at 35 Serbian ground troop targets in Kosovo, and there were reports of at least three Serbian surface-to-air missiles fired at allied aircraft.

NATO is demanding that Serbia remove all anti-aircraft weapons from Kosovo before anything else. Allied warplanes are initially to monitor the Serbian military's departure, but ultimately the major verification burden will fall to the peacekeepers on the ground--and that includes searching out any hidden Serbian armor, anti-aircraft artillery and missiles.

Bacon said that the Serbian paramilitary groups responsible for many of the atrocities in Kosovo are led by close associates of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and should comply with orders from him to withdraw.

But Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies and an expert on the Balkans, said he expects as many as 1,000 of the more militant, radical Serbian paramilitaries to "take to the hills" and try to continue warfare with the KLA.

And, he said, many of the KLA will be willing to take them on.

"I think the KLA are going to be a real problem," Heyman said. "NATO is going to find it very difficult to deal with them, and may have to do so for the next 25 years. Some KLA are wild and crazy, much like some of the militia groups in America."

Though the peace initiative calls for Serbian withdrawal and the establishment of a UN-sanctioned provisional government for the province, the plan frustrates KLA goals for independence by retaining Kosovo as a part of Serbia and also requiring the KLA to disarm.

Bacon warned that further KLA combat would be "a grave mistake," but it will be up to U.S. and other NATO peacekeepers to deal with it.

The Pentagon and NATO have made clear that the top priority of the peacekeepers is not to re-establish the Kosovar refugees in their homes but to create and maintain a safe and secure environment in which they can do so.

Once the refugees do return, Heyman foresees a de facto partition of Kosovo as Serb civilians there flee to places of safety in the north. The returning ethnic Albanians will cluster where they feel safe, he said, creating a division of the province and adding to the tensions.

"I can see the Serbs packing up, burning their houses and businesses behind them and heading north on the heels of the Serb troop pullout," he said. "I can see the Kosovars coming in as fast as they can. The Serbs will be fearful. The KLA treat Serbs the way the Serbs have been treating Kosovars."

TO GUIDO
Zoja me Jack Rosie are probably the only people who you did not scare off!

Maja Daniela Nick they all suck there tumb and cry cause of realization how wrong they all were.

Emina

I imagine they still think they are right and the whole world is wrong. If this thing is about over (I don't think it is.) I still want to talk to you gals every once in a while but I did a system restore on my computer, because my son screwed it up, and I lost your e-mail address. So send me a nasty letter sweethearts, so I can save your address again.

P.S. I feel better about myself, after Nick told me I was an uneducated moron I took an I.Q. test and scored 152. Apparently, I am an uneducated genius. My score was higher than 99.5% of all the people who have taken an I.Q. test. But as I am sure he would point out, that is probably just in the USA, and most people in the USA are morons. Sometimes I would agree with him. But it is comforting to know I am not one of them. Just think, if I had not done all those good drugs for 25 years I might have scored higher. LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!!!! Get back, evil Guido, get back. NNNooooooooooooo! There really IS a fine line between genius and insanity.

God bless ya'll.

Charlie Oops, I mean Guido.

To Guido

I'm still here.

Maybe this is part of the big boycott by European netizens protesting telecomms charging by the minute for connect time. If so, they'll all be back, probably tomorrow.

Pete

I don't know Pete, you may be right, I hadn't heard about that. If that is why they aren't here I don't blame them.

The following text was written in the wake of the 1995 Dayton Agreement
(Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1996, No. 56 contains the complete
article with footnotes; a more detailed version is contained in
"Globalisation of Poverty", chapter 13). Macro-economic reforms imposed
by Belgrade's external creditors since the late 1980s had been carefully
synchronised with NATO's military and intelligence operations. Kosovo's
fate had already been decided. Resulting from the IMF's deadly economic
medicine, the entire Yugoslav economy had been spearheaded into
bankruptcy. The Rambouillet agreement largely replicates the model of
colonial administration and military occupation imposed on Bosnia under
the Dayton agreement. In Kosovo, the economic reforms were conducive to
the concurrent impoverishment of both the Albanian and Serbian
populations contributing to fueling ethnic tensions. The deliberate
manipulation of market forces destroyed economic activity and people's
livelihood creating a situation of social despair... In parallel with
the destruction of federal Yugoslavia, similar macro-economic reforms
under IMF auspices were imposed on Albania with devastating economic and
social consequences. The plight of Albania culminating with the West's
military
intervention in 1997 is analysed by the author in a separate text.
As heavily-armed US and NATO troops enforce the peace in Bosnia, the
press and politicians alike portray Western intervention in the former
Yugoslavia as a noble, if agonizingly belated,
response to an outbreak of ethnic massacres and human rights violations.
In the wake of the November 1995 Dayton peace accords, the West is eager
to touch up its self-portrait as savior of the Southern Slavs and get on
with "the work of rebuilding" the newly sovereign states.
But following a pattern set early on, Western public opinion has been
misled. The conventional wisdom holds that the plight of the Balkans is
the outcome of an "aggressive nationalism", the inevitable result of
deep-seated ethnic and religious tensions rooted in history. Likewise,
commentators cite "Balkans power-plays" and the clash of political
personalities to explain the conflicts. Lost in the barrage of images
and self-serving analyses are the economic and social causes of the
conflict. The deep-seated economic crisis which preceded the civil war
is long forgotten.
The strategic interests of Germany and the US in laying the groundwork
for the disintegration of Yugoslavia go unmentioned, as does the role of
external creditors and international financial institutions. In the eyes
of the global media, Western powers bear no responsibility for the
impoverishment and destruction of a nation of 24 million people. But
through their domination of the global financial system, the Western
powers, in pursuit of national and collective strategic interests,
helped bring the Yugoslav economy to its knees and stirred simmering
ethnic and social conflicts. Now it is the turn of Yugoslavia's
war-ravaged successor states to feel the tender mercies of the
international financial community.
As the world focuses on troop movements and cease fires, the
international financial institutions are busily collecting former
Yugoslavia's external debt from its remnant states, while transforming
the Balkans into a safe-haven for free enterprise. With a Bosnian peace
settlement holding under NATO guns, the West has unveiled a
"reconstruction" program that strips that
brutalized country of sovereignty to a degree not seen in Europe since
the end of World War II. It consists largely of making Bosnia a divided
territory under NATO military occupation and Western administration.
Neo-Colonial Bosnia
Resting on the Dayton accords, which created a Bosnian "constitution,"
the US and the European Union have installed a full-fledged colonial
administration in Bosnia. At its head is their appointed High
Representative, Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister and European
Union representative in Bosnian peace negotiations. Bildt has full
executive powers in all civilian matters, with the right to overrule the
governments of both the Bosnian Federation and the Republika Srpska. To
make the point crystal clear, the accords spell out that "The High
Representative is the final authority in theater regarding
interpretation of the agreements." He will work with IFOR's Military
High Command as well as creditors and donors. The UN Security Council
has also appointed a "commissioner" under the High Representative to run
an international civilian police force. Irish police official Peter
Fitzgerald, with previous UN policing experience in Namibia, El
Salvador, and Cambodia, presides over some 1,700 policemen from 15
countries. The police will be dispatched to Bosnia after a five-day
training program in Zagreb. The new constitution hands the reins of
economic policy over to the Bretton Woods institutions and the
London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
The IMF is empowered to appoint the first governor of the Bosnian
Central Bank, who, like the High Representative, "shall not be a citizen
of Bosnia and Herzegovina or a neighbouring State." Under the IMF
regency, the Central Bank will not be allowed to function as a Central
Bank: "For the first six years . . . it may not extend credit by
creating money, operating in this respect as a currency board." Neither
will Bosnia be allowed to have its own currency (issuing paper money
only when there is full foreign exchange backing), nor permitted to
mobilize its internal resources. Its ability to self-finance its
reconstruction through an independent monetary policy is blunted from
the outset. While the Central Bank is in IMF custody, the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) heads the Commission on Public
Corporations, which supervises operations of all public sector
corporations, including energy, water, postal services,
telecommunications, and transportation. The EBRD president appoints the
commission's chair and will direct public sector restructuring, meaning
primarily the sell-off of state and socially-owned assets and the
procurement of long term investment funds. Western creditors explicitly
created the EBRD "to give a distinctively political dimension to
lending."
As the West trumpets its support for democracy, actual political power
rests in the hands of a parallel Bosnian "state" whose executive
positions are held by non-citizens. Western creditors have embedded
their interests in a constitution hastily written on their behalf. They
have done so without a constitutional assembly, without consultations
with Bosnian citizens' organizations and without providing a means of
amending this "constitution." Their plans to rebuild Bosnia appear more
suited to sating creditors than satisfying even the elementary needs of
Bosnians. And why not? The neo-colonization of Bosnia is the logical
culmination of long Western efforts to undo Yugoslavia's experiment in
market socialism and workers' self-management and impose in its place
the diktat of the free market.
The Shape of Things to Come
Multi-ethnic, socialist Yugoslavia was once a regional industrial power
and economic success. In the two decades prior to 1980, annual GDP
growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, the literacy rate
was of the order of 91 percent, and the life expectancy was 72 years.
But after a decade of Western economic ministrations and five years of
disintegration, war, boycott, and embargo, the economies of the former
Yugoslavia are prostrate, their industrial sectors dismantled.
Yugoslavia's implosion was in part due to US machinations. Despite
Belgrade's non-alignment and its extensive trading relations with the
European Community and the US, the Reagan administration targeted the
Yugoslav economy in a "Secret Sensitive" 1984 National Security Decision
Directive (NSDD 133), "United States Policy toward Yugoslavia." A
censored version declassified in 1990 largely elaborated on NSDD 54 on
Eastern Europe, issued in 1982. The latter advocated "expanded efforts
to promote a `quiet revolution' to overthrow Communist
governments and parties" while reintegrating the countries of Eastern
Europe into a market-oriented economy. The US had earlier joined
Belgrade's other international creditors in imposing a first round of
macroeconomic reform in 1980, shortly before the death of Marshall Tito.
Successive IMF-sponsored programs since then continued the
disintegration of the industrial sector and the piecemeal dismantling of
the Yugoslav welfare state. Debt restructuring agreements increased
foreign debt, and a mandated currency devaluation also hit hard at
Yugoslavs' standard of living. This initial round of restructuring set
the pattern. Throughout the 1980s, the IMF prescribed further doses of
its bitter economic medicine periodically as the Yugoslav economy slowly
lapsed into a coma. Industrial production declined to a negative 10
percent growth rate by 1990--with all its predictable social
consequences.
Mr. Markovic Goes to Washington
In autumn 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslav
federal Premier Ante Markovic met in Washington with President George
Bush to cap negotiations for a new financial
aid package. In return for assistance, Yugoslavia agreed to even more
sweeping economic reforms, including a new devalued currency, another
wage freeze, sharp cuts in government spending, and the elimination of
socially-owned, worker-managed companies. The Belgrade nomenklatura,
with the assistance of Western advisers, had laid the groundwork for the
prime
minister's mission by implementing beforehand many of the required
reforms, including a major liberalization of foreign investment
legislation. "Shock therapy" began in January 1990. Although inflation
had eaten away at earnings, the IMF ordered that wages be frozen at
their mid-November 1989 level. Prices continued to rise unabated, and
real wages collapsed by 41 percent in the first six months of 1990. The
IMF also effectively controlled the Yugoslav central bank. Its tight
money policy further crippled federal Yugoslavia's ability to finance
its economic and social programs. State revenues that should have gone
as transfer payments to the republics and provinces went instead to
service Belgrade's debt with the Paris and London clubs. The republics
were largely left to their own devices. In one fell swoop, the reformers
engineered the final collapse of Yugoslavia's federal fiscal structure
and mortally wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the
financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the reforms
fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as
ethnic divisions and virtually ensured the de facto secession of the
republics. The IMF-induced budgetary crisis created an economic fait
accompli that paved the way for Croatia's and Slovenia's formal
secession in June 1991.
Crushed by the Invisible Hand
The reforms demanded by Belgrade's creditors also struck at the heart of
Yugoslavia's system of socially-owned and worker-managed enterprises. As
one observer noted, "The objective was to subject the Yugoslav economy
to massive privatization and the dismantling of the public sector. The
Communist Party bureaucracy, most notably its military and intelligence
sector, was canvassed specifically and offered political and economic
backing on the condition that wholesale scuttling of social protections
for Yugoslavia's workforce was imposed." It was an offer that a
desperate Yugoslavia could not refuse. Advised by Western lawyers and
consultants, Markovic's government passed financial legislation that
forced "insolvent" businesses into bankruptcy or liquidation. Under the
new law, if a business were unable to pay its bills for 30 days running,
or for 30 days within a 45-day period, the government would launch
bankruptcy procedures within the next 15 days. The assault on the
socialist economy also included a new banking law designed to trigger
the liquidation of the socially owned"Associated Banks." Within two
years, more than half the country's banks had vanished, to be replaced
by newly-formed
"independent profit-oriented institutions." These changes in the legal
framework, combined with the IMF's tight money policy toward industry
and the opening of the economy to foreign competition, accelerated
industrial decline. From 1989 through September 1990, more than a
thousand companies went into bankruptcy. By 1990, the annual rate of
growth of GDP had collapsed to -7.5 percent. In 1991, GDP declined by a
further 15 percent, while industrial output shrank by 21 percent. The
IMF package unquestionably precipitated the collapse of much of
Yugoslavia's well-developed heavy industry. Other socially-owned
enterprises survived only by not paying workers. More than half a
million workers still on company payrolls did not get regular paychecks
in late 1990. They were the lucky ones. Some 600,000 Yugoslavs had
already lost their jobs by September 1990, and that was only the
beginning. According to the World Bank, another 2,435 industrial
enterprises, including some of the country's largest, were slated for
liquidation. Their 1.3 million workers--half the remaining industrial
workforce--were "redundant." As 1991 dawned, real wages were in free
fall, social programs had collapsed, and unemployment ran rampant. The
dismantling of the industrial economy was breath-taking in its magnitude
and brutality. Its social and political impact, while not as easily
quantified, was tremendous. "The pips are squeaking," as London's
patrician Financial Times put it. Less archly, Yugoslav President
Borisav Jovic warned that the reforms were "having a markedly
unfavourable impact on the overall situation in society . . . Citizens
have lost faith in the state and its institutions . . . The further
deepening of the economic crisis and the growth of social tensions has
had a vital impact on the deterioration of the political-security
situation."
The Political Economy of Disintegration
Some Yugoslavs joined together in a doomed battle to prevent the
destruction of their economy and polity. As one observer found, "worker
resistance crossed ethnic lines, as Serbs, Croats,
Bosnians and Slovenians mobilized . . . shoulder to shoulder with their
fellow workers." But the economic struggle also heightened already tense
relations among the republics--and between the republics and Belgrade.
Serbia rejected the austerity plan outright, and some 650,000 Serbian
workers struck against the federal government to force wage hikes. The
other republics followed different and sometimes self-contradictory
paths. In relatively wealthy Slovenia, for instance, secessionist
leaders such as Social Democratic party chair Joze Pucnik supported the
reforms: "From an economic standpoint, I can only agree with socially
harmful measures in our society, such as rising unemployment or cutting
workers' rights, because they are necessary to advance the economic
reform process." But at the same time, Slovenia joined other republics
in challenging the federal government's efforts to restrict their
economic autonomy. Both Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman and Serbia's
Slobodan Milosevic joined Slovene leaders in railing against
Yugoslavia's attempts to impose harsh reforms. In the multi-party
elections in 1990, economic policy was at the center of the political
debate as separatist coalitions ousted the Communists in Croatia, Bosnia
and Slovenia. Just as economic collapse spurred the drift toward
separation, the separation in turn exacerbated the economic crisis.
Cooperation among the republics virtually ceased. And with the republics
at each others' throats, both economy and the nation itself embarked on
a vicious downward spiral. The process sped downward as the republican
leaderships deliberately fostered social and economic divisions to
strengthen their own hands: "The republican oligarchies, who all had
visions of a `national renaissance' of their own, instead of choosing
between a genuine Yugoslav market and hyperinflation, opted for war
which would disguise the real causes of the economic catastrophe." The
simultaneous appearance of militias loyal to secessionist leaders only
hastened the descent into chaos. These militias, with their escalating
atrocities, not only split the population along ethnic lines, they also
fragmented the workers' movement.
Western Help
The austerity measures had laid the basis for the recolonization of the
Balkans. Whether that required the breakup of Yugoslavia was subject to
debate among the Western powers, with German leading the push for
secession and the US, fearful of opening a nationalist pandora's box,
originally arguing for Yugoslavia's preservation. Following Franjo
Tudjman's and the rightist Democratic Union's decisive victory in
Croatia in May 1990, German Foreign Minister
Hans Dietrich Genscher, in almost daily contacts with his counterpart in
Zagreb, gave his go-ahead for Croatian secession. Germany did not
passively support secession; it "forced the pace of international
diplomacy" and pressured its Western allies to recognize Slovenia and
Croatia. Germany sought a free hand among its allies "to pursue economic
dominance in the whole of Mitteleuropa." Washington, on the other hand,
favored "a loose unity while encouraging democratic development . . .
Secretary of State] Baker told Tudjman and [Slovenia's President] Milan
Kucan that the United States would not encourage or support unilateral
secession . . . but if they had to leave, he urged them to leave by a
negotiated agreement."
Instead, Slovenia, Croatia, and finally, Bosnia fought bloody civil wars
against "rump" Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) or Serbian
nationalists or both. But now, the US has belatedly taken an active
diplomatic role in Bosnia, strengthened its relations with Croatia, and
Macedonia, and positioned itself to play a leading role in the region's
economic and political future.
The Post-War Regime
Western creditors have now turned their attention to Yugoslavia's
successor states. As with the demise of Yugoslavia, the economic aspects
of post-war reconstruction remain largely unheralded, but the prospects
for rebuilding the newly independent republics appear bleak.
Yugoslavia's foreign debt has been carefully divided and allocated to
the successor republics, which are now strangled in separate debt
rescheduling and structural adjustment agreements. The consensus among
donors and international agencies is that past macroeconomic reforms
adopted under IMF advice had not quite met their goal and further shock
therapy is required to restore "economic health" in Yugoslavia's
successor states. Croatia and Macedonia have followed the IMF's
direction. Both have agreed to loan packages--to pay off their shares of
the Yugoslav debt--which require a consolidation of the process begun
with Ante Markovic's bankruptcy program. The too familiar pattern of
plant closings, induced bank failures, and impoverishment continues
apace. And global capital applauds. Despite an emerging crisis in
social welfare and the decimation of his economy, Macedonian Finance
Minister Ljube Trpevski proudly informed the press that "the World Bank
and the IMF place Macedonia among the most
successful countries in regard to current transition reforms". The head
of the IMF mission to Macedonia, Paul Thomsen, agreed. He avowed that
"the results of the stabilization program were impressive" and gave
particular credit to "the efficient wages policy" adopted by the Skopje
government. Still, his negotiators added, even more budget cutting will
be necessary. But Western intervention is making its most serious
inroads on national sovereignty in Bosnia. The neo-colonial
administration imposed by the Dayton accords, supported by NATO's
firepower, ensures that Bosnia's future will be determined in
Washington, Bonn, and Brussels-not Sarajevo.
Reconstruction Colonial Style
If Bosnia is ever to emerge from the ravages of war and neo-colonialism,
massive reconstruction will be essential. But judging by recent Balkan
history, Western assistance is more likely to drag Bosnia into the Third
World rather than lift it to parity with its European neighbors. The
Bosnian government estimates that reconstruction costs will reach $47
billion. Western donors have pledged $3 billion in reconstruction loans,
yet only $518 million dollars have so far been granted. Part of this
money is tagged to finance some of the local civilian costs of IFOR's
military deployment and part to repay international creditors. Fresh
loans will pay back old debt. The Central Bank of the Netherlands has
generously provided "bridge financing" of $37 million to allow Bosnia to
pay its arrears with the IMF, without which the IMF will not lend it
fresh money. But in a cruel and absurd paradox, the sought-after loans
from the IMF's newly created "Emergency Window" for "post-conflict
countries" will not be used for post-war reconstruction. Instead, they
will repay the Dutch Central Bank, which had coughed up the money to
settle IMF arrears in the first place. Debt piles up, and little new
money goes for rebuilding Bosnia's war-torn economy. While rebuilding is
sacrificed on the altar of debt repayment, Western governments and
corporations show greater interest in gaining access to strategic
natural resources. With the discovery of energy reserves in the region,
the partition of Bosnia between the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and
the Bosnian-Serb Republika Srpska under the Dayton accords has taken on
new strategic importance. Documents in the hands of Croatian and the
Bosnian Serbs indicate that coal and oil deposits have been identified
on the eastern slope of the Dinarides Thrust, retaken from rebel Krajina
Serbs by the US-backed Croatian army in the final offensives before the
Dayton accords. Bosnian officials report that Chicago-based Amoco was
among several foreign firms that subsequently initiated exploratory
surveys in Bosnia.
"Substantial" petroleum fields also lie in the Serb-held part of Croatia
just across the Sava river from Tuzla, the headquarters for the US
military zone. Exploration operations went on during the war, but the
World Bank and the multinationals which conducted the operations kept
local governments in the dark, presumably to prevent them from acting to
grab potentially valuable areas. With their attention devoted to debt
repayment and potential energy bonanzas, the Western powers have shown
little interest in rectifying the crimes committed under the rubric of
ethnic cleansing. The 70,000 NATO troops on hand to "enforce the peace"
will accordingly devote their efforts to administering the partition of
Bosnia in accordance with Western economic interests rather than
restoring the status quo ante. While local leaders and Western interests
share the spoils of the former Yugoslav economy, they have entrenched
socio-ethnic
divisions in the very structure of partition. This permanent
fragmentation of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines serves to thwart a united
resistance of Yugoslavs of all ethnic origins against the recolonization
of their homeland. But what's new? As one observer caustically noted,
all of the
leaders of Yugoslavia's successor states have worked closely with the
West: "All the current leaders of the former Yugoslav republics were
Communist Party functionaires and each in turn vied to meet the demands
of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the better to
qualify for investment loans and substantial perks for the leadership."
Concluding Remarks
Western-backed neoliberal macroeconomic restructuring helped destroy
Yugoslavia. Yet, since the onset of war in 1991, the global media has
carefully overlooked or denied its central role. Instead, it has joined
the chorus singing praises of the free market as the basis for
rebuilding a war-shattered economy. The social and political impact of
economic restructuring in Yugoslavia has been carefully erased from our
collective understanding. Opinion-makers instead dogmatically present
cultural, ethnic, and religious divisions as the sole cause of the
crisis. In reality, they are the consequence of a much deeper process of
economic and political fracturing.
This false consciousness not only masks the truth, it also prevents us
from acknowledging precise historical occurrences. Ultimately it
distorts the true sources of social conflict. When
applied to the former Yugoslavia, it obscures the historical foundations
of South Slavic unity, solidarity and identity. But this false
consciousness lives worldwide, where the only possible world is one of
shuttered factories, jobless workers, and gutted social programs, and
"bitter economic medicine" is the only prescription. At stake in the
Balkans are the lives of millions of people. Macroeconomic reform there
has destroyed livelihoods and made a joke of the right to work. It has
put basic needs such as food and shelter beyond the reach of many. It
has degraded culture and national identity. In the name of global
capital, borders have been redrawn, legal codes rewritten, industries
destroyed, financial and banking systems dismantled, social programs
eliminated. No alternative to global capital, be it market socialism or
"national" capitalism, will be allowed to exist. But what happened to
Yugoslavia--and now continues in its weak
successor states--should resonate beyond the Balkans. Yugoslavia is a
mirror for similar economic restructuring programs in not only the
developing world but also in the US, Canada and Western Europe. The
Yugoslav reforms are the cruel reflection of a destructive economic
model pushed to the extreme.

Guido, finally somebody admitted America is producing brainwashed killing machines!

Just the Marines Maja. The Army is the brains. Ask any Marine he will tell you he loves to kill, and is the best in the world at it. And they are!

Marines would kill anybody they are ordered to kill, right? Even like Vietnamese children and women? That has happened. How do we know they won't be ordered to kill civilians in Yugoslavia?
They sure have murderous brains, if you want to call Cohen, Clinton and Albright brains. I call it a.s.s.e.s..

TO EVERYONE.
Unfortunately it is NOT over yet, cause "Mr" Milosevic had to put on new demands on the table after having a good lenghtly discussion in the night with his beloved Miriana Markovic.

Its a real shame as i was really praying that it would stop on sunday.Somewhere knowing in the back of my head it was not likely, but more wishfull thinking from my part.

Second i think if its going to stop that nato isnt in place there, but some more independant force "just to watch over"
Question remains for me and a lot of people( mostly SErbians) i speak to on a daily bases who would be most reliable?

Note these people i have contact with are very much against Milosevic and all the other murderous gangs including uck.They just want peace and most of all not being the blacksheep after all this is over.

Anyone has a suggestion?
Emina

Kosovo is Serbia, there is nothing Guido and Jack can do about it.

There is no genocide committed by Serb forces in Kosovo.

There will be no partition of Kosovo.

There will not be any bases of NATO either.

There will also be a Russian contingent whose goal amongst many others will be to make sure Serb residents in Kosovo do not get bombed, massacred, evicted, mistreated, robbed as they have been so far by the disgusting Albanian terrorists.

There will be no commercial exploitation of Kosovo by NATO.

There will be no removal of Milosevic.

I understand why you are pissed off, I would be too in a situation like this !

haha

Oh, I almost forgot: the marines are idiots.

They are marines because that is the only thing they can do. They cannot create anything, so they train to kill.

But that is what America does best, isn't it ? Kill what it cannot defeat by other means. You must be so proud to belong to a nation of dumb cowards with no honour, losing all these battles, and led by a draft-dodger liar in chief, who even admitted to lie and cheat on his wife with a pig.

No other country in the world can match the ridiculous of the USA. I think more movies should be made about how sad and sick you people are.

Your women are ugly with their Montgolfier boobs and other face lifts. The food you eat is disgusting and you seem to love it, given the rate of obesity recorded. Today in the news they mentioned this 500 (!) kgs man hospitalised in the US. Only a stupid US cretin could go this far...

This is only the beginning of a series of posts about the sick USA, in an attempt to explain why and how the problems they experience in dealing with life in general are transferred to the rest of the world.

More to come.

Published in Washington, D.C. 5am -- June 8, 1999 www.washtimes.com


A slight delay,
please, for NATO's
next war


We were expecting to see NATO cruise missiles saving
Tibet by bombing Beijing by now, cleaning the clocks
of the Chinese ethnic cleansers.
We know that China is next on NATO's to-do list, it must
be, it has to be, because Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, who never
imagined that playing Audie Murphy and John Wayne with real
guns could be this much fun, told us six weeks ago that the
reason we have to destroy Kosovo to save it is only to stop
Slobodan Milosevic's brutal ethnic cleansing. Mr. Clinton told a
labor-union rally in Washington the day he unleashed his
bombers that blowing Yugoslavia back to the Bronze Age is
necessary to make sure that Europe had someone to do
business with.
But a funny thing happened to our guys on the way to the
cellar to select a suitably celebratory vintage of Mumms. The
Serbs balked, and the Chinese ethnic cleansers thus get a
reprieve.
Nobility can play no favorites, and unless Mr. Clinton wants
the United States to stamp itself indelibly as the raging bully of
the West and to stamp himself as the coward of the county
--which of course he would never, ever do -- he'll have to
avenge Tibet, too. China has raped that luckless little
Shangri-La far more brutally, inflicting far more death and
depravity and populating far more graveyards, than Slobo has
done in Kosovo. And Slobo never even stole our nuclear
secrets. (But of course he never financed a Clinton presidential
campaign, either.)
But if civilizing mainland China, which is big enough to hit
back, can wait, bombing Yugoslavia, which is small and
helpless enough to make an ideal target for bullies, can't.
Madeleine Albright, the Roseanne Barr of New Age statecraft,
flew off to Bonn yesterday as NATO's bombers resumed their
attack on the usual targets -- old folks' homes, gynecological
clinics, prisons, hospitals, apartment houses, refugee convoys,
the occasional embassy and maybe the capital of Bulgaria
again. She promised "a peaceful resolution" of the war she
helped ignite 11 weeks ago. A "peaceful" resolution to the
accompaniment of bombs? Words mean whatever you want
them to mean in Mr. Clinton's Washington.
Bill and Tony stayed on the trans-Atlantic telephone most of
yesterday, trying to patch up the "implementation talks" that
collapsed on Sunday night. So their war isn't over yet. NATO's
bombs have made a rubbled wasteland of Kosovo, but
nobody in Washington or London dares call it peace. Neither
Bill nor Tony is that shameless. Not yet.
Mr. Milosevic's stall might even be a little serendipity for the
Tony twins. Once the euphoria and the champagne in
Washington and London wear off, as euphoria and the effects
of champagne always do, it won't be quite so easy to portray
the end of the war as a triumph of the will. What it may be is
the first American war to end with both a bang and a whimper.
Mr. Milosevic, in fact, is getting pretty much what he wants,
minus a lot of Kosovars that Bill and Tony got rid of for him.
He's got the Russians involved, better for him and worse for us;
he got the reintroduction of some Serbian military forces into
Kosovo, and he won the elimination of any hint of
independence for the Kosovar province. The international
force is excluded from Serbia and Montenegro; the integrity of
Yugoslavia is guaranteed; there is no room for a meaningful
referendum. Not a bad day's work, and these are concessions
squeezed from Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, not Slobodan
Milosevic.
Not only that, but NATO will have to contend with the
KLA, likely to be embittered and spoiling to make someone's
life miserable for it. The United Nations "peacekeepers," as we
will call them even though the word mocks the reality, since
there will be no peace to keep, will land in hostile terrain. Mr.
Clinton and his clueless secretary of state can call it
"permissive" all day long, but it will be anything but.
Mr. Clinton seems to think the KLA is made up of freedom
fighters, something like a Balkans Viet Cong. He would know
better if he had not scuttled off to hide out in London when his
country called a quarter of a century ago.
The "peacekeeping" force will be plagued by ambiguities of
control and command. The Russians will arrive with their own
commanders, and if the Russians get them, why not everybody
else? The Rambouillet accords, which we were told we had a
duty to get excited about only yesterday, are history.
But there will be work to do, mopping up the blood and
cleaning up the wreckage wrought by the Tony twins, binding
up the wounds of children and persuading the 900,000
Kosovars we made into refugees to return to the scene of the
crime.
Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, having made "peace" in the
Balkans, can't wait to march toward the sound of guns
somewhere else. We can wait.


Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.

Kosovo is in Yugoslavia, there is nothing Guido wants to do about it.

There is ethnic cleansing committed by Serb forces in Kosovo.

There might be partition of Kosovo.

There will be NATO bases.

There will be a NATO contingent whose goal amongst many others will be to make sure Serb residents in Kosovo do not get bombed, massacred, evicted, mistreated, or robbed as they have been doing to the Albanian civilians and revolutionaries.

There will be no commercial exploitation of Kosovo by NATO.

There will be no removal of Milosevic.

I understand why you are pissed off, it's because you are so freaking ignorant!

LOL LOL LOL

Yugoslavia: G7 Agrees On UN Resolution For Kosovo Peace Force

Cologne, 8 June 1999 (RFE/RL) - Foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations plus Russia announced today that they have agreed on the text of a United Nations Security Council resolution detailing plans for an international peace force in Kosovo. In Cologne, Germany, where the ministers met for a second day, U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters that the text met all of NATO's objectives. Rubin confirmed that the resolution would establish a unified command and control system for the peacekeeping force, which is expected to include about 10,000 Russian troops as well as at least 40,000 NATO troops.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the resolution text has been worked out by all eight of the foreign ministers meeting in Cologne. He said Russia will certainly support that text at the Security Council.

But Ivanov also said that details on the command structure for Russian troops in the international peacekeeping force still must be resolved. Yesterday the talks stalled over Russia's objection to NATO's insistence that it lead the peace force.

Cook said it is too early to determine when the U.N. resolution would be voted upon. But he said the sooner Belgrade starts a withdrawal, the sooner peace will come to the Balkans.

The withdrawal is a key part of the international peace plan approved last week by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Under the plan, the Security Council must approve an international force and civilian administration that would be sent to Kosovo under UN auspices.

French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne Gazeau-Secret said the text was adopted due to an accord on the idea of "synchronization" proposed by Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine.

Vedrine had proposed that a verified Serb troop withdrawal, an end to NATO bombing and the passage of a UN resolution occur roughly at the same time.


http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/1999/06/F.RU.990608151408.html


Tuesday June 8 10:28 AM ET


Full Coverage
NATO - Serbia War


By Robert Mahoney

COLOGNE, Germany (Reuters) - The West and Russia reached a landmark agreement Tuesday that could bring peace to the Balkans, but it looked unlikely that NATO's 11-week air campaign on Yugoslavia would come to an immediate end.

After two days of talks between foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrial powers and Russia, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said: ``We have finally achieved a breakthrough by agreeing on a Security Council resolution.''

The draft resolution will be passed to the U.N. Security Council for approval but a senior U.S. official warned that the council would not be able to vote on the resolution Tuesday.

``No way it will pass today. They will have to have a consultation, and the other members will have to study it,'' the official told reporters.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in Cologne further discussions would be needed in the Security Council on the make-up of an international peacekeeping force for Kosovo.

If the resolution is passed by the Security Council, pressure will mount on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to start pulling his troops out of Kosovo.

The five permanent members of the Security Council are the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China. The Chinese, bitterly opposed to NATO's actions in Yugoslavia, have yet to say whether they will back the new deal.

President Clinton described the Cologne agreement as ``a step forward.''

He said in Washington: ``The key now, as it has been from the very beginning of the process, is implementation. A verifiable withdrawal of Serb forces will allow us to suspend the bombing and go forward with the plan. NATO is determined to bring the Kosovars home...''

Fischer said the Cologne agreement opened the way to finalizing a military agreement between NATO and Yugoslav commanders on a complete Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo and the deployment of an international peacekeeping force.

State Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters the resolution ``meets all of our objectives and that will have all the necessary decisions to have the peacekeeping force with NATO at its core to operate in Kosovo.''

Renewed hopes of a resolution to the Kosovo conflict gave a boost to European stock markets and pushed the fledgling euro currency back above $1.04 after closing below $1.03 in the U.S. Monday.

The Cologne breakthrough came after Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov consulted Moscow.

Ivanov told the ministers he had spoken to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. He presented proposals to the ministers who then broke off the meeting to study them.

Rubin said the resolution allowed for a Kosovo peacekeeping force with a unified command and control.

Another key NATO demand would also be met with the inclusion of a reference to the war crimes tribunal that has indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic as a war criminal, Rubin said.

But he said that until Yugoslavia agreed a schedule for withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and began a verifiable pullout, NATO would not suspend air strikes against Yugoslavia.

Earlier Tuesday, Russian defense minister Igor Sergeyev said his ministry had drawn up proposals for sending up to 10,000 troops to a peacekeeping force in Kosovo, but they would not be under NATO command.

President Clinton told Russian President Boris Yeltsin by phone Tuesday that he was dispatching Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott to Moscow to work out details of Russian participation in a Kosovo security force.

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Clinton and Yeltsin spoke for about 15 minutes and that Clinton thanked Yeltsin for the ``constructive role'' Russia has played in trying to get a peaceful settlement to the Yugoslav war.

The ministers went into a fresh round of talks in Cologne after a night of intensified NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia in which explosions were heard in central Belgrade for the first time in several days.

Bombs blasted targets in Kosovo and turned oil refineries near Belgrade and in northern Serbia into blazing infernos.

Serbian state television showed huge flames and clouds of smoke above the Novi Sad refinery after NATO missiles hits its fuel depots. A civilian was killed in the attack, the Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug reported.

The European Union's Kosovo envoy, Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, arrived in Beijing Tuesday to brief China's leaders on the peace process and lobby for their support for a U.N. resolution.

The Chinese reacted with fury when NATO accidentally bombed its Belgrade embassy last month and has repeatedly condemned the air war. Western nations are concerned that Beijing could use its Security Council veto to block a Kosovo deal.

Tuesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry called on NATO to ''immediately halt its bombing of Yugoslavia to create the conditions and atmosphere for the resolution of the Kosovo issue.'' NATO has so far insisted the bombing must go on until a Serb retreat from Kosovo is clearly under way.

Yeltsin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin discussed efforts to draft a U.N. Security Council resolution on Kosovo by telephone Tuesday, Russia's Interfax news agency said.

In the G8 talks, Russia and the West had been at odds on two main points -- the relationship between NATO and the peacekeeping force and what the U.N. resolution should say about the war crimes tribunal which has indicted Milosevic.

The Western foreign ministers spent eight hours with Ivanov in nearby Bonn Monday, wrangling over terms for a NATO-led force to replace the withdrawing Yugoslavs.

They broke up when Ivanov told him he had to consult Moscow on some contentious points and could not get a quick answer.

Ivanov blamed the hitch on the deadlock in military contacts between NATO and Yugoslav generals over the scope and timing of the Yugoslav withdrawals. ``This led to certain points causing problems that need ironing out,'' he said.

Russia, which has religious and cultural ties with the Serbs, has been striving to maintain a significant independent role for its own troops alongside a planned 50,000-strong NATO peace force for Kosovo.


http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ts/story.html?s=v/nm/19990608/ts/yugoslavia_leadall_58.html

NAH NAH NAH NAH BOO BOO. NICK IS FULL OF POO POO!