Hell, Kosovo is only a training excersize to these cut throats.

AIR AMERICA ACTS I-V

By C. S. Mahoney

Up until the moment when three medellin cartel gunmen blew the life from his body in front of a dingy Baton Rouge
Salvation Army outlet, Adler Berriman, better known as Berry Seal ran the largest drug smuggling operation in the
continental United States. From his headquarters at the Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena Arkansas, Seal
oversaw the importation of tens of thousands of pounds of cocaine and the export of tremendous amounts of U.S.
military hardware. He was able to accomplish this with the overt and covert complicity of at least four major U. S.
government agencies and despite being investigated at least nine times between 1981 and 1986 by everything from a
grand jury to an official congressional inquiry. The case of Berry Seal stands as a cautionary tale of Intelligence
Community ‘s covert operational capability run amok.

It’s true roots lie not in the Oachita mountains, some 160 miles from Little Rock where he broke state and federal laws
for so long and with such impunity, rather they lie in the dank steaming jungles of North Vietnam. For to tell the story
of Berry Seal is to tell the story of Air America. When Ted Shackley arrived in Laos, Vang Pao was at war with two
rival druglords for control of the Southeast Asian opium trade. Shackley had just been transferred to Laos from Miami
where he had run JMWAVE, a Spanish language radio station broadcasting nonstop propaganda into Havana. He had
also run Operation 40,which was a program dedicated to training and equipping assassins for the express purpose of
killing the upper echelons of the Cuban revolutionary government. It was thought that if this could be accomplished
that the communist regime in Cuba would collapse under it’s own weight. At some point this operation evolved into the
infamous Operation Mongoose, which was tasked with training and equipping Cuban exiles for the doomed Bay of
Pigs invasion. Even after the Bay of Pigs debacle Shackley stayed on in Miami to conduct a covert war against Cuba.

In 1965 the covert war on Cuba was folded up and Shackley’s team was moved en masse to Laos. Shackley took three of
his Operation 40 assassins to Laos with him, Felix Rodriguez, Jose Pasada and Chi Chi Quintero.Shackley was in Laos
a matter of days before intermediaries set up a meeting between he and Vang Pao. Vang Pao wanted total control of the
opium trade and Shackley wanted a military intelligence foothold in the Southeast Asian opium trade. The two struck
a bargain. The United States Air Force would bomb the compounds of both of his rivals out of existence in exchange for
certain favors once he was in control of the opium traffic. The Air Force carried out it’s end of the bargain. The young
major who coordinated the bombing attacks on Vang Pao’s rivals was Richard Secord.

When Vang Pao did become undisputed lord of the Southeast Asian opium trade, he regularly began donating a share
of his profits to the training and equipping of Laotian tribesman for incursions against North Vietnamese supply lines
and to carry out assassinations against suspected communist sympathizers. The director of training for the tribesman
was Shackley’s second in command, Tom Clines. Major General John Singlaub ran the assassinations arm of the
enterprise. Richard Secord coordinated the flights that ferried arms, personnel, and heroin to various points
throughout Europe and Asia. One of the pilots who made these flights was a Special Forces lieutenant named Adler
Berrimen, later known as Berry Seal. In 1968 Mafia Don Santos Trafficante visited Vang Pao in a Saigon hotel. There
are at least three different military intelligence reports that mention this meeting so it is highly unlikely that it escaped
Shackley’s notice. More likely, it occurred with his direct complicity. Subsequent to the meeting Trafficante became the
leading importer of China White heroin in the western world. Vang Pao’s profits soared, and as they did so did his
contributions to the training and equipping of the Laotian tribesman. What had been a relatively small scale operation
suddenly blossomed into the Phoenix Project. The Phoenix Project was an epic intelligence debacle that resulted in the
assassinations of nearly 35,000 noncombatants throughout Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. The Phoenix
Project acquired it’s own airforce, paid for with profits from Vang Pao’s heroin trade and piloted by U.S. intelligence
personnel such as Adler Berrimen.

In 1972, with the coming fall of Saigon, Air America, as the group had come to be known (complete with the cynical
motto "We Fly Right") was officially disbanded. But during their four years of existence, they had established an
important precedent. They had used an existing criminal infrastructure to finance intelligence community operations
that they never would have received funding for had they gone through standard appropriations channels, thus
subverting the will of Congress and the American people.

Even after Ted Shackley was brought back to the United States to run the western hemisphere operations of the CIA,
his agents were still extorting millions of dollars from Vang Pao and transferring it to a bank in Australia called the
Nugun Hand Bank. They also began to pilfer tons of military equipment from depots around Asia and transfer it to a
secret base in Thailand. One of the men who flew the military hardware into Thailand and made the odd smuggling
run for Vang Pao was Adler Berrimen a.k.a. Berry Seal.

In 1975 George Bush became director of the CIA and Ted Shackley received yet another promotion, this time to Deputy
Director of Intelligence in charge of world wide covert operations. This was a major step towards the directorship of the
CIA, which Shackley would have received had Ford won the election. But Carter won and Admiral Stansfield Turner
became director of the CIA. Under Carter’s direction, Admiral Turner began to dismantle large parts of the CIA’s
covert operations apparatus. Since the accounts in the Nugen Hand bank and the military hardware stashed in
Thailand had never officially existed, they were never touched. However the remnants of Air America feared that this
would not be the case for much longer so they found employment with the Shah of Iran until Turner’s purge had run
it’s course.

The Shah was a longtime friend of the United Sates, so it was not difficult to get the operation approved. Elements of
the Air America apparatus began training and equipping the Shah’s dreaded secret police SAVAAK for a prolonged
assassination program against the Shah’s many political enemies, both in and out of Iran. This must have made the
Shah sleep better at night because he paid the mercenaries off in copious amounts of petrodollers.

The operation was overseen by Edwin Wilson and Frank Turpel. The fear and hatred that the ensuing assassination
program brought about was instrumental in Iran falling to the Islamic militants. This was the first time that the Air
America network had been used for purposes totally outside of the CIA’s supervision and so Shackley and Tom Clines
had to deal with something that neither of them expected, resistance from inside the intelligence community.

While many had winked at Shackley’s ingenuity in financing the Phoenix Project with Vang Pao’s heroin profits, the
prospect of using that selfsame apparatus for an operation that was at best only nominally in the national interest and
was very profitable to those involved. So Shackley and Clines bowed to the pressure from their collegues and withdrew
the elements of Air America from Iran.

Mere weeks later Shackley, Richard Secord, and Eric Von Marbod formed a company called EATSCO, the Egyptian
American transport and Service Company. Because Eric Von Marbod had been assistant Secretary of Defense, the
company received the contracts to ship all of the arms shipments into Egypt. The routes into Egypt had been opened
due to the Camp David peace accords. These shipments were partially coordinated by Adler Berriman.

The Air America apparatus banked hundreds of millions of dollars over the next several years until they came under
the unwelcome scrutiny of U.S. Attorney Larry Barcella. Barcella discovered that Edwin Wilson had been selling
explosives to Col. Qaddaffi in direct defiance of the U.S. arms embargo. Barcella indicted Edwin Wilson and Frank
Turpel and began an investigation of Shackley, Clines, Secord and Von Marbod. This investigation lasted less than a
week before it was quashed, but Deputy Director of Intelligence Frank Carlucci did ask that Shackley and Clines resign
from the CIA, they did.

Air America was mothballed for a period of slightly more than two months while Edwin Wilson, then under multiple
federal indictments, traveled to Nicaragua to negotiate a deal with then dictator, Anastasio Somoza. After obtaining a
contract to supply Somoza with U.S. military hardware and private sector advisors in open contempt of U.S. policy, the
apparatus was reactivated. Even after Somoza was forced to flee to the Bahamas, Air America continued to supply arms
and advisors to the vestiges of his supporters in Nicaragua, now called the Contras. The man who acted as liaison to the
Contras was one of Ted Shackley’s old Operation 40 operatives, professional assassin Chi Chi Quintero.

Quintero took orders from the Contras and relayed them to Adler Berrimen who set up the shipping routes. Shackley’s
next coup was to negotiate a deal with the Iranians whereby the hostages were kept on ice until the election was over.
This enabled Reagan strategists to portray the Carter administration as weak and vacillating. Perhaps not an I
naccurate depiction. The American public did not seem to think it coincidental that the hostages were released on the
day of Reagan’s inauguration. All of this time and all of these operations were leading the Air America apparatus
incrementally toward Mena.

There has long been an outlaw quality about Mena. During the nineteenth century, it was a refuge for smugglers and
bandits. In the 1920’s it was a hotbed of political discontent. During the depression, it offered shelter to anarchists and
like minded extremist elements. The rolling terrain and densely packed pine and hardwood forests give the
surrounding territory a secretive feel. As though you could wander over the next hill and come upon a parked UFO or a
cocaine shipment in progress.

Berry Seal started bringing planes into Mena in 1979, but the operation never really got into full swing until late 1980.
There never seemed to be any deviation from the cycle that ran until his death in 1986. Armaments were loaded at
Mena. They were then flown to a private airfield in Costa Rica located on a gigantic ranch belonging to a millionaire
named John Hull.

The construction of this airfield had been supervised by Chi Chi Quintero. From there, the planes were refueled and
sent on or sometimes the cargo was off loaded for overland shipment to boats waiting in Costa Rican waters. But
wherever the planes finally did offload their cargo, there was an arguably more lethal cargo waiting to be picked up,
kilos of it.

The planes would then turn back towards the United States to deliver their cargo to various drop points throughout the
South. One video tape left among the voluminous financial records, journals, bank drafts and classified federal
documents, Seal left after his death shows a cargo plane dropping several sturdy looking duffel bags by parachute, Seal
retrieving them and stuffing them into a helicopter that had come in behind the cargo plane. He then smiles into the
camera and says "That was the first daylight cocaine drop in the history of the state of Louisiana.

If the videotape is any indication, Seal’s operations were pulled off with a military precision that was to be expected of
a former Special Forces pilot. The pattern of financing a black op, that could not be financed through normal
intelligence community appropriations channels with the profits from drug sales to American citizens was being
continued by the same group of men who had done it in Vietnam a decade previously. The Mena operation’s only real
divergence from the guns for drugs for guns pattern was some occasional intelligence gathering duties.

Sometime in 1982, CIA technicians came to Mena and installed cameras in the wings of Seal’s C-123K transport plane.
Seal used these cameras to take the famous pictures of the Sandanistas loading drugs aboard a flight in Nicaragua.
These pictures were later used by the Reagan administration to justify covert aid to the Contras. These same pictures
were used by the Bush administration as one of the links in the evidentiary chain tying Manuel Noriega to a massive
drug smuggling campaign.

The C-123K cargo plane that Seal used, later became an important link in another chain. The chain connecting the
operations at Mena to the original Air America apparatus. Seal’s C-123K cargo plane, which he dubbed "Fat Lady",
had been part of the original Air America fleet in Laos. After the fall of Saigon "Fat Lady" had stayed on at the secret
base in Thailand, occasionally turning up working for CIA friendly companies but mostly doing heroin runs for Vang
Pao’s organization.

Seal’s plane and two others like her were used in this way until the operation in Iran, when they were transferred to
Iran and countries just outside of Iran, to facilitate the training of the Shah’s secret police. At the conclusion of that
operation they turned up in Mena. The smugglers at Intermountain Regional Airport seem to have enjoyed reasonably
cordial relations with the local community. The one horrific exception to this was the deaths of two local teenagers,
found bludgeoned and stabbed, then laid across tracks to be struck by the morning freight train. Authorities stepped
all over themselves to rule the deaths an "accident", saying, "the boys had been smoking marijuana and fell asleep on
the tracks" Only after the coroners report showed that the boys had been killed prior to being layed on the tracks were
the deaths pronounced murders. Some of Seal’s records indicate that the area in which the boys had been camping was
one of his drop zones and that there had been a flight on the night they were killed.

Since Seal modeled his operations so closely on Airborne resupply procedures, it is only logical that he would have set
out security teams to patrol the perimeter of his drop zone. Don Henry and Kevin Ives may have run afoul of just such a
patrol and been killed because of it. Whatever the case, a large number of people who were either investigating or
implicated in the death’s of the two teenagers have either been killed or have committed suicide. This has all the
hallmarks of black operations damage control. Seal’s relations with the banks were especially good. Secretaries have
testified that there were days that they were given stacks of cash and directed to secure cashiers checks and money
orders, just below the ten-thousand dollar limit that triggers an automatic IRS cash transaction report. The Union
Bank of Mena seems to have been a particular favorite of Seal’s. Not only did he maintain several accounts there, but
some of the bank’s officers were also administrators of the Intermountain Regional Airport. One of these officers,
Jackson Stevens, was an early Clinton campaign contributor.

The Union Bank of Mena is currently under investigation by the house banking committee.

Another name that crops up time and again in relation to Seal’s financial activities is Don Lassater. Lassater ran a
Little Rock bond house that was investigated for laundering cocaine profits. He was also involved in a cocaine
distribution trial as a codefendant with Roger Clinton, the President’s brother. Lasater was sentenced to a short prison
stay in this case.

The President has been accused of varying degrees of collusion in the Mena case. The single most glaring piece of
evidence that he did indeed know about the activities at Intermountain Regional Airport is the Congressional
testimony of a former Arkansas state trooper named Larry Patterson who said that he and other officers repeatedly
discussed in Clinton’s presence large amounts of guns, money and drugs going in and out of Mena".

Another Arkansas State Trooper L.D. Brown has said in a magazine interview that while a member of the Governor’s
security detail, he applied to the CIA with Clinton’s verbal and written endorsements. Shortly after doing so, he was
contacted by Berry Seal and found himself making smuggling runs into Central America. Clinton made his first public
statement on Mena at a press conference in 1991 in which he said " there are apparently linkages to the federal
government", he also said, "there are all kinds of questions as to whether Seal had any links to the CIA and whether
that banked into the Iran-Contra deal". Not much of a statement to make upon finding out that one of the largest
smuggling operations in the history of the United States was going on in your state.

Of Clinton’s reticence to discuss the Mena case, Bill Plante and Micheal Singer of CBS news have written "That a
Republican administration was apparently sponsoring a contra aid program in his state and protecting a smuggling
ring that flew tons of cocaine through Arkansas was indisputable". One thing is certain, that is that Bill Clinton, on
most occasions, has an unusually keen faculty for sniffing out political advantage. It stretches the boundaries of
plausibility that he would have missed the possible political bonuses inherent in the Mena situation, that is unless he
unless he had a good reason for missing them.

Official sanction of the activities at Mena by no means begins and ends with Bill Clinton. As early as 1986 the Attorney
General of Louisiana wrote to then Attorney General Edwin Meese that Seal had "smuggled between three and five
billion dollars worth of cocaine into the United States. In 1991 Arkansas State Attorney General Bryant wrote to
independent council in the Iran-Contra investigation as to "why no one was prosecuted in Arkansas despite a
mountain of evidence that Seal used Mena as his principle staging area during the years between 1982 and 1985".

Both Internal Revenue Service Agent Bill Duncan and Arkansas State Police Investigator Russel Welch have accused
U.S. Attorney J. Micheal Fitzhugh of not pressing evidence that they presented him with. Welch was later poisoned
with military grade anthrax, something that is very difficult to come by unless you can lay hands on biological warfare
stores.

The final nail in the coffin of the Mena operation came, not with the murder of Barry Seal in Feb. of 1986, rather it came
with crash of the "Fat Lady" which was shot down over Nicaragua loaded with supplies for the Contras. Arkansas
pilot Buzz Sawyer was killed in the crash and mercenary pilot Eugene Hasenfus was taken prisoner. The Sandanistas
were smart enough to make sure that the footage of Hasenfus being led from the wreckage was splashed all over CNN.
After that, according to one arms dealer who had come to town to get paid, "You couldn’t find anybody in Mena".

The newest incarnation of Air America has turned up in the Wackenhut corporation. Specializing in security related
products, the Wackenhut corporation’s board of directors and senior administration ranks read like a who’s who of
retired spooks and spymasters. The Wackenhut corporation was also active in developing chemical and biological
weapons for the contras at a secret facility on an Indian reservation in Southern California. Shortly after the operation
at Mena was closed down, the Wackenhut corporation came out with a new business venture, Wackenhut Correctional.
The idea of privatized prisons is a relatively new one in the United States and was still facing some legislative hurdles.
Wackenhut hired lobbying firm Grey and Company to aid in getting over these hurdles. It wasn’t long before all the
impediments to Wackenhut running prisons in the United States had been removed. With the contracts to run some
American prisons in hand, some of the Wackenhut sales staff left for South America. It is worth noting that all of the
locations where Wackenhut Correctional obtained large contracts to run South and Central American prisons, were
areas that Berry Seal had formerly run drugs or guns to. The leap from smuggling drugs to running prisons makes
perfect sense in the face of the intelligence community mindset.

Appearances to the contrary, the bulk of all intelligence community activity involves the analysis and collation of data.
Their job is to take absolutely gigantic amounts of information, shape it, and analyze it, and try to garner a coherent
picture of the future from it. Since all of the people in the senior ranks of the Air America apparatus were high level
intelligence officers, they probably had a good idea of what the net effect of pumping billions of dollars worth of drugs
on to the streets of this country was. They also knew that the war on drugs as started by the Reagan administration was
unwinnable. Not that this country was incapable of interrupting a large percentage of the flow of drugs through our
borders and of drying up another large percentage at the source, but that the United States does not want to win the war
on drugs. If we were to do so, nearly a dozen South and Central American countries would default on their loans to
Chase Manhattan and the World Bank, plus a huge amount of money currently circulating on the streets of the U.S.
would be taken off.

Being analysts themselves, the command structure of Air America knew that the only real industrial growth to come
from the war on drugs would be in law enforcement and prisons. Using this knowledge, they filtered their financial
base into the Wackenhut corporation and began to prepare to profit from a national tragedy that they helped create,
both here and in South and Central America. Just as they have profited from tragedies in Laos, Iran and everywhere
else they have appeared. Today, over 62% of those people imprisoned in the United States are imprisoned due to drug
offenses. As my broker said while we were discussing this article,"they’ve created their own futures market.

God Bless America! Time to Take it Back!
Peace or WoD
FFFF
DdC

TO ROSIE.
Thanx Rosie.Not that Daniela can compare time, cause she can't read the clock yet>Thats why she acts like she acts.You have a wonderfull way of using the language btw my compliments. I did not dare to say that.But i agree fully!!Bare in mind that Daniela is ONLY a small child not out of pubertystate yet.When she is grown up in about 15 years from now, she will be so ashamed of what she once said that she would not dare to walk the streets.Affraid they will still shave her hair off.Like they did with Nazilover in WW2.

Emina

LONDON (CNN) -- 26th of May The
International War Crimes Tribunal
is poised to issue an indictment
accusing Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic of atrocities,
possibly as early as Thursday,
sources told CNN, a move that
Russian diplomats said would
undermine efforts to negotiate a
peace deal with Yugoslavia.

No details on the indictment were
released, but sources said others
may also be named.

The tribunal, based at The Hague,
Netherlands, would not comment
on the report, but said it would
hold a news conference Thursday
morning. There was no immediate
comment from the Yugoslav
government, but officials there have
said in the past that the tribunal was
biased and anti-Serb.

The U.N. court's chief prosecutor,
Louise Arbour, has been
investigating alleged war crimes in
Kosovo for more than a year, even
though Yugoslavia has banned her
from traveling there.

Arbour's spokesman, Paul Risley,
who spent the last two days
speaking with Kosovo refugees in
Albania, said there is evidence of
war crimes on a massive scale and
that the challenge for investigators
is where to focus.

Many of the hundreds of thousands
of ethnic Albanian refugees who
fled Kosovo have reported what
they described as systematic rapes,
beatings, detentions and mass
killings at the hands of Serb forces.

The indictment of Milosevic would
mark the first time a sitting head of
state has been charged with war
crimes.

Under the tribunal's rules,
war-crimes suspects are required
to surrender or be surrendered by
authorities. But observers say
Milosevic is unlikely to turn himself in for trial, leaving NATO in the position
of negotiating with an indicted war criminal for a resolution to the
Kosovo-Serb conflict.

Serb troops gang raped women, says UN report

Sexual violence: Victims tell of threats, beatings and killings

Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday May 26, 1999
The Guardian

Kosovan women have been subjected to widespread gang rapes by Serbian troops,
according to a United Nations report released yesterday, which found no
evidence, however, of official military organisation
of the assaults.

Many of the refugees, who were interviewed in Albania by a French psychologist,
said they had been abducted, held for several days in houses requisitioned by
soldiers, sexually exploited and beaten before
being released.

Written for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and based on interviews
with 35 victims in refugee camps this month, it is the first authoritative study
to confirm rumours of mass kidnappings which
surfaced in the early weeks of the conflict.

"It is primarily the young women who are rounded up in villages and small
cities," the author, Dominque Serrano-Fitamant, writes. "The soldiers take
groups of five to 30 women to unknown places in trucks or
they are locked up in houses where soldiers live. Any resistance is met with
threats of being burned alive."

In one case, a woman who tried to prevent her daughter being assaulted was
"beaten to death in front of the door of the house," the report alleges.

Such "collective rapes" were said to be worst in the Kosovan towns of Gjakova,
Pec and Drenitza. "The women reported being individually raped by men during a
few hours but sometimes even for days.
(Those) who were released had lacerations on their chest and evidence of
beatings on their arms and legs."

Ms Serrano-Fitamant, a trauma specialist who has worked with victims in the
Congo, concluded that there was "no concrete evidence of the systematisation of
sexual violence" organised by Serbian military
authorities.

But the Nato bombings were regarded by troops as a "psychological licence" for
collective sexual violence, she suggested, and the evidence was that rapes had
increased since the strikes began on March 24.

No one has been able to give an estimate of how many women have been raped in
the past two months.

Many of the rapists wore masks, the victims said. Most were referred to as
Serbian "soldiers" and some women were able to identify the torturers "as
obeying a single well-known leader."

"The interviewees thought that one of the reasons for spontaneous and individual
rapes stemmed from those men who had been recruited from the prisons (some as
marginalised drug addicts) and hastily
incorporated into the army."

Many of the young women interviewed believed they were allowed to live so they
would dissuade other refugees from returning. Other rape victims had been
systematically killed, the report said. In the town of
Berlenitz, women told of soldiers separating men from their wives and children.
Young boys had their ears and noses cut before their throats were slit.

"The torturers sharpened their knives in front of the women. They then cut open
the stomachs of many pregnant women and skewed the foetus on their blades," the
report said.

Two rape counsellors, speaking from Skopje on a live video link to the Ministry
of Defence in London, yesterday said they had heard stories of Serb forces
injecting Kosovan women with drugs before taking
them away. When they returned "they were naked with foam around their mouths."
Some later died.

Rachel Wareham, who has been working in camps in Macedonia, said woman and
children were telling "terrible stories": in one instance a 13-year-old girl was
gang-raped by six Serb soldiers. Ilirijana Loxha,
who ran a women's group in Pristina, said she had heard of a mother and her five
daughters all being raped.

© Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 1999

Serbs step up protests against war

Dissidents: Anger over army call-up

By David Hearst
and Lazar Dzamic

Tuesday May 25, 1999
The Guardian

Thousands of anti-war protesters, many of them soldiers who had deserted their
posts in Kosovo, took to the streets for the second successive day in towns in
southern and central Serbia demanding the
return of conscript troops from the war-torn province.

Despite the efforts of two senior Yugoslav army generals to defuse the growing
tension, about 2,000 people assembled in front of the municipal hall in Krusevac
to protest against attempts to enforce a
regional call-up. Other demonstrations were reported in Aleksandrovac and Raska.

The protests have become a persistent source of internal dissent against the
government and the army.

After days of delicate negotiations, the reservists returning from Kosovo had
surrendered their weapons and uniforms, only to receive a second batch of
call-up papers from the federal army. This ignited a
fresh demonstration yesterday, as soldiers screamed the taunt "Red Gang" at
their masters. The army later backed down by saying the second draft was purely
voluntary, according to Montenegrin TV.

According to a Serbian official in Krusevac contacted yesterday by telephone,
the reservists, joined by their relatives, rallied for three hours and vowed to
continue the protest. The official said about 1,000
people staged a similar rally in the nearby town of Aleksandrovac.

Under a front page banner headline saying "They do not want to go to Kosovo any
more", the independent Montenegrin daily Vijesti reported that crowds on Sunday
had shouted "You will not cheat us any
more" and "Give us back our sons". People then surrounded a Yugoslav army
general, named as Stojimirovic, who was visiting the town from Nis.

"He said he agreed that they [the reservists] should not have to return to
Kosovo and called on the crowd to disperse," the paper said.

Tension in Krusevac is said to be high, although the authorities have held back
so far from suppressing the demonstrations and rounding up the leaders for fear
of igniting a bigger revolt.

As many as 1,000 reservists returned from the front to Krusevac last week after
hearing reports that anti-war demonstrations in the town were being brutally
suppressed. Vijesti reported rumours of other
soldiers deserting their positions in Kosovo, but they could not be confirmed.

There was trouble brewing in central Serbia too. Three members of the
self-styled citizens' parliament of Cacak, 100km (60 miles) south of Belgrade,
were taken into custody for "informative questioning", it
was reported.

Earlier the so-called parliament had openly defied Belgrade by sending a letter
of support to the pro-western president of Montenegro, Milo Dukanovic,
condemning the Yugoslav government for
"adventuristic politics based on ideology of collective suicide".

Meanwhile, the commander of the 3rd army, General Nebojsa Pavkovic, who last
week tried to defuse the revolt in Krusevac, met the families of reservist
soldiers in a local cinema in Raska. The families
demanded that the federal army take men from Belgrade or from Pozarevac,
Slobodan Milosevic's home town. Gen Pavkovic said conscripts could only be
pulled out when they had been replaced by others.

A fourth demonstration was due to be held yesterday in Prokuplje, after the
bodies of 11 local soldiers killed in Kosovo had been returned to their
families.

Hard on the heels of the demonstrations, two Serbian opposition parties urged
the Yugoslav government to break the deadlock in the talks. The Christian
Democratic party urged the Belgrade regime and the
UN, Nato, Russia and international mediators to end the Kosovo crisis quickly.

The head of the National Peasants party, Dragan Veselinov, urged the government
to take urgent measures to stop further suffering among the people and
destruction of the economy.

The bold and rare opposition statements came after three days of Nato attacks
that have blacked out most of Serbia and drastically hit water supplies.

Most of Belgrade was reported yesterday to be without electricity and only 40%
of the capital had water.

© Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 1999

Unrest in town that wants its sons back

Protests: Serb reservists defy their leaders

By Jean-Baptiste Naudet
in Krusevac

Tuesday May 25, 1999
The Guardian

Here, the Serbian soil has begun to tremble under Slobodan Milosevic's feet.

The news reaching Krusevac, unconfirmed until now, has not been exaggerated.
After their parents' continued demonstrations, reservists sent to Kosovo decided
to return home.

Crying out "The dead don't need Kosovo", the town's inhabitants demonstrated for
three days for the return of their sons, not against the Nato bombardments, as
the official local television said, and which
immediately drew hostile stone-throwing from the townspeople.

That's what the people in this town told us, anonymously and out of sight of the
civil and military police who are constantly patrolling, looking out for any
sign of rebellion.

In this little garrison town, with its chemical and mechanical industry, that
elected a mayor from the Yugoslav President's Serbian Socialist Party (SPS), the
parents of the mobilised reservists "want their
children to come back from Kosovo alive", said the father of one soldier sent to
the front, daring to speak out in a cafe.

A week ago, the bodies of seven soldiers arrived from Kosovo. "There were nearly
2,000 of us. We demonstrated in front of the town hall for two days, throwing
stones and breaking windows. There was some
confrontation with the police," he said.

On the third day of the first Serbian demonstration against the war in Kosovo, a
miracle happened. Nearly 1,000 young men from the region who had been sent to
Kosovo came back to Krusevac.

One soldier said: "We were in Kosovo for more than two months. We weren't doing
anything, apart from waiting for Nato to bomb us. Some of us weren't even armed.
We were in houses that had already been
cleaned out by the police.

"We were left to ourselves, we had no orders. So someone said that we could go
home, because under the law, mobilisation only lasts two months, except in times
of war. And war hasn't been declared on
anyone."

Ready to fight against invasion, the reservists had had enough. Enough of the
"phoney war", enough of waiting, enough of being "killed from the sky like
birds". They had done their time.

"There was no desertion. These soldiers are reservists coming home as normal,"
explained Nebosja Vukovic, a Yugoslav official in Belgrade.

In the neighbouring town of Nis, the third largest in the country, an opposer of
the Milosevic regime said: "What is going on in Krusevac is very important.

"A thousand reservists who came home without orders is a lot. It could be the
start of a movement."

"We left in 70 lorries," said the soldier who had had enough. "Someone said Nato
was protecting us. Planes were flying overhead, without firing."

On the road, just before Krusevac, General Nebosja Pavkovic, commander of the
3rd army of southern Serbia and Kosovo, caught up with the column.

"Pavkovic told us nothing would happen to us if we gave our weapons back," said
the soldier. "So the men gave back their arms and went home."

The general "was scared the soldiers would use them to bring down the town's
mayor," said one man.

"The local government doesn't reflect the general opinion. They fixed the
elections," he added.

Then Gen Pavkovic appeared before parents protesting outside the college in
Krusevac, where the local authorities had taken refuge, worried the town hall
would be bombed by Nato.

"He said that the boys still in Kosovo would soon be coming back, maybe in three
days time," said the father of one soldier. Since then, there have been no more
demonstrations in Krusevac. The town is
waiting for its sons. Meanwhile, a tense calm reigns. "Seventy per cent of the
young people here are against Milosevic," said one young man.

In a cafe, one soldier's father is concerned: "Pavkovic is going to want his
revenge. We don't know what will happen. He is going to take measures. If not,
all the reservists will want to come back home from
Kosovo."

But this man, some 50 years old, who demonstrated for three days to get his son
back, is not frightened. Here, he says: "It's not over yet."

* Jean-Baptiste Naudet is a correspondent for Le Monde

© Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 1999

> BELGRADE, May 26 (AFP) - A United Nations exploratory mission to
>Yugoslavia on Wednesday described as "calamitous" the humanitarian
>situation for civilians in the country, as it concluded its ten-day
>assessment.
> "If I have to define in a sentence our findings throughout the
>country, I would say that it is in general a calamitous situation
>for its civilian population," mission leader Sergio Vieira de Mello
>told reporters here.
> However, De Mello, who is UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian
>Affairs, added that "the qualitative nature of the problems faced by
>civilians in different parts of the country is not identical."
> He said he would present the mission's findings and
>recommendations to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan "within the next
>48 hours" and to the UN Security Council next week.
> Speaking about Kosovo, De Mello said the mission had seen
>"pretty systematic destruction or burning of private property" and
>has heard testimonies from "the victims themselves" that "they were
>forced to leave by various degrees of forms of intimidation and
>force."
> "In the opinion of this mission, something more than accidental
>attacks on civilians has taken place and continues to take place,"
>he added.
> The UN team in Kosovo received "more access than expected but
>less than requested," De Mello said.
> All arguments by the Yugoslav government, "as understandable as
>they may be...can not explain or justify the magnitude and
>geographical extent of internal displacement and of the refugee
>phenomenon in the neighbouring countries," he said.
> "Threats, violence, destruction and burning private homes, clear
>signs that people left in a panic, in a rush, in a hurry, in a
>terror, can not be attributable only to the irrational or insane
>behaviour of some individuals or to small irresponsible groups
>acting outside the law," De Mello said.
> In Serbia, the UN exploratory mission saw "evidence of the
>additional damage caused by NATO bombings on an already debilitated
>economy and on the social conditions of the population," De Mello
>said.
> The UN team identified the main problems there as the
>destruction of basic services, the closure of educational facilities
>and unemployment.
> "We have also been moved by the psychological impact that the
>present conditions and indeed the NATO air campaign have on the
>civilian population at large," De Mello said.
> The head of the UN mission has proposed to Yugoslav authorities
>"an immediate follow-up" visit by specific humanitarian agencies
>which would "carry out a more targetted assessment of the needs of
>refugees, internally displaced peoples and other vulnerable sections
>of the population."
> The UN team, composed of some 15 people from a number of UN
>agencies, visited Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro during the ten-day
>assessment mission, and held talks with Yugoslav authorities in
>Belgrade.

afp: NATO attacks damage bunkers at Milosevic villa: Pentagon
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WASHINGTON, May 26 (AFP) - Two consecutive nights of NATO
>attacks on a presidential villa outside Belgrade have damaged
>underground bunkers but the Pentagon has no firm evidence of their
>effect on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, spokesman Kenneth
>Bacon said Wednesday.
> "I'm sure that he has been psychologically rattled by these
>attacks," said Bacon, who has described the wooded Dobanovci villa
>as a major command center for the Yugoslav leadership.
> "It could well be that he's not sleeping well, either because of
>the attacks or because of his concerns that his policies are not
>working, but I have no firm evidence of what his physical or mental
>state is at this stage," he said.
> In overnight raids Tuesday, NATO struck the villa for a second
>straight day as part of renewed attacks on leadership targets in the
>Belgrade area, officials said.
> NATO bombs penetrated an underground bunker through its entrance
>before exploding, Air Force Major General Charles Wald said at a
>Pentagon briefing.
> "The entry part showed damage, and we estimate the bunker itself
>was damaged as well," he said.
> Asked whether Milosevic was alive and well, Wald said, "As far
>as I know, he is alive. I don't know how well he is."
> It was one of the heaviest nights of bombing yet with nearly 700
>combat sorties, according to Wald, who said targets included the
>Interior Ministry in downtown as well as attacks on more than 41
>targets in Kosovo.
> With good weather forecast for the next several days, NATO
>expects to maintain attacks 24 hours a day he said. About 1,000
>sorties, including about 800 combat sorties, were scheduled for
>Wednesday, he said.

---

As long as they hit War Criminal Slob Milo instead of innocent civilians, both Emina and I think the bombs are fine.

It will also save the War Crimes Tribunal a lot of time and money.

Zoja

afp: Two Kosovars sue Milosevic and others in US court
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WASHINGTON, May 26 (AFP) - Two Kosovars living in the United
>States have filed suit against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic
>and 13 other top Serb officials for genocide and other war crimes,
>their lawyers said Wednesday.
> The civil suit was presented at US District Court in Boston by
>two men, originally from Pec, Kosovo, who were not named to protect
>their families, according to court documents.
> One man is a naturalized US citizen, the other has refugee
>status.
> "The complaint charges Milosevic and other senior officials with
>genocide, war crimes and other violations of law, committed in the
>form of murder, torture, pillage, rape and other gross abuses of
>fundamental human rights by forces under (Milosevic's) command," the
>summary said.
> The suit was brought under the US Alien Tort Claims Act, a
>federal law allowing foreign nationals to go before US courts in
>cases of violations of international treaties or laws.
> The lawsuit was filed the same day that sources in the
>International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said the
>court had indicted the Yugoslav leader for war crimes.
> Besides Milosevic and his wife Mirjana Markovic, the complaint
>filed in the United States cites Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin
>Jovanovic, Information Minister Milan Komnenic, Interior Minister
>Vlajko Stojilkovic, Milan Milutinovic, president of the Serb
>Republic, Vladislav Jovanovic, Yugoslavia's ambassador to the United
>Nations, and Nebojsa Vujovic, a former charge d'affaires at
>Belgrade's embassy in Washington.
> Also named are Zelijko Raznatovic, better known as the notorious
>"Arkan", deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic, and four top
>military officers.
> If the 14 do not appear before the court in 20 days, they could
>be found guilty by default, Abram Chayes, one of the men's lawyers,
>told a news conference Wednesday.
> The amount of damages sought has not been specified.

Especially put here for DANIELA

Below you can read what will happen to war criminals

1: they will be found
2They will be tried
3Whatever lies the suspects spin, it has no use. Justice will prevail.

---

afp: 22 Croatian Serbs on trial for war crimes
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ZAGREB, May 25 (AFP) - The trial opened Tuesday of 22 Croatian
>Serbs accused of war crimes and genocide, the HINA official news
>agency said.
> Only Stevan Curnjic appeared in the Vukovar regional court,
>while 21 of the defendants are being tried in abstentia.
> The 22 have been been indicted on charges that during the former
>Yugoslav People's Army's (JNA) 1991 occupation of Vukovar, they
>"actively participated in an attempt of ethnic cleansing in the
>eastern part of Croatia and of creating a Greater Serbia".
> The indictment said that they participated in "capturing,
>mistreating, killing, putting into concentration camps and expelling
>non-Serb prisoners".
> Curnjic pleaded not guilty, saying that although he "wore the
>JNA uniform" he did not commit atrocities, but "prevented them".
> The trial continues Wednesday.

---

The devil will always lose!

Zoja

afp: Serbs close border with Macedonia, UN says
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SKOPJE, May 26 (AFP) - Yugoslavia appeared to have closed its
>border with Macedonia Wednesday, suddenly stopping the flow of
>ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo, the office of the United
>Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.
> The closure occurred at around 0800 local (0600GMT) and no
>further refugees were waiting in the no-man's-land between the two
>countries at the main crossing point of Blace, said Ron Redmond,
>UNHCR spokesman in Macedonia.
> He said 8,500 had crossed in the previous 24 hours, adding to
>22,000 who arrived in the preceding three days.
> "According to unverifiable rumours, the Serbs have closed the
>frontier for two or three days," he said.
> All through Tuesday, refugees crossed into Macedonia in small
>groups and the arrivals continued through the night.
> Redmond said the UNHCR did not know if the buses and trains that
>transported the refugees were still bringing people to the Serb post
>of Djeneral Jankovic on the other side of the frontier.
> The UNHCR expressed the fear that the sudden surge in refugee
>arrivals would saturate camps in Macedonia that have already taken
>in 250,000 refugees. Another 63,000 have been taken to other
>countries, mainly in Europe and North America.
> On Sunday, the UNHCR accused Skopje, which fears the influx of
>refugees will destabilise the country, of trying to organise the
>night-time transfer of refugees to Albania but the Macedonian
>authorities denied any such plans.
> Macedonia, which closed the frontier at the beginning of the
>month because it said it could take no more refugees, gave the
>go-ahead Tuesday for the construction of a new camp in the west of
>the country financed by the US government.
>

---

This is a nice example of how chicken Slob Milo is. Too affraid to fight himself, he uses unarmed civilians. PRAVI COVIJEK!!

Zoja

] upi: Yugoslav shells kill two Albanians
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TIRANA, Albania, May 26 (UPI) -- Two Albanian civilians were killed by
>Yugoslav cross-border artillery fire in Cahan, a village in Hasi
>district, says the Albanian Public Order Ministry.
> A ministry statement says, ``Muse Cahani, 58, and his daughter
>Merita, 20, were killed by Serb shells in their home in Cahan, in Hasi
>district, this morning.''
> The ministry said the incident occurred at 10:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m.
>EDT). A spokeswoman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
>Europe confirmed the identity of the two victims.
> The statement said Serb police and army fired across the border at
>the Morina checkpoint, some 10 miles (16 km) from Kukes, where there are
>still around 100,000 Kosovar Albanian refugees.
> Lt. Gen. John Reith, commander of the NATO troops in Albania, said in
>Kukes today: ``There are Serbs digging in at the border at Morina
>checkpoint. There is artillery behind them.''
> In its Albanian-language report, Voice of America says there are
>around 200 Serb soldiers in Morina.
> State-run Radio Tirana, quoting a local official, says border police
>and citizens shot at the Serbs when they tried to dig trenches in Zherke
>inside the Albanian border early this morning.
> Radio reports say there was fighting today between Yugoslav forces
>and the Kosovo Liberation Army in Cahani and Pogaj.
> The reports say the Serbs mined 500 square meters in Cahani, using
>mine launchers. They say NATO dropped 20 bombs on Morina inside
>Yugoslavia and the Albanian army also returned Yugoslav fire.
> Neither Albanian nor OSCE authorities have confirmed fighting between
>Yugoslav forces and the KLA.
> Meanwhile, the KLA is attempting to open a new corridor in Hasi
>district. The guerrillas already maintain a corridor in Padesh that
>extends 10 miles (16 km) into Kosovo and 4 miles (7 km) along the
>border, says a KLA liaison officer.
>

---

Now, really, why is Slob complaining about collatteral damage, when he imposes it himself on another sovereign state??

Zoja

] upi: Reports: ethnic cleansing in Pristina
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Serb forces have begun operations to ethnically cleanse Pristina of
>the tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians still living in the Kosovo
>capital, according to refugees and aid workers.
> London's Daily Telegraph reports that independent accounts suggest
>the action is aimed at those who refused to or could not leave the city
>during the first heavy push two months ago. Macedonian officials stated
>that about 150,000 refugees are now leaving Kosovo and headed toward the
>border. Most refugees who arrived at the Macedonian border Tuesday were
>from Pristina.
> ``For two months the police played cat and mouse with us,'' Shehrije,
>a 27-year-old woman from the suburb of Vranjevc told The Telegraph.
>``First they told us to go to the bus station and leave and then when we
>got there they told us to go back home. But last week that all changed.
>They said if we didn't leave in five minutes we would be killed. This
>happened to all our neighbors, too, and from what we saw the same was
>going on all over the city.''
> Aid workers said that in one area, young girls were kidnapped and
>held until their families paid ransom.
> ``There seems to have been a policy change in Pristina some time
>around the middle of last week,'' said an aid worker at the Blace,
>Macedonia camp. ``Just when it seemed that life was settling down a bit,
>a fresh outburst of evil was let loose.''
> The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees also reports a new
>wave of systematic cleansing in Kosovo. More than 7,500 refugees arrived
>in Macedonian on Tuesday. In addition to Pristina, other cities that
>appear to be targeted for ethnic cleansing include Urosevac and Vitina.
>The UNHCR fears that if refugees continue to arrive at the present rate,
>there will be a crisis in the already overcrowded camps.
> Refugees arriving in Macedonia said that Serbian troops were going
>from house to house, ordering residents to leave at gunpoint, and
>robbing and beating them.
> They also reported that as people were being expelled, police forced
>them to sign documents stating they were leaving their home and
>renouncing their citizenship of their own free will. Some refugees said
>that only people with the proper documents were allowed to leave the
>country.
> In Albania, about 220 people crossed the Morini border Tuesday,
>including 104 prisoners released from the Smrekovnica prison in northern
>Kosovo. Approximately 1,300 people have been released from Smrekovnica
>over the last four days, out of a reported prison population of about 3,
>000. Prisoners were reportedly forced to sign a blank sheet of paper for
>reasons that were not explained.
> The UNHCR has also deposited $800,000 in Macedonia's Health Insurance
>Fund in order to finance health services to refugees.
> Enthusiastic crowds greeted the moderate Kosovo Albanian leader,
>Ibrahim Rugova, when he visited the Stankovic camp in Macedonia, the BBC
>reported. Rugova who was seen on Serbian TV meeting with Yugoslav
>President Slobodan Milosevic, was met by thousands of cheering refugees
>who gave the victory sign and chanted, ``Rugova, Rugova'' and `
>``parvasi'', the Albanian word for independence.
> Earlier, Rugova had thanked the Macedonian government for sheltering
>the refugees. Rugova has spent the past two weeks visiting European
>capitals to discuss the Kosovo crisis.
>

By DMS on Wednesday, May 26, 1999 - 07:09 pm:

We are looking for topic ideas that would encourage thoughtful and intelligent debate. Please send topic
suggestions to @viexpo.com">viexpo@viexpo.com.
Thanks DMS

] Reuters UN indicts Milosevic, clouding diplomacy
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UN Indicts Milosevic, Clouding Diplomacy
09:21 p.m May 26, 1999 Eastern

By Janet McBride

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic has been indicted for war crimes, U.N. tribunal sources
said, a move that may put Kosovo mediation efforts on ice while the
West cranks up pressure for his removal from power.

A source close to the International Criminal Tribunal for former
Yugoslavia said Wednesday a warrant had been issued for
Milosevic's arrest. The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour,
was to hold a news conference Thursday to provide details of the
indictment, which would be the first of a head of state in office.

The indictment followed a trip to Yugoslavia by a senior U.N.
humanitarian delegation that reported finding strong evidence of
massive human rights abuses in the purge of Kosovo's ethnic
Albanian population by Serbian forces.

It also pointed to a loss of Western patience with Milosevic's refusal to
accept international administration of Kosovo after more than two
months of NATO air strikes that have smashed Yugoslavia's
economy and infrastructure.

Overnight, NATO warplanes zeroed in on the Yugoslav capital
Belgrade and surrounding areas, with residents and local media
reporting heavy bombardment and intense anti-aircraft fire.

Western diplomats said Milosevic's indictment leaves him
no choice but to yield to NATO's demands for an international
security force in Kosovo or risk a possible NATO ground invasion.

Yugoslav analysts said Milosevic had wanted direct talks with the
West to boost his political standing at home, and that one of
his main concerns had been to obtain a pledge of immunity from
prosecution for war crimes.

One Belgrade analyst said the tribunal's decision showed the
West had decided removing Milosevic should take precedence
over diplomacy that could leave the Serbian nationalist strongman
in power, free to stir upheaval in the Balkans yet another time.

The tribunal has indicted Bosnian Serb wartime leaders Radovan
Karadzic and Ratko Mladic for their alleged role in the ''ethnic
cleansing'' of Muslims and Croats during the conflict in Bosnia that
ended in 1995, but they have not been arrested and remain at large.

It was not immediately clear after reports of the impending
indictment became public whether Russia's Kosovo envoy, Viktor
Chernomyrdin, would travel to Belgrade Thursday for his planned
fourth round of talks with Milosevic.

Wednesday evening, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott
appeared to deflate the idea.

``Is he going to Belgrade? All I know is that he is meeting us in
the morning (on Thursday),'' Talbott told Reuters in Moscow
after several hours of talks with Chernomyrdin and European
Union envoy Martti Ahtisaari.