-Caveat Lector- >From http://defence-data.com/current/ Russia, Ukraine agree on Black Sea Fleet split April 9th, 1999 by Gordon Feller, Defence Systems Daily's correspondent in Moscow The Ukrainian parliament on March 24 voted by a narrow majority to ratify an agreement with Russia on the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet that officially allows Russia to retain its military presence on Ukrainian soil. The treaty confirms Ukrainian sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula but also allows Russia to lease a large military base in Sevastopol and various other military installations in southern Ukraine until 2017. Ukraine will also give up about half its share of the ageing fleet to Russia. In a 1997 preliminary agreement dividing up the 525-vessel fleet, Russia received 271 ships and Ukraine 254. Under the new treaty, Ukraine will sell Russia an additional 117 ships for $527 million. The peaceful parcelling out of the Soviet-era war ships clears the way for important friendship and cooperation agreements between Ukraine and Russia. Russia had conditioned its implementation of Ukraine's broad-based friendship treaty with Russia on Ukraine's ratification of the Black Sea Fleet agreement. With that hurdle now cleared, Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny was expected to exchange ratification documents on the so-called "Big Treaty" during an April 8-9 visit to Kiev, the Interfax news agency reported. With that act, Russia would formally recognise Ukraine's sovereignty within its current borders. Ukraine will lease the property, a total of 4,500 buildings on 18,000 hectares of land, for $98 million annually. Russia is expected to deduct those payments from Ukraine's massive debts for Russian energy supplies. However, opposition to the agreement is strong. "Over the years of the agreement's operation, Ukraine will not receive a single penny and will only be able to get rid of its dubious debt to Russia," Yaroslava Stetsko, chairwoman of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, said during parliament debate on the treaty. "If the ships were sold as scrap metal, they would be worth more [than Russia will pay under the treaty]," Stetsko added Stetsko also said Ukraine would rent the bases to Russia at rates that were approximately 2 percent of those in the open market. Critics also object that the treaty, which codifies Russian ground and air-force limits in Crimea, violates the constitution, which forbids the permanent stationing of foreign troops on Ukrainian territory. And some fear that a Russian military presence in Sevastopol will make that Crimean port a target for attack. "Nobody can say that in the next 20 years how relations between NATO and Russia will work out. In case of a military conflict, no matter who is responsible, Ukrainian Sevastopol will be subject to military strikes because large [Russian] military formations are located there," attorney Dmitry Baziv wrote in a March 26 Den newspaper opinion piece. Other critics took a more sarcastic view, saying that besides doling out a mass of rusting ships, the does little but ratify a shoddy, cash-poor status quo between Russia and Ukraine. "These documents have no practical meaning, just political," Boris Oliynik, chairman of parliament's foreign-affairs committee, was quoted by Interfax as saying. "After all, the Black Sea Fleet itself doesn't really exist anymore." Stetsko said during the debate that those appendixes give Russia control of the Sevastopol base and other property in Feodosia, Yalta, Kach, Batlyman, Chornomorsk, Ordzonikidze, Koktebel, Pishchana Balka, Hvardyysk, Pryberezhne, on the Capes of Iliya and Chauda, on the hills of Opuk and Dyurmen, and in two locations outside Crimea: Henichesk and Mykolayiv. Stetsko's description and other reports make it appear that most of those sites are wharfs, airfields or radar stations. The Gvardeyskoye airfield near Simferopol is also being leased to Russia under the treaty. Stetsko said appendix 5 allowed Russia to keep in Ukraine 110 tanks, 65 self-propelled artillery systems, 169 armoured personnel carriers, 200 armoured cars, 92 aircraft, 72 helicopters, "dozens of missile complexes, cannons, subsidiary equipment, and the like." Russia's adherence to those limits will be verified through regular independent inspections conducted under the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, which was signed by 22 NATO and Warsaw Pact states in 1990. "The [CFE treaty] plans for regular checks of data provided by signers. In this way, the numbers and condition of weapons of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation may be checked in the course of such inspections," Oleksy Rybak, an official with the Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry, was quoted by Den as saying on March 25. "Ukrainian representatives have the right of unrestricted access to the weapons of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation during the course of the inspections." However, at least one dispute has already cropped up over the limits. The Russian military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda complained in its March 24 edition that Ukraine was barring Russia from replacing 22 venerable Su-17MZ aircraft based at Gvardoyskoye with somewhat newer Su-24 fighters. The treaty also leaves many ongoing questions regarding the Russian presence in Ukraine unresolved. For instance, the treaty does not address the issue of the Russian military's consumption of utilities in Sevastopol, where the largest ground unit is based. The Russian Black Sea Fleet's arrears to the city of Sevastopol already total Hr 5.5 million ($1.5 million) for electricity and Hr 74 million ($20 million) for other city services, according to city spokeswoman Svetlana Buravskaya. Though some suggest that a Russian military presence in Sevastopol would bring income and employment to the city, not many believe it. "Discussions that the Black Sea Fleet will give [Sevastopol] money and jobs is pure and unadulterated foolishness," Baziv wrote in Den. "The jobs will go to citizens of Russia, not Ukraine, and the city will lose money every month for electricity used [by fleet installations]." And the diplomats who drafted the treaty have done little to resolve the complex legal problems associated with the residence of Russian service personnel in Ukraine. Ukrainian proponents of the treaty, which must also be ratified by the upper house of the Russian Duma, seem to agree that its major benefit to the country will be improved relations with Russia. "It is very important that ... the Ukrainian parliament soon ratify the [Black Sea Fleet] agreements. This would be a major step toward stabilising and solidifying the good relations between our two countries," parliament speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko said in February, according to Interfax. President Leonid Kuchma has also promoted the Black Sea Fleet agreement as a prerequisite to Russian ratification of the friendship treaty between the two countries. "The 'Big Treaty' is being drafted simultaneously with the [Black Sea Fleet] agreements, which are the key point at issue between our two countries. So all of these things are interwoven," Kuchma said in a Russian television interview. After the parliament vote, Kuchma and Russian President Boris Yeltsin proclaimed the treaty's Ukrainian ratification a great achievement of Slavic diplomacy. REF XQQAS XQQEE >From http://defence-data.com/current/ Serbian cyber attack may spread April 9th, 1999 mi2g, a London based authority on high security Knowledge Systems, has warned "The real threat of cyber warfare from Serbian hackers is to the economic infrastructure of NATO countries and not to their better prepared military command and control network." In the last ten days, The Department of Defence (DoD) in the US and the NATO command in Europe have confirmed that Serbian hackers have attacked their computer network, thereby causing a Denial of Service. This was achieved by flooding their network with empty ping packets and despatching new variants of the Melissa and Papa viruses. The DoD's Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defence confirmed that the US Army and Airforce had to take their e- mail servers, across the world, out of action over the weekend to disinfect them from the Melissa Virus. mi2g's SIPS (Security Intelligence Products and Systems) division predicts that Serbian, and sympathetic Russian hackers, are likely to attack civilian targets in NATO countries such as financial institutions and public utilities. This may cause severe disruption to normal economic activity. The governments of some NATO countries are concerned that civilian facilities are much less well prepared than their military counterparts in dealing with cyber attack. According to the ICSA (International Computer Security Association) more than 70% of corporate networks are vulnerable to attack in spite of firewalls at their network perimeter. "Few large corporations have contingency plans and even those that do are not comprehensive enough to cope with persistent cyber attack. The probability of electronic transaction disruption or loss of daily records is much higher than ever in history as we arrive at a new juncture in Cyber Warfare", said D K Matai, the founder of mi2g. REF XQQEE XQQTY >From New York Daily News Albanians in America Answer the Call to Arms By BILL EGBERT Daily News Staff Writer Standing at attention beneath slate-gray skies, 250 men and women from the New York area yesterday swore allegiance to the Kosovo Liberation Army - and prepared to ship out soon for the bloody war tearing apart their homeland. Not just strapping young men, but also old men with handlebar mustaches and young girls with cascading blond hair stood in formation in crisp new fatigues in a Yonkers parking lot. Americans of Albanian heritage yesterday sign up as part of the Kosovo Liberation Army. They were all Albanian-Americans - who were prepared to give their lives on distant battlefields. They soon will leave via a chartered flight and will train for three weeks before going into battle against Serbian forces, who have already driven thousands of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in a bloody ethnic cleansing campaign. Sadri Mehaj, 35, owns a pizzeria in the Bronx. Soon, the Westchester man will risk his life to stop the slaughter. "I am very happy to go," said Mehaj, who spent three years in a prison in Montenegro in the 1980s for pro-Albanian activism. "I don't care if I am killed. I want to be a free man in my own country." "When I saw the refugees, and the children screaming, I said to myself, 'This has got to stop,' " recalled Diane Celaj, 19, a Fordham University sophomore. Young men sign up for induction into the KLA in Yonkers. Girls as young as 16 have volunteered. "I see all my sisters getting raped and my brothers getting killed," said Linda Muriqi, 16, her voice filled with anger. "My father is already over there fighting and I want to go, too." Isa Kodra, 19, of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, a student at New York City Technical College, is a platoon sergeant in the National Guard, and he was eager to use his military training to defend the land where his parents were born. "Maybe I can help save whatever is left of Kosovo," he said. Kodra believes NATO ground troops will be necessary, but feels that he and other Albanian volunteers must fight first. "The reality is, [NATO] will only respond when they see body bags," he said. "We will fill those body bags if necessary." Tales of young Kosovar women being raped have not deterred young female volunteers. Instead, the atrocities moved these women to step forward. "I've seen pictures on the Internet of children being burned alive, and pregnant women with their wombs cut out," said Hasnija Gjonbalaj, 18, who decided to fight in Kosovo instead of beginning her second semester at Manhattan College in the Bronx. The group was one of many Albanian volunteer brigades flying to Kosovo from all over the world, said Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, Balkan affairs adviser for the Albanian American Civic League. She said 2,000 to 3,000 volunteers have already left the U.S. When this group, the Atlantic Brigade, ships out, it will be a return trip for Tonin Gjetaj, 50, who saw combat last summer in a KLA unit protecting the village of Junik. They were finally driven into the hills when they ran out of ammunition, but not before one of Gjetaj's friends sacrificed himself in an attempt to destroy a Serb tank with the unit's last grenade. "We are hoping the United States will arm us," he said, adding that it is Serb armor that has doomed the lightly armed KLA to defeat so far. "If you give me an anti-tank weapon, I would go and kill one tank and not care if I died." But even if the KLA does not get sophisticated American weapons, Gjetaj believes the KLA and its fresh volunteers can make a stand against the Yugoslav Army. "When you are defending your own home and your own land," he said, "you are so strong no army can defeat you." Original Publication Date: 04/12/1999 >From NYDN Singer Robbed Of 33G for Refugees Yusuf Islam, known in his pop star days as singer Cat Stevens, says Macedonian border guards "robbed" him of $33,000 he had hoped to give to Albanian refugees. "We're absolutely furious," he told the BBC yesterday. "Obviously everybody knows why we're here, to help those people who have tragically gone through this and who are going through this problem of ethnic cleansing, and they robbed us." Islam, who is leading a humanitarian mission, said the guards shook him down for the money before they let him pass Saturday night. The singer, whose hits include "Wild World" and "Peace Train," gave up the entertainment business when he converted to Islam in the 1980s. Original Publication Date: 04/12/1999 ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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