-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/1999/0427/wor4.htm Tuesday, April 27, 1999 KLA wants air strikes to assist ground offensive ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- NATO is anxious not to further the KLA's political ambitions, writes Chris Stephen from Kukes Kosovo: NATO officials were due to meet last night in Brussels with officials of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army to consider requests for bombing missions to support guerilla operations. The KLA wants air attacks to smash Serb forces which are blocking their efforts to push into Kosovo from neighbouring Albania to link up with forces trapped with thousands of refugees inside the province. But NATO officials are worried that, in the long term, the KLA intends to establish a dictatorship in Kosovo, and are reluctant to launch military strikes that will help it achieve this. "NATO will not be the KLA's airforce," said one Western official close to the talks last night. "Can you imagine NATO establishing a protectorate in Kosovo and then the KLA establish a military dictatorship? There's no way the international community is going to have that." NATO officials are concerned that the KLA appears to be trying to dominate Kosovo's ethnic Albanian political parties, now exiled in surrounding countries. Militarily, the alliance says such air strikes are possible. The KLA has spent the past week pushing into Kosovo with units being fed in through the northern Albanian border town of Bajram Curri. It now holds a rectangular piece of mountainous wooded territory, 5 km deep by about 10 km across, anchored on the Albanian border, but the precarious main supply route is constantly targeted by Serbian artillery. Inside the pocket, troops have hit a brick wall - the well-defended village of Junik, south west of the town of Decani. Beyond Junik is the north-south highway used to move Serbian troops, and the scene of NATO's erroneous attack on a refugee convoy earlier this month. Beyond that are more guerrilla units close to the village of Glodjane. The KLA says that forming a link would allow it to get refugees out and new fighters in. A primitive communications link has now been established between the KLA and NATO, via a satellite fax/phone operated inside the province. Faxes are sent to three KLA officials in Brussels, who in turn relay these to NATO. In the past four weeks NATO has launched several air strikes after being alerted through the KLA phone link. But the Junik operation would mark a new stage in their co-operation, with strikes needing some form of ground observation and lasting several days. A more daring alternative might be to use the American airborne troops now arriving in the region to establish a "safe haven" in this area, although it is unlikely that such an operation would meet NATO's desire for "zero casualties" among its own troops. More likely, if NATO agrees, would be that bombers would open the corridor, and the Apache attack helicopters now in Albania would help keep it open, fending off Serbian counter-attacks. The Western alliance may fear becoming air support for the KLA, but it also fears sending its own ground troops into the province, and may welcome the chance to let another army do the work. But first are likely to come the political questions - made harder because the KLA has yet to speak with one voice. Since it began fighting in late 1997, the KLA has been riven by disputes and disagreements. NATO officers are worried about the KLA's attitude to its main political rival, Mr Ibrahim Rugova, elected president in unrecognised elections among ethnic Albanians last year. Mr Rugova, since captured and apparently kept prisoner by the Serbs, was denounced as "worse than a traitor" by KLA spokesman Mr Jakob Krasniqi last week. NATO will want assurances that, if victory comes, the KLA will confine its battles with Mr Rugova to the ballot box. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ >From Slate Morning Update ""The U.S. has cited the KLA for provocative acts of violence but has yet to place the organization on its official terrorist list. "" <<Huh??>> explainer Who is the Kosovo Liberation Army? By Eve Gerber Members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who have been lionized as "freedom fighters," have also been demonized as communists, narco-terrorists, and Islamic fundamentalists. Who are these folks? And what are their goals? The group's origins are murky, and like most guerrilla armies it does most of its business in secret. But this much is known: The KLA grew out of independence demonstrations staged in the early 1980s by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. Serb authorities arrested hundreds of protesters, many of whom called themselves Marxist-Leninists, in part to secure assistance from their ethnic brothers in communist Albania. The demonstrators' goal was to rid Kosovo of Serb rule. During the 1980s many current KLA members, including future Rambouillet delegates Jakup Krasniqi and Azem Syla, served time in Serb prisons for organizing peaceful demonstrations, leafleting, or calling for independence. The KLA was formed some time in the early 1990s, shortly after Belgrade abolished the autonomy the province had enjoyed since 1974 and purged ethnic Albanians from civil and state institutions, including the military. (Many KLA leaders received their military training in the Yugoslavian army.) Ethnic Albanians responded to the purge by creating a shadow government under the auspices of the Democratic League of Kosovo and electing Ibrahim Rugova their unofficial president in 1992. While war ravaged other parts of the splintering Yugoslavia, Rugova--the "Balkan Gandhi"--persuaded Kosovars to remain nonviolent, arguing that the international community would reinstate the province's independence. But when the 1995 Dayton Accords ended the war in Bosnia but left Kosovo's status unresolved, other nationalists decided nonviolence was ineffective: They noted that Yugoslavian minorities who took up arms won independence, while those who didn't were strong-armed. The Albanian diaspora funds the KLA through an organization named "Homeland Calling," soliciting funds in the U.S. (mostly Brooklyn), Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, and other European nations. A UN arms embargo prevents member nations from funding the KLA. The European press alleges that ethnic Albanian drug traffickers contribute to the rebel army, a report that arms trade experts confirm. Although most ethnic Albanians are Muslim, the Kosovo independence movement is not much influenced by Islamic fundamentalism. The group's spokesman says that they shun the assistance of Middle East radicals despite sketchy reports that Iran surreptitiously finances the KLA. The State Department denies, at least for the record, that it knows the source of KLA funding. The KLA began hit-and-run attacks against Serb policemen and officials in early 1996 in hopes of abolishing "Serb colonization." In 1997, following the collapse of order in Albania, that nation's military depots were looted and small arms poured into Kosovo. The KLA stepped up its attacks, kidnapping and executing not only Serb officials and their families but suspected ethnic Albanian collaborators. In 1998, Serb President Slobodan Milosevic retaliated against the KLA uprisings by executing Albanian clan leader Adem Jashari and members of his family. Radicalized by his martyrdom, Kosovar Albanians rallied to the KLA. Armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, the KLA punched a supply route through to Albania where they established a staging base for operations. No match for the better equipped Serbian army, the KLA retreated in the face of a Serbian offensive last year. The Serbs torched villages and killed scores of civilians, triggering a refugee crisis. In protest marches, ethnic Albanians of all ages began to defiantly chant, "We are the Kosovo Liberation Army," and the nation's many political factions began to rally to the KLA cause. "President" Rugova's credibility was damaged beyond repair last May when he met with Milosevic, and several of Rugova's moderate colleagues, including Rambouillet delegate Jakup Krasniqi, spurned him by joining the KLA. Adem Demaci, who spent 28 years in Serb prisons and led the Parliamentary Party of Kosovo which rivaled Rugova's, called on the KLA to establish a political presence "because one cannot communicate with the world with statements released from forests." NATO silently urged rival factions to unite and the KLA formed a political wing last summer. Demaci briefly became the KLA spokesman and quickly attributed previous calls for a pan-Albanian state from within the group to political immaturity. The augmented KLA clearly tempered its core. At least 8,000 rebels once fought for the KLA, although that is a very soft number. According to Albanian television reports, the KLA ordered all Kosovars between the ages of 18 and 50 to join its ranks earlier this month. The KLA successfully recruits in the refugee camps and among the diaspora. More than 5,000 fresh recruits are now training in Albania. Command remains decentralized, but seems to have settled under the control of Bislim Zyrapi, who formerly led a militia brigade in the Bosnian conflict. Albania is giving ammunition and trucks to their efforts. The situation in the province is fluid and rebels struggle to hold their remaining isolated enclaves. Macedonia has charged that the KLA conducts military activities within its borders. The KLA has yet to build an effective military force and it is considered unlikely that they could defeat government forces, even with the assistance of NATO air cover. The Department of Defense acknowledges that the KLA reports to NATO on the situation inside Kosovo, but the extent of KLA/NATO cooperation is not known. The U.S. has cited the KLA for provocative acts of violence but has yet to place the organization on its official terrorist list. In fact, the Clinton administration has warmed to the rebel force. Last June, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke met with a KLA commander in Kosovo. The Contact Group nations (Russia, Britain, France Germany, Italy, and the U.S.), decided that the KLA represents a significant portion of the Kosovars and that no settlement is possible without them. KLA attendance at the Rambouillet negotiations lent the group new legitimacy, as did the election of KLA political director Hashim Thaci as leader of the 15-member ethnic Albanian negotiating team. The KLA's willingness at the Rambouillet talks to demilitarize Kosovo in return for the reinstatement of autonomy was interpreted by many as a signal that a peaceful organization might evolve from the guerrilla force. Explainer would like to thank Ben Fischerof Indiana University, Barney Rubin of the Council on Foreign Relations, Kurt Bassuener of the Balkan Action Council, John Hillen of the Center for Strategy and International Studies, and Jane's Intelligence Review. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
