-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Money Laundering MI6 "Investigates" Crime Links to KLA Kosovo is Money, Money, Money THE secret support network across Europe and America providing help to the Kosovo Liberation Army is being investigated by MI6 and other intelligence agencies after allegations that organised crime plays a central role. Most of the investigation work has been focused on Switzerland where the KLA is known to have set up a complex network of accounts to channel funds raised from the Albanian and Kosovar diaspora. Some accounts have been found to breach Swiss banking standards and have been closed down. Support comes from shadowy groups known mainly by their acronyms. The KLA is supported by the LPK and LNCK but challenged by the LDK and tolerated by the LBD, formed out of the LDS. Each group has a clear interest in the future of Kosovo and there is intense rivalry as they try to build large fighting funds to help to pay for the political battle that will follow the war. It is not known whether links with organised crime were proven and some accounts were found to be legal. The investigations have forced the KLA to be even more cunning in concealing its financial trail. The investigations were launched after repeated accusations, mainly from Belgrade, that the KLA was funded largely by organised crime including drugs trafficking and the smuggling of non-Europeans into the EU. Belgrade repeatedly said the KLA was a terrorist organisation with similarities to the IRA, which has criminal backers. The West's attitude is equivocal. State Department spokesmen are holding back from giving absolute backing to the KLA. Current investigations will go a long way to establishing whether the KLA is a genuine, popular freedom fighting group or a front for criminals. Since Albania's Cold War isolation ended in 1991, the country's large and rapidly growing diaspora has begun to challenge the Sicilian Mafia for control of large-scale crime in the West. While it is true that Albanian criminals are proliferating in some parts of the West, the connection between them and the KLA is not so clear, notwithstanding Belgrade's propaganda. What the Western agencies, including the Secret Intelligence Service, have found is a sophisticated network of accounts and companies set up to process funds that the KLA says were raised legally as voluntary contributions from supporters in the ethnic Albanian diaspora. Western investigators first had to distinguish between funds raised for the KLA and funds raised for rival Kosovo support groups. The KLA's precursor was a secretive party known as the Popular Movement for Kosovo (LPK) set up in Germany after the 1982 assassination of three Kosovar Albanians in Bonn. The LPK was known to have Marxist-Leninist pretences in the early days but those are believed to have been diluted since the armed struggle began on a large scale last year with the KLA appearing in uniform in Kosovo. The KLA's main rival was the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the party of Ibrahim Rugova, which stood on a ticket of peaceful, Gandhi-style, non co-operation in Kosovo. The LDK is more politically sophisticated and in 1992 it organised what it called free and fair elections in Kosovo, still subject to strict Serb control, and elected a government which was forced to operate in exile in western Europe. Kosovars were encouraged to provide funds for the LDK through voluntary donations. The KLA soon learnt the same trick and letters went round to the Kosovar diaspora asking for funds. Some of the methods of persuasion were believed to be erring on the strong side. The London Telegraph, May 5, 1999 Der Fuhrer Invades Yugoslavia NATO Military Commander Criticizes NATO Curbs Kill 'em ALL! Let CNN sort 'em out! BRUSSELS - NATO's senior military commander said Tuesday that the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia was lasting much longer than expected because of serious constraints imposed on the alliance and its refusal to use the overwhelming firepower that it had at its disposal. General Klaus Naumann, the outgoing chairman of the alliance's Military Committee, said the lessons of the first sustained combat operation in NATO's 50-year history underscored the limits of waging war by a coalition of 19 democracies. ''The air campaign is working, but not as quickly as we hoped,'' said General Naumann, a 60-year-old German officer who is retiring from his post this week. ''We have conditions we have to follow,'' he said, ''which degrade our own military campaign, especially the need to limit civilian casualties.'' At a farewell news conference, General Naumann said the alliance needed to reflect on how it could best reconcile the requirements of political control in a democratic alliance with the need to maximize effectiveness in future military operations. ''We need to think through our organization's structure in time of war,'' he said. On the 41st day of the air campaign, NATO carried out the most extensive bombing operations so far, hitting Yugoslav armed forces throughout the entire province of Kosovo. A NATO spokesman, Jamie Shea, said no part of the Yugoslav armed forces had been spared. He said the targets included five airfields, at least three aircraft, radar and petroleum facilities, command and control bunkers, artillery sites and communications lines. General Walter Jertz, a German who is a NATO military spokesman, said the latest allied attacks were concentrated against the 125th Motorized Infantry Brigade in western Kosovo and the 243d Brigade in the east. Both brigades have been accused of conducting some of the worst known ''ethnic cleansing'' operations and their commanders have been cited as war crimes suspects. General Jertz said that the bombing raids had gone ''extremely well'' and that more than 80 percent of the designated targets had incurred damage. ''It was our most successful military operation yet against field forces in Kosovo,'' he said. Pentagon officials announced that a U.S. F-16 fighter shot down a Yugoslav MiG-29 after being challenged near the Bosnian border. NATO claims to have destroyed more than half of Yugoslavia's air force in air battles and repeated attacks against airfields. President Bill Clinton plans to visit Germany for two days to meet with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as well as U.S. pilots and Kosovar refugees. U.S. officials said one of the reasons behind the trip was to help revitalize support for the air campaign in Germany, where Chancellor Schroeder's alliance of Social Democrats and Greens is feeling intense pressure to back away from the bombing campaign. President Clinton will start his trip with a meeting here at NATO headquarters early Wednesday with Secretary-General Javier Solana. He also plans to receive an update on the course of the air operations from General Naumann and NATO's top military commander, General Wesley Clark. On Capitol Hill, the Senate set aside Senator John McCain's effort to give Mr. Clinton unsolicited authority to use ''all necessary force'' to win in Yugoslavia. The Arizona Republican bitterly accused the president of being ''prepared to lose a war'' rather than consider use of ground forces. The vote was 78-22. After six weeks of sustained air strikes, General Naumann acknowledged that the alliance's military strategy had not succeeded in coercing President Slobodan Milosevic to embrace an interim peace settlement nor had it stopped him from expelling hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albania n refugees from Kosovo. But he emphasized that NATO missiles and warplanes were slowly destroying Mr. Milosevic's ''war machine'' and have managed to disrupt Yugoslav forces in their efforts to banish the ethnic Albanian population. He said Mr. Milosevic ultimately risked the devastation of his entire country unless he bowed to the demands of the international community. ''Milosevic is losing, and he knows he is doomed to fail,'' General Naumann said, adding that the attacks on Yugoslavia's oil facilities and the disruptions in lines of communications were producing the first signs that morale was sagging among the nation's beleaguered armed forces. On the other hand, General Naumann said, Mr. Milosevic's tactics of using civilian sites to shield military assets , such as parking tanks and basing troops next to churches and apartment buildings, meant that the alliance would not be able to hit all its military targets. General Naumann said the use of ground troops has never been a serious option, which further compounded the difficulties of the air campaign. But he insisted that any disappointment with its results should be measured against the absence of any casualties for the alliance. ''We democracies hate war,'' he said. ''Any operation without one soldier being killed or wounded is not a bad result for the alliance.'' General Naumann also pointed out the ''astoundingly low'' number of accidental strikes against Yugoslav civilians. He said more than 5,000 bombing attacks have been carried out involving 15,000 pieces of dropped ordnance, yet only six had gone astray and resulted in the deaths of civilians. After spending much of his three-year tenure trying to shape NATO's war-fighting abilities to the post-Cold War era, General Naumann stepped down with a warning that a dangerous technology gap was emerging between the United States and Europe that could lead to allied soldiers being unable to fight on the same battlefield if it was not redressed. General Naumann noted that the United States spent $36 billion a year in military research and development, compared with $10 billion for all the European countries. He said the technological superiority of the American forces had left European forces sidelined for much of the air campaign, with the United States firing the vast majority of cruise missiles and laser-guided munitions against Yugoslav targets. As diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis continued, the Russian special envoy for the Balkans crisis, Viktor Chernomyrdin, said after meeting with President Clinton at the White House that a solution to the conflict was closer. But Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, who was to meet Mr. Chernomyrdin later Tuesday, cautioned against expecting any quick end. Germany announced that foreign ministers of the Group of Seven major industrial powers plus Russia would meet Thursday in Bonn. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, on a visit to Romania, insisted there would be no compromise on NATO's demand, which President Milosevic has so far rejected, for an armed international force to go to Kosovo to protect ethnic Albanian refugees returning home. NATO acknowledged that Serbian forces had resumed ''ethnic cleansing'' in Kosovo on a massive scale. International Herald Tribune, May 5, 1999 Palladium Market Palladium Price Plunges Gold next? The price of palladium, a metal used in car exhaust systems and electronics, has dropped by a quarter in the last couple of weeks, and was still falling yesterday. On April 20 it was $384 per ounce; yesterday it was $285 per ounce at the London bullion market afternoon fix. Palladium used to be far cheaper than its sister metal platinum. In the past couple of years it had almost caught it up, but the palladium price has shown far more volatility than platinum's. The steady price rise had mainly been because mine production at present falls well short of demand, but also because exports from Russia, the big producer that also holds substantial but unquantified stockpiles, were disorganised and unpredictable. Analysts have warned that some palladium users would switch to more reliable alternative metals, now palladium had lost its price advantage. The confusion surrounding the latest price collapse is typical of the palladium market. This year, like last year, began with prices buoyant because of uncertainty about the size of Russian exports and worries about physical and bureaucratic delays to shipments. Most metal is sold by the finance ministry and the central bank, and Norilsk Nickel, the big producer (based in Arctic Russia) also has a small quota - around a tenth of total Russian exports. But the official export agency, Almaz, normally handles the actual export deals. In March, new export licences were said to have been agreed and in April rumours began that palladium was actually being exported from Russia. Then there was speculation of a new 5 per cent export tax, effective from April 28. That was followed by reports, apparently confirmed by Norilsk, that it had shipped out its entire 1999 quota (about 10 tons) in order to beat the imposition of the export tariff. On Friday between four and five tons of palladium are believed to have been sold at the London fix - an abnormally large quantity: even a ton would be a lot. Meanwhile, the Almaz negotiators are reported to be packing their bags for Tokyo to start the annual haggle about export prices with their big customers there. Since the London bullion market was shut on Monday because of a UK public holiday, it was the New York futures price that bore the main brunt of all this confusing but bearish news. Nevertheless, in London yesterday the price was fixed a further $12 lower at $285 per ounce, and $47 lower than Friday's close. There were large imports of palladium to Switzerland via Holland in March. And Rhona O'Connell of Hoare & Co suggests that the sharp fall in prices could be the consequence of hedging by buyers or their agents in Switzerland. If buyers agree that the metal will be sold at the price obtaining on a particular day, they can avoid risk by selling comparable quantities on similar terms. However, analysts are still puzzled by the fact that so large a quantity was sold at the fix. Ross Norman of Precious Metals Research described it as a desperate move, and argued that Norilsk was not that clumsy. He also pointed out that Norilsk allegedly said it had shipped palladium to the US, whereas the import figures were for Switzerland. Confusion looks likely to prevail in the short term. But in the longer term, Ms O'Connell argues that the fundamentals for the metal remain good. Although palladium users are switching to alternatives where possible, and usage per unit is falling, the total number of units where palladium is involved continues to grow. "Supplies are consistently falling short of demand and are likely to continue to do so . . . the fate of supply rests in Russia's hands." The Financial Times, May 5, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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