-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- >From http://www.originalsources.com/OS2-00MQC/2-24-2000.1.html {{<Begin>}} Is Another Outbreak of War Looming in Kosovo? The Battle of Mitrovica is Not About Visiting Cousins - its About the Trepca Mine By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com> February 24, 2000 The lead Associated Press and CNN stories Monday reported that 25,000 ethnic Albanians have marched for miles through the snow to attempt to force their way into Mitrovica, where the last few Serbs in Kosovo are living. All the Serbs in other parts of Kosovo, including the capitol Pristina, have been driven out or killed. Now the Albanians are challenging the KFOR troops who are guarding Mitrovica to force their way in. Eleven people have been killed in this effort in the past week or so, and KFOR soldiers have been wounded. Why, do you suppose, 25,000 city dwellers would march 25-30 miles through the snow in the middle of winter to try to get across the bridge into Mitrovica? Carlotta Gall, a New York Times reporter covering the story in Kosovo must have asked the question. "We want to liberate the other side," said Shyrete Gela, a 35 year old optician who lives in Mitrovica, as she took shelter in a shop from the clouds of tear gas. "I have cousins who live over there. My friend has her flat there too but Serbs are living there now. Serbs killed my brother, you know. And now people came from Pristina to help us liberate the city, so we must run with them." An MSNBC report quoted a similar comment from another Albanian marcher: "With this peaceful march, we want to make it clear to the whole world that (Kosovska) Mitrovica cannot be partitioned, because it means very much for all the people of Kosovo," said Jeton Balaj, 24, a student participating in the march. So, according to all these reports from top world news sources,all the poor Albanians want is to be able to visit their kinfolk on the other side of the river and it just means so much to them and the unreasonable KFOR troops are preventing them from doing that. Really? How come none of these reports are mentioning another minor little fact concerning Mitrovica - the Trepca Mine? The mine is owned by the Serbs and a Greek mining firm, Mytilinaios SA who signed a contract with Serbian agency of foreign trade in 1998 to invest $519 Billion in the mine. It was part of a deal in which one third of the mineral production of the mine would belong to the Greeks who would sell the minerals in the international market and would also upgrade mining equipment and facilities. "Trepca mines are on the list of companies soon to be privatised, thus allowing the Greek company to buy stock," the report said. (See Athens News Agency Report at http://www.ana.gr/hermes/1998/feb/mining.htm). We are getting another dose of Albanian propaganda designed to lull an uninformed American electorate into believing that the bombing of Kosovo was all about "humanitarianism." The Trepca mine explains why KFOR troops have been determined to keep the KLA terrorists, their former allies, from seizing Mitrovica. NATO has no desire to see the KLA control the minerals in that mine. It would appear that NATO wants the mine for its own use, not that of the unstable Albanians. So, what to do? Blame it on Milosevic, of course! U.S. Ambassador to the UN, William Holbrooke, was the key figure in developing the so-called "humanitarian crisis" following the death of 43 ethnic Albanians at Racak. He accepted, and broadcast the KLA story that the Albanians were innocent civilians "slaughtered" by the Serb forces. French news reports have cast considerable doubt on that story. Half the dead Albanians were killed KLA soldiers killed in a gun battle with Serb forces. The other half were killed at short range after the Serbs had withdrawn. The French reporter believed they were moderates who did not support the KLA and were executed in time to show the bodies to Holbrooke. Yesterday Holbrooke was reported as saying the turmoil at Mitrovica was Milosevic's fault! Supposedly Milosevic is inciting the a few thousand remaining Serbs in Mitrovica to take on the burgeoning Albanian population, which UN figures show has grown from 1.8 million before the bombing started in March 1999 to 2.3 million by December 1999. On July 8, 1998, the New York Times outlined the Trepca Mine situation in an article by Chris Hedges entitled: "Below It All in Kosovo, A War's Glittering Prize." Describing a trip into the mine he said, in part: "As the iron box rattled and squealed on the ear-popping journey, dropping at 18 feet a second, it left behind the potent symbols of nationalism and ethnic identity scattered in disarray on the ground above. Instead, in the shrill cacophony, it exposed the real worth of Kosovo. The medieval Serbian monasteries and churches, crumbling mosques with silver domes and spindly minarets and a dark stone tower brooding over the Field of Blackbirds, where the Turks wiped out Serbian nobles 600 years ago and began 500 years of Ottoman rule, seemed to evaporate in the thin air. ...Half a mile underground, hissing rubber air hoses were looped along tunnel walls and small lights hooked on the hard hats of miners bobbed in the inky universe. Worm-like diesel loaders roared through the corridors, laden with sparkling ore, and huge drills snarled and spat at the rock. ''There is over 30 percent lead and zinc in the ore,'' said Novak Bjelic, the mine's beefy director. ''The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else. This is Serbia's Kuwait -- the heart of Kosovo. We export to France, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Russia and Belgium. ''We export to a firm in New York, but I would prefer not to name it. And in addition to all this Kosovo has 17 billion tons of coal reserves. Naturally, the Albanians want all this for themselves.'' The sprawling state-owned Trepca mining complex, is the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans." The mine, with its warehouses, is ringed with smelting plants, 17 metal treatment sites, freight yards, railroad lines, a power plant and the country's largest battery plant. ''In the last three years we have mined 2,538,124 tons of lead and zinc crude ore,'' said Mr. Bjelic, 58, ''and produced 286,502 tons of concentrated lead and zinc and 139,789 tons of pure lead, zinc, cadmium, silver and gold.'' When the Nazis seized this corner of the Balkans in 1941, they handed over the hovels in Pristina, the provincial capital, to the Italian fascists. But they kept the British-built Trepca mines for the Reich, shipping out wagonloads of minerals for weapons and producing the batteries that powered the U-boats. Submarine batteries, along with ammunition, are still produced in the Trepca mines. The mining history reaches back to the Romans, who hacked out silver from the quarries." At one time 75% of the 23,000 employees of the mine were ethnic Albanians. However, in a political move against the Serbian nationalist movement which was led by Milosevic, the employees shut down the mines and organized a 30-mile- long protest march to Pristina as they carried photos of Tito and Yugoslav flags adorned with the Communist Red Star. They demanded independence for Kosovo and, of course, they wanted to seize control of the "most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans" - the Trepca mines. When the marches didn't work, the Albanians did what they are really trying to do now - they seized and occupied the mines. That led to general strikes throughout Kosovo, making the Trepca mines the nerve center of the resistance movement. The occupying Albanians eventually were seized, the mine reclaimed and the strikers were replaced with Poles, Czechs, Serbs and eventually even Muslim prisoners of war in the Bosnia conflict. By 1998 the number of miners had dropped to 15,000, only 15 percent of whom were ethnic Albanians. Today, those ethnic Albanians who worked for the Serb management are generally considered "traitors" to the KLA cause and many of them were killed or driven from Kosovo when the KLA and KFOR took control in June 1999. The 1998 New York Times Article noted: "A few days ago, Mr. Dimitrijevic (the mine's manager) received the disturbing news that a factory two miles away, where clothing for the miners is produced, had been seized by the rebels. Armed separatist guerrillas now guard the gates, and Serbs avoid the dirt road to the factory. No one has yet tried to take it back. ''We will never give up Trepca!'' he shouted over the drilling. ''Serbs will fight to defend the mine. It is ours. We know how to make war if this is what the Albanians want." I have been getting e-mail for several weeks that has warned another outbreak of war may be imminent, especially when the weather improves. I was told in March or April of last year that the real cause of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was money, not humanitarianism. I didn't believe it at the time and didn't print those reports. In retrospect, it appears those reports were on target. It's a bit hard to explain to anyone, apparently even the KLA allies of NATO, why, after doing nothing to stop the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Gypsies (Roma), Montenegrins, Greeks, Egyptians, Turks and even Croatians from Kosovo by the KLA, all the sudden KFOR and the UN are rushing to stop the Albanians from driving all the Serbs out of Mitrovica. It's not about who gets to visit their cousins on the other side of the river, folks. It's about who gets to control the Trepca mine which produces ores that not only bring in a lot of money, but enable their owners to make or buy weapons. To comment: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Subscribe to the Reagan Monitor, the newsletter that gives you news FACTS you can USE to make your life, and the world, better go to: Start Your Subscription To E-mail Original Sources - Click Here Website: http://www.originalsources.com To E-Mail Mary Mostert, Analyst - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax # (801) 426-8316 {{<End>}} From http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/howitis.htm >>If this is a duplicate of a recent post, sorry, it seemd to fall in line with the foregoing. A<>E<>R << {{<Begin>}} How it is done Taking over the Trepca mines: Plans and Propaganda by Diana Johnstone (2-28-00) www.tenc.net [emperors-clothes] Comparison of two documents, a November 1999 International Crisis Group (ICG) paper on the Trepca mining complex, and a February 2000 article in the Toronto Star by ICG consultant Susan Blaustein, provides an exceptionally clear glimpse into the workings of the "international community". The International Crisis Group is a high-level think tank supported by financier George Soros. It was set up in 1995, primarily to provide policy guidance to governments involved in the NATO-led reshaping of the Balkans. Its leading figures include top U.S. policy maker Morton Abramowitz, the eminence grise of NATO's new "humanitarian intervention" policy and sponsor of Kosovo Albanian separatists. Last November 26, the ICG issued a paper on "Trepca: Making Sense of the Labyrinth" which advised the United Nations Mission In Kosovo (UNMIK) to take over the Trepca mining complex from the Serbs as quickly as possible and explained how this should be done. The February article by the ICG journalist represents a vulgarization of the anti-Serb position designed to prepare public opinion for carrying out the ICG policy. There will no doubt be more. The ICG Paper: Manipulative Ambiguities Trepca is a conglomerate of some 40 mines and factories, mostly but not all in Kosovo, notably including Stari Trg, "one of the richest mines in Europe" and the richest in the Balkans, currently shut down, and the Zvecan smelter, located northwest of Mitrovica and still being operated by Serb management. The ICG calls on UNMIK, headed by Bernard Kouchner, to cut through legal disputes over the industry's ownership and take over management of Trepca itself. On July 25, Kouchner issued a decree that "UNMIK shall administer movable or immovable property, including monetary accounts, and other property of, or registered in the name of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia or the Republic of Serbia or any of its organs, which is in the territory of Kosovo". The ICG paper concluded that "UNMIK and KFOR should implement a rapid and categorical takeover of the Trepca complex, including the immediate total shutdown of the environmentally hazardous facilities at Zvecan". What is really wrong with Zvecan is that it is run by Serbs and provides revenue to Yugoslavia. But in the "game-plan of measures" recommended by the ICG, UNMIK is advised to instruct a "Zvecan environmental assessment team" to report on the status of the equipment and thereupon "advise as to what measures must be taken"... Environmental hazards are to be the pretext to shut down Zvecan and deprive the last Serbs in Kosovo of their livelihood. Meanwhile, "Stari Trg, one of the richest mines in Europe, must be potentially profitable again and should be a priority for donors interested in setting Kosovo on its feet". The game-plan calls for a gradual start up of mining to reassure the "Kosovars", meaning ethnic Albanians, of their future. For although the ICG says that the "workforce and management of all Trepca facilities should be selected on a merit basis only", it adds that "no one with ties to the Belgrade regime should be considered" -- and it is habitual to identify all Serbs with "the Belgrade regime", even to ignore their existence other than as "agents of Milosevic". This blatant takeover of valuable property in what is still nominally part of Serbia is of course justified as a necessary measure to reassure the oppressed Albanians. "The return to work of even a few hundred Kosovar miners would represent, for all Kosovars, the reclaiming of their patrimony". The media event is easy to imagine. But if the ICG hostility toward the Serbs seems genuine, the love for the Albanians may be less than perfect. In the ICG's brief account of past ethnic clashes over Trepca management, underlying the habitual anti-Serb bias is the basic hypocrisy of dominant powers manipulating two peoples against each other. The ICG report notes that Trepca "has long stood for Kosovar Albanians as the symbol of Serbian oppression and of their own resistance", and recounts that after 1974, finally able to manage the Trepca facilities themselves, Kosovars "created thousands of jobs", but that "in 1981-82, a sort of `Trepca-gate' scandal -- in which Kosovar Albanian workers were accused of having stolen vast quantities of gold and silver -- was the pretext for firing many engineers and technicians". Whether the theft was real or merely a "pretext" is of no interest to the international community ... so long as the Serbs were in charge. But afterwards? The report concludes that: "Simply handing Trepca over to the Kosovars is ruled out by the shortage of modern skills available locally, the need for internationally-verifiable standards to avoid corruption" as well as damage to the installations. And as for those "thousands of jobs" created by and for Kosovo Albanians, they are not on the international community agenda. "The social impact of the reduced work force would need to be balanced against the need for competitively based private investment", the ICG observes. Fortunately, the ICG finds that the young leadership of the "Kosovo Liberation Army" is "somewhat impatient" with the older Kosovo Albanian leadership group's interest in "a huge workforce" and prefers modernization that will require foreign investment capital. No wonder Washington chose to back the violent KLA. The manipulative hypocrisy of the ICG policy designers is even more blatant concerning the Serbs. The ICG urges UNMIK to hurry up with the game plan for taking over the valuable mining complex _before_ Serbian elections so that a new government more to the West's liking cannot be accused of "losing Trepca". All Serbian leaders, including opposition leaders, the ICG observes, will have to protest when UNMIK takes over Trepca and the Zvecan smelter. "However they could exploit the argument that the `loss' was due to the pariah status of Milosevic himself, so that once again Serbia has lost assets due to his presence in office. So provided action were taken before any elections in Serbia it need not upset, and might contribute to, any strategy for unseating Milosevic." In short, the international community is going to take over Trepca whoever is in charge in Belgrade; better do it while Milosevic is there, so that the Western-backed "progressive, democratic" opposition can pretend it was the fault of Milosevic! Media Propaganda: Familiarity versus Truth Such cynicism is hard to surpass, but there is always room to add a few lies. This is the task of the media propaganda aimed at getting the general public to swallow the policies decided by elite think tanks and governments. The February 23, 2000 article in The Toronto Star by ICG senior consultant Susan Blaustein, "Mitrovica flashpoint for the next Balkan war", deserves a Jamie Shea award for the most shameless war propaganda of the month. The clichés are all there, "centuries-old hatreds" (not our fault, folks); then focus on the single culprit: Milosevic; the unreliable French seeking appeasement versus the need for the international community to display "backbone" and stand up to "Milosevic's test of its resolve". For Blaustein, it is Milosevic, of course, who is causing trouble in the city of Mitrovica because of his "keen financial interest" in the Trepca mining complex and the Zvecan smelter. NATO has occupied Kosovo and watched for eight months while Albanians murder, terrorize and drive out most of the non-Albanian population, but Blaustein is able to write (and the newspaper to publish) that: "The city is a lynchpin in Belgrade's `Greater Serbia' strategy of expelling non-Serbs from the region." The November 1999 ICG report noted that: "International financial officials have long recognized the minerals industry as being prime for money laundering" throughout the world because of its structure and suggested that "the interest of the Milosevic circle in exploiting the Trepca facilities might go beyond the simple operation of sharing out the profits." This speculation is taken a step further by Blaustein, who writes that the smelter in Zvecan "is widely believed to have served the regime as an efficient money-laundering mechanism". But in any case, if the Serbs are running Zvecan to their profit, why would they want to make trouble? Ah, that Milosevic! It is because "Mitrovica is Milosevic's only remaining foothold in Kosovo" so "he has decided to call the bluff of the international community". The world is one big "test of wills" where little guys are forever "calling the bluff" of giants so the giants will wipe them out. The little guys seem to enjoy doing that, don't ask why. Blaustein goes on to excuse the Albanians for recent violence and blame the French. It is not the Serbs who are being driven out of Kosovo, but the Albanians who are victims of "Milosevic's operatives" who "monitor, harass, terrorize and expel ethnic Albanian civilians who dare to live in or travel to the Serb side of town". The rocket attack on a bus carrying Serb civilians, which killed two of them, was "not unprovoked"; the Albanians were impatient with the international community for turning a blind eye to "Serbs' oppression of ethnic Albanians"... By not allowing mobs of angry ethnic Albanians to take over the last part of Kosovo where Serbs are still managing to live more or less normally, "international officials are abandoning the U.N.'s stated commitment to create and protect a multi-ethnic society in Kosovo", according to Blaustein. This tract is meant to cast the blame in advance for what Blaustein calls the "next Balkan war". It is in total contradiction to the facts of what has been happening in Kosovo during eight months of foreign occupation. How then can anyone dare to write or publish such an article? The answer is that the propagandists are counting on the tendency of uninformed readers to mistake what is familiar for what is true. The cliches about "Milosevic" and "Greater Serbia" are familiar. The truth is not. If and when the "next Balkan war" breaks out and the "international community" takes full control of the Trepca industrial complex, the distracted public need not pay too much attention, since everybody already knows what it's all about: that evil dictator Milosevic is causing trouble again. - Diana Johnstone, 28 February 2000 *** To read the ICG report, Trepca: Making Sense of the Labyrinth please go to http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/icg.htm To read the Blaustein article, please go to http://www.emperors- clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/flashpoint.htm Emperors-clothes relies on contributions to cover expenses. If you'd like to help with a credit card donation please click here or go to http://www.emperors- clothes.com/howyour.html . Or you can mail a check to Emperor's Clothes, P.O. Box 610-321, Newton, MA 02461-0321. Thanks for helping make our work possible. 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