The Global Reflexion Foundation contributes, according to her ability, to the distribution of information on international issues that in the media does not recieve proper attention or is presented in a distorted way. We receive information from different sources, that does not necessary reflect our opinion. If you don't want to receive it, please send us an e-mail. ****************************************************** Friday, October 13, 2000 1. Fischer Calls for Permanent German Troop Occupation of Yugoslavia 2. Yugoslavia Slated for German Domination 3. Yugoslav Coup Unravels ************************************ The URL for this article is http://emperors-clothes.com/news/occupation.htm German Foreign Minister Calls for Permanent German Troop Occupation of Yugoslavia Fischer says Yugoslavs Must Acquire Democratic Culture in order to be able to Relate to Germany Comments by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky follow the news report www.tenc.net [Emperor's Clothes] [Emperor's Clothes note: The following has been translated from the printout of a German language 'Associated Press' dispatch. For more details, see end of article] *** (Berlin), AP, Oct. 11, 2000 German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, addressing Parliament on Wednesday, expressed his opinion that Germany should not only provide material help to Yugoslavia but that the Bundeswehr [the German Army] and non-military organizations should establish a permanent presence there. He declared that this was a unique chance to create a democracy in the context of further European unification. Reunited Germany has a special responsibility for stabilizing democracy in Serbia. Democracy, said Mr. Fischer, is the basis for a lasting peace in the Balkans. But the priority is for the moment that the democratic changes be carried out peacefully and that justice prevail. The Western Balkans is a part of the European comprehensive responsibility. It was truly correct at the time to stop Slobodan Milosevich's policy of Greater Serbia and to engage oneself on the side of the democratic opposition, says Joschka Fischer. Now the bloody murdering in the Balkans can be stopped. The Stability Pact has to be used, among other things, for the clearing of the Danube. Also democratic culture has to be built up [in Serbia] to make possible the normalization of relations between Germany and Serbia. The first steps have been taken through the lifting of the oil and the flight embargoes by the European Union. Now Serbia can be accompanied on its route toward Europe. In the words of Fischer, all those who have made themselves guilty of grave crimes have to be brought to justice. [Note: Original German text will be posted as soon as possible at http://emperors-clothes.com/german/bundeswehr.htm ] *** Yugoslavia Slated for German Domination Interview with Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa. Prof. Chossudovsky studies and writes about the effects of International Monetary Fund/NATO penetration of countries in transition. Interview conducted by Max Sinclair Sinclair: Some supporters of Kostunica are arguing, or hoping, that somehow he can maneuver around the United States because he has ties to Europe. That Europe is getting away from US domination and wants to be independent. Chossudovsky: I think they're very na�ve in that belief. Berlin and Washington are working hand in hand in this situation. They coordinate their respective foreign policy initiatives. Germany's secret service, the Bundes Nachrichtendienst (BND) collaborated closely with the CIA in the various stages of the 78 day bombing of Yugoslavia, and also after the bombing. Everything indicates that what they want is to transform Yugoslavia into a German protectorate with German troops (and the Deutschmark) stationed on Yugoslav soil, within Germany's "Lebensraum". This has been the fate of the other former republics of Yugoslavia including Macedonia and Croatia. In Montenegro and Kosovo the Deutschmark has been established as legal tender. In Kosovo Germany's Commerzbank controls the entire commercial banking system. At the same time it is the Washington Group, which is a US Transnational linked up with the US defence industry, which controls the Trepca mines in northern Kosovo. The Americans and their British allies have their eyes on Central Asia; that is the deal. The Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia are American territory. BP-AMOCO and ARCO, the world's largest Anglo-American oil consortium, is the major player in the Caspian oil fields. NATO's role, through GUUAM, the NATO-sponsored military alliance in this area, is to protect the pipeline routes from the Caucasus through the Balkans. Germany is not an important player in the oil business. In return for the US and Britain getting the Caspian Sea Basin and Central Asia, Germany gets the Balkans and parts of Eastern Europe. The US and Germany seem to have agreed on this division of territory and their respective spheres of influence. Sinclair: So they are fully united? Chossudovsky: United in some regards, divided in others. There is a major split between Germany and the US in the defence industry. We see two competing defence conglomerates. The powerful Deutsche Aerospace which is part of Daimler is now allied with France's Aerospatiale Matra. In turn, British Aerospace is integrated into the US military industrial complex. It is in close relationship with major US defence contractors. In other words the Western defence industry is split in two; the Anglo-American axis and the Franco-German axis. Incidentally in the oil business the Anglo-Americans are also competing with the French-Belgian-Italian consortium, El-Aquitaine-Petrofina-ENI, which also has links to the Iranian and Russian Oil companies. Dinkic Attempts to Control Central Bank for the IMF Chossudovsky: With regard to Yugoslavia, what they want is to impose the Deutschmark, which means Germany would dominate the monetary system. This requires controlling the Central Bank. I think the biggest stake in Yugoslavia right now is over who controls the Central Bank. It appears that Mr. Mladjan Dinkic of the G17 group of economists has assumed control of the Bank. He has done this on behalf of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) If Yugoslavia is to retain national sovereignty, it is absolutely essential that it regain sovereignty over its bank and therefore its monetary policy. If Kostunica and Dinkic and the G-17 can hand over the Central Bank to the IMF, then the German banks will come in as they did in Kosovo and Bosnia . The IMF then acquires de facto control and then we have a colonial situation regardless of what might happen in the arena of party politics. In other words, if the IMF, through the G-17 economists, has control of the Central Bank in the person of Mr. Dinkic, then they control part of the key power in the country. If they also get the position of Finance Minister they have it all. Mr. Dinkic appears to have assumed the functions of a Central Bank governor without the legally required parliamentary assent. There is evidence, publicly available, that the IMF has already begun wrecking the monetary system. For Yugoslavia to retain sovereignty, its monetary policy must be controlled by those answerable to parliament, not to the IMF. This means removing the Central Bank from Dinkic and his associates. With regard to Yugoslavia the US, Germany and France collaborate. Sinclair: The other day I read an article which suggested that Kostunica has the backing of France and so he can therefore play an independent role. Chossudovsky: France and Germany go together. As I mentioned, their defense industries are fully integrated now. There's very close collaboration between the two. That is the new axis. France, ermany and Italy, on one side, and Britain and America on the other. Sinclair: So does this mean there is hope that the Serbs will be protected from the U.S. by France and Germany? Chossudovsky: They won't; no no, they won't. Of course, there are many disagreements and conflicts between Germany and the US. In Albania, the Germans supported the Democrats and the US supported the Socialists. The Germans lost out. Germany's giant mining consortium Preussag, lost out to an Anglo-American mining company when the Socialists came in. Albania is one of the world's largest producers of chrome, you see. But with regard to Yugoslavia the US and German sides fully collaborate. And mind you, the International Monetary Fund is run by a German now. Let's be clear: in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, the IMF is just as much an instrument of German domination as it is of American domination. And then of course there are the historical implications of Germany once more occupying Yugoslavia. This of course has been an established goal of the German Empire, including during W.W.II. Sinclair: Before we conclude could you talk a bit more about United States and Central Asia? Chossudovsky: Well the United States has extended into the Caucasus and the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union; it also has its eyes on China. Since the Asian crisis and the IMF bailout in 1997, South Korea is becoming a full fledged colony of the US. The powerful Korean business conglomerates (Hyundai, Samsung, Daewoo, Kia) are being taken over by U.S. financial interests. The Germans, including Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, are also present in Korea, picking up the pieces. The US has 38,000 troops in Korea. The Korean economy is being ransacked. *** Further Reading 'U.S. Arrogance and Yugoslav Elections' at http://emperors-clothes.com/engl.htm 'The International Monetary Fund And The Yugoslav Elections' at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/1.htm 'Yugoslav Coup Unravels' at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/szamuely/unravels.htm Two interviews relate first hand experience with the DOS terror: * These Dindjic people are brown shirts' at http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/djindjic.htm An interview conducted after the Oct. 5 coup * 'On the list, they had me marked as a nationalist' at http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/onthelist.htm Interview conducted before the Oct. 5 coup The Case of the Reluctant News Report As far as we know, the 'AP' dispatch posted above was only distributed in German. A reader spotted it at Yahoo.com's German language site and emailed us his English translation of an excerpt as well as the web address where he'd found it. Following his instructions we went to http://de.news.yahoo.com/4/ and did a search for "Fischer will Jugoslawien mit Bundeswehr helfen" [Fischer wants Army to help Yugoslavia]. This took us to the web address "http://de.news.yahoo.com/001011/12/14aun.html" The url we there had the right title, but the link didn't work. The other links on the page worked fine. We contacted a friend in Germany who has access to 'AP' . He got a printout of the actual news dispatch and sent us the text in German and translated it to English. We will post the original German soon. ********************************************** Yugoslav Coup Unravels by George Szamuely [10-13-2000] Last week's coup d'etat in Yugoslavia is unraveling rapidly. President Vojislav Kostunica is emerging as a new type of President. He waves to the cameras; he gives interviews to the media; he meets foreign dignitaries. Yet he is in charge of nothing. He has no political party and no political base. He does not control the Federal Parliament. He does not control the Serbian Parliament. He does not control Montenegro. He does not control any Ministry. He does not control the police. Above all, he does not control Yugoslavia's armed forces. And, as he reveals in an interview with the New York Times (October 12), he does not even control his own coalition. Kostunica won 50 percent of the vote - if that - in an election with a 60 percent turnout. The Yugoslav Presidency is essentially a powerless institution, important only because Slobodan Milosevic occupied it. The Yugoslav President, for example, is not the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. The Supreme Defense Council commands the armed forces. This body comprises the President of Yugoslavia, the President of Serbia, the President of Montenegro, the Yugoslav Defense Minister and the Yugoslav Army Chief of Staff. Since Montenegro President Milo Djukanovic is likely to continue boycotting the Supreme Defense Council, Kostunica is outnumbered 3 to 1 by Milosevic loyalists. The United States and the European Union poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Yugoslavia over the years trying to oust Slobodan Milosevic. They ended up with no popular, national hero in the Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel mould; rather a not terribly bright, pedantic prot�g�, one who can only achieve power by thuggery, media attention, and large infusions of foreign cash. As ever, the NATO project is failing. Since last week throughout the country drunken mobs have been storming the offices of factories, coalmines, banks and universities and forcing people to resign. Armed gangs seized the National Bank as well as the Customs' office. The managers of Yugoslavia's largest gold mine and smelter were kicked out, as were the managers at Zastava, the country's giant carmaker. The Director of the Kolubara coalmining complex was thrown out, as was the Director of Yugoslav Coal Production. This lawlessness has not escaped the attention of the Yugoslav military. Last Sunday Kostunica met the Yugoslav Army General Staff. At the meeting, according to the Serbian Ministry of Information, "concern was expressed over certain events in the country, in post-election period, that are not in accordance with the Constitution and the laws, and the position and role of the Yugoslav Army in resolving problems had also been considered." Sounds like a clear warning to Kostunica not to engage in mob rule. Zoran Djindjic, unquestionably the real leader of the Democratic Opposition, evidently decided that the time had come to try to use the same bullying tactics with the army. Djindjic began telling reporters about the need to replace Army Chief of Staff General Nebojsa Pavkovic with Momcilo Perisic, a former general sacked by Milosevic in 1998. "We can expect not only the resignation of the present chief of general staff Nebojsa Pavkovic, but also a wind of fresh air throughout the top ranks," Djindjic said. On Wednesday Kostunica went to army headquarters - a highly revealing act leaving no one in any doubt as to who really wields power in Yugoslavia. Following the meeting, the army issued an ominous statement: "The army leadership drew the President's attention to possible negative consequences which might result from increasingly violent attacks on and efforts to discredit individual Army officers and the Army as an institution of vital importance to national security and defense." Kostunica made it clear that Pavkovic was staying on, that he had never had the slightest intention of replacing him and that Djindjic does not speak for him. Like Al Gore, Kostunica is "his own man." On Monday, the Democratic Opposition was boasting that it had bullied the Serbian President Milan Milutinovic into holding elections for the Serbian Parliament in December and into ceding power to a transitional Government in the interim. Now, it looks as if there will be no elections until September of next year, when Parliament's term is due to end. Members of Milosevic's Socialist Party and those of Vojislav Seselj's Radical Party walked out of talks earlier this week on forming a new government in Serbia. They vowed not to come back until the "end of riots, violence and lawlessness against the citizens of Serbia." The Radicals complained of people were being "lynched by mobs belonging to the illegal regime of the Democratic Opposition." The response of the Democratic Opposition was to threaten more violence. Djindjic issued an ultimatum. Either the Serbian Government sets a date for new elections by Friday or the Opposition will call its followers out into the streets. One senior Democratic Opposition official, Cedomir Jovanovic, warned the Socialists, that they will face "non-constitutional" pressure. Jovanovic said that the DOS would ask for the help of people in the streets to force the Serbian Government into holding early elections and to cede power to a "transitional government." The "people's patience is exhausted," said Velimir Ilic, the Mayor of Cacak. "Serbs are so eager to see changes, and I do not know who�will protect Socialists if they continue to drag their feet." Meanwhile, the Democratic Opposition is trying to bring the Serbian police under its control. Serbia's Interior Minister resigned this week citing a conflict of interest on account of having been elected to the Federal Parliament. The media reported this as a major triumph for Kostunica. No sooner had they done so, than Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic announced that he was taking over the Interior Ministry himself and thereby assuming control of the police. Kostunica wants to ignore elected bodies and to set up so-called "crisis committees" to run the country. But no one is buying into the idea. According to Branislav Ivkovic, a senior figure in Milosevic's Party, the "government [of Serbia] will�ignore all the decisions of the so-called 'crisis committees'." In addition, all managers of state companies dismissed by the Democratic Opposition will be reinstated. The Serbian Government, he explains, "was elected on a four-year mandate, and it is the only one which can make legal decisions." This week Zoran Djindjic announced that the new Federal Prime Minister would be G17 Plus Chief Executive Miroljub Labus. Djindjic has long been an advocate of putting Yugoslavia into the receivership of the IMF. G17 Plus drew up the Democratic Opposition's economic program, with all its promises to abide by IMF demands. Apparently this was all news to Kostunica. He announced that he had promised the job of Prime Minister to a member of Montenegro's Socialist People's Party, which is aligned with Milosevic. The Socialist People's Party has, however, rejected the notion of establishing a "government of experts" in the interim. Kostunica intends to travel to Montenegro on Friday to meet local party leaders as well as Milo Djukanovic. Note that once again it is Kostunica who has to do the traveling and the paying of respects, not the politicians of Montenegro. Kostunica continues on his clueless and sycophantic way. "The United States has done too much meddling in our internal affairs," he says in the Times interview as if he were still running for office, "Now it's meddling less than usual, so this will have a positive influence." "Less than usual"? The United States manipulated an election, and engineered his seizure of power. What does he mean by "usual"? On improving relations with the United States, the Times says: "If re-establishing diplomatic relations is in his competence as Federal President, he said, he will do it quickly." An extraordinary statement, first, in its revelation about Kostunica's lack of knowledge as to what falls within his competence. Second, in its revelation as to the kind of "nationalism" espoused by this supposed "Serbian nationalist." He literally pants to win the approval of the very power that was bombing his country to smithereens last year. Third, if even diplomatic relations do not fall within his competence, what does? What happened in Yugoslavia was the overthrow of a legitimate Government by a combination of brute force and US threats and dollars. The people who have been hoisted into power are no democrats, but the servants of foreign interests. They have no power, and their attempts at circumventing democratic institutions are meeting ferocious resistance in the country. The media hacks, robbed of their "fall of the Berlin Wall" and "people power" story are unable to understand any of this. Convinced that the Democratic Opposition leaders are the "good guys," and that the United States is self-evidently on the side of democracy and freedom, they have only one explanation as to why events are not following the approved script: the old standby, "Milosevic is causing mischief." But this is an old story now, and an increasingly unconvincing one. By stepping down last week and not resorting to violence, Milosevic may well have outmaneuvered the Americans once again. The fight for Yugoslav sovereignty will continue. www.tenc.net [Emperor's Clothes] ******************************************************* Global Reflexion - Amsterdam - The Netherlands
