From: Rick Rozoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.nationalpost.com/news/updates/story.html?f=/news/updates/stories/ 20010805/world-470016.html National Post August 5, 2001 Canadian professor claims U.S. aids rebels in Macedonia, Washington denies it ALEJANDRO BUSTOS Canadian Press (CP) - The United States is helping both sides in the armed conflict between the Macedonian government and ethnic-Albanian rebels, says a Canadian university professor who has spent years studying the Balkan country. "America is at war with Macedonia," said Michel Chossudovsky, an economics professor at the University of Ottawa. "There is conclusive evidence that they are helping" the ethnic-Albanian rebels. But Washington is also helping the Macedonian government in what amounts to giving aid to both sides, he said. The claim of dual aid is echoed by reports in the Macedonian and west European press, along with statements from leading Macedonian politicians. The allegations, however, have been dismissed by numerous experts who study the region, and an American military firm working in Macedonia. The U.S. government flatly denies it. Chossudovsky, who has written extensively on Macedonia, insists Washington is actively helping the rebels. But for other experts on the region, the issue is far from conclusive. "I totally reject the notion that the U.S. has trained ethnic-Albanians to wreck Macedonia," Heather Hurlburt, deputy director of the International Crisis Group, a think-tank on preventing conflict around the world, said from Washington. To make sense of the opposing views, one needs to know the history behind the current turmoil in Macedonia, which declared independence in 1991 when the former Yugoslavia broke up. Reports that Washington is funding the rebels in Macedonia stem from U.S. support for ethnic-Albanians in neighbouring Kosovo. In February 1998, then Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic sent troops to crush an ethnic-Albanian uprising in Kosovo, Serbia's southern province. The following year, after Milosevic refused to sign a western-dictated peace agreement, the United States and its NATO allies launched 78 days of air strikes against Yugoslavia. During this period, the West formed links with the now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, a rebel group that has been tied to prostitution and drug running. "There have been reports that rogue elements of the KLA have been trained by the CIA," said Gordon Bardos, a Balkans expert at Columbia University in New York. Gary Dempsey, a foreign policy analyst for the Cato Institute in Washington, doubts the claim of U.S. aid for ethnic-Albanian rebels in Macedonia. However, he said the West was actively involved in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. "Covert actions were taking place in the Bosnian conflict and the early stages of the Kosovo conflict," he said. When fighting erupted in Macedonia earlier this year, ethnic-Albanian veterans from the Kosovo war began shipping arms, soldiers and money to their brethren in Macedonia. The National Liberation Army - the name used by the Macedonian rebels - is generally considered a proxy of the KLA. This has led Macedonian politicians to accuse the West of helping the rebels. "It becomes obvious that all of terrorist actions in Macedonia have been supported by the western democracies," Macedonia's Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski was quoted as saying last month. In late July, the German daily Berliner Zeitung reported that Macedonian secret police had proof that a U.S. military helicopter dropped supplies near rebel lines. U.S. peacekeepers based in Kosovo denied the allegation. Several experts on the region cautioned that one cannot confuse past aid to the Kosovo rebels with current aid in Macedonia. But Robert Hayden, a Balkans expert at the University of Pittsburgh, said it's misleading to declare that past aid given to Kosovo rebels doesn't impact the current fighting in Macedonia. "That's a little fraudulent," he said in a phone interview. Hayden pointed to a statement in 1998 by a Kosovo rebel leader who said, "Kosovo was only the first step." Ethnic-Albanian fighters have claimed parts of Greece, Montenegro - the smaller republic in the Yugoslav federation - and Macedonia. Washington has known about rebel plans to create a greater Albania since 1998, said Hayden. Chossudovsky, meanwhile, has drawn links between the Macedonian rebels and Military Professional Resources Inc., a private Virginia-based military firm. MPRI, which has worked in Colombia and Croatia, is providing the Macedonian government with military expertise under a contract with the U.S. Defence Department. Chossudovsky cited Macedonia press reports that Macedonian military information was sent to the rebels via MPRI's head of operations in Macedonia, who had a working relationship with a former commander of the Kosovo rebels. The two had met in Croatia during the fighting there in the mid-'90s, Chossudovsky said. A spokesman for MPRI, however, said it is ludicrous to think that the company would help both sides in the Macedonian conflict. "As a publicly traded company we would not take that risk. We would end up in jail," said Ed Soyster, a company spokesman. "It doesn't make business sense." Soyster said press reports connecting the company to the rebels are "absolutely not true." MPRI has tens of millions of dollars in contract, most of them with the U.S. government. Engaging in covert actions would risk these contract, Soyster said. A U.S. State Department official denied Washington is helping the rebels. "The reports have been all wrong," said a department official, speaking on condition of anonymity. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
