STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Get a low APR NextCard Visa in 30 seconds! 1. Fill in the brief application 2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds 3. Get rates as low as 2.99% Intro or 9.99% Ongoing APR and no annual fee! Apply NOW! http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/NextCard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1)Copyright 2001 CTK Czech News Agency Czech News Agency June 5, 2001 NATO LACKS INFO ON CZECH SCREENING AFFAIR, SAYS IT MAY BE PROBLEM BRUSSELS, June 5 (CTK) - Yves Brodeur from NATO has told CTK in relation to the current scandal in the Czech Republic over possible wrongful issuing of clean screening certificates to ex- communist StB agents that NATO does not know details of the scandal, but that this does not mean the problem does not exist. Brodeur could not tell CTK whether the case was being discussed at NATO headquarters. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 together with Hungary and Poland. "I am hearing about it for the first time," CTK's reporter in Brussels was told anonymously by another NATO representative. Czech press reported on Monday that NATO officials were unsettled by the scandal, involving in particular Czech defence and security officials. Both Brodeur and the other official who spoke to CTK declined to give any speculations about consequences of potential confirmation that former communist agents who wrongly received certificates saying they had not collaborated with the StB, the former Czechoslovak Communist secret police, were now working with NATO. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross said on Friday of last week that a ministry inspection had discovered that probably more than 100 people were in the early 1990s wrongly issued certificates clearing them of having collaborated with the Czechoslovak Communist secret police even though they had been collaborators. The Interior Ministry is now reportedly checking around 150,000 screening, or lustration, certificates. The Czech Republic has a screening law, which some have criticised as unfair while others have defended, that sets conditions that are supposed to be met by people in order to work in state administration, the judiciary, public media, the Czech National Bank (CNB) or majority state-owned firms. The screening law was passed in order to bar former pre-1989 StB agents or collaborators, former top Communist Party functionaries, members of the former People's Militia Communist paramilitary units or former students at schools run by the Soviet KGB from holding posts mentioned above. Within NATO, every member country is supposed to conduct background checks on anyone who could come in contact with confidential or secret information. NATO member countries do this according to individual guidelines, and the outcomes of the background checks are not known to be usually questioned. All staff members of the Czech Republic's delegation in NATO, both military and civilian personnel, undergo secret level background checks carried out by the Czech National Security Authority (NBU). The NBU is said not to rely on screening certificates issued by the Czech Interior Ministry during the first half of the 1990s when carrying out the background checks for NATO purposes. The NBU reportedly instead thoroughly verifies validity of the screening certificates on its own to its satisfaction. Defence Minister Jaroslav Tvrdik said in an interview published on Monday by the Czech paper Pravo that the reports about clean screening certificates having been wrongly issued in the early 1990s to former communist agents had taken NATO officials by surprise and prompted them to ask whether such persons could have gained access to NATO secrets. Tvrdik told Pravo he did not think there was reason for any such concern. 2)Financial Times Information Global News Wire June 5, 2001 SECRET FILES DECLASSIFIED PER NATO ORDER EMI PETKOVA Bulgaria THERE IS a resolution, issued in 1990, which recommends that the so called new democracies distance themselves from the totalitarian secret services, said Dimitar Abadzhiev, considered to be the ideologist of the ruling UDF and leader of the party nominee list in the Veliko Tarnovo constituency. This resolution was the basis for introducing the act under which the names of the agents of the former security services were declassified, he explained, again threatening with barriers that might be imposed in Bulgaria's accession to the EU and NATO. Abadzhiev went at great lengths to elaborate what he and his party consider to be high morality and even congratulated the National Movement for Simeon II /NMSII/ for showing good morality, meeting his expectations. The Movement said the day before it will cancel the 8 nominations in its lists, who turned out to be present in the files of the security services, among them a prominent Bulgarian artist and cartoonist. Further Dimitar Abadzhiev announced his own poll predictions about his party winning 20% of the popular vote in the Veliko Tarnovo region, against 28% for the NMSII and 9% for the Bulgarian Socialist Party. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
