Seventy Percent of Montenegrins Are AGAINST Secession and other Balkans stories (Sep 10, 2000)

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TiM GW Bulletin 2000/9-3

Sep. 10, 2000

U.S. “Covered Up” for Kosovo Albanian Criminal; Then Gives Him Royal Treatment in the U.S.

Seventy Percent of Montenegrins Are AGAINST Secession

Karadzic Seen in Sarajevo?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 - A Howard University professor who has just returned from a trip through Serbia, Montenegro and Albania said in an Aug. 29 Washington Times OpEd piece that 70 percent of Montenegrins are AGAINST secession from Yugoslavia.

Just as we opined in the subject “Red October” Bulletin, Prof. Nikolaos A. Stavrou, who teaches international affairs at Howard, said that, “Montenegro is rapidly becoming the next flash point that could silence George W. Bush's criticism of the uses and misuses of American power and could serve as the October surprise in an election year.”

“This tiny republic of 600,000 people is neither a democracy nor a state, although is treated as one by our architects of the Balkan quagmire. Its government behaves as an aspiring victim and seems eager to make the most of Mr. Milosevic's villainous image in an election year. Madeleine Albright's latest model of Balkan democrat, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, presides over a smuggling enterprise, not a government. The Italian mafia, roving Russian gangsters, and Albanian drug and gun dealers, all share the benefits of Montenegro's anarchic environment that Western observers confuse for freedom. […]

A year after NATO's humanitarian intervention this region, still Yugoslav sovereign territory, has been transformed into a safe heaven for Europe's largest drug cartel. It also is a place where Islamic fundamentalists drift in and out with little hindrance.

But judging from its escalating rhetoric, the Clinton administration seems itching for another Balkan war in defense of self-proclaimed victims. The Bosnia-Kosovo pattern is now being fine-tuned and Slobodan Milosevic, our favorite villain, could be tricked to provide the pretext.

Part of the fine-tuning is a myth currently perpetrated by the "mainstream" Western media: i.e. that Montenegro's population wishes to break free from Belgrade's grip and go its own way. That is a myth. Internal polls conducted by Montenegro's own government (confirmed by an informal poll by this writer) show a solid 70 percent of the population favoring the Federation, even though the same percentage also opposes Mr. Milosevic's authoritarian rule and Mr. Djukanovic's corruption.

Sensing the likely outcome of such a referendum for independence, the family-centered government of Montenegro passed up several opportunities to hold one. Instead, under apparent Western tutoring, it has opted for the well-tested "victimhood model." Verbal and other provocation against Belgrade have intensified and a paramilitary force resembling KLA in its formative years is used to "solve" the unemployment problem. The scenario most often talked about by idle "coffee shop" analysts is a staged hot incident and disproportionate reaction by the entrenched Yugoslav Army.

Ironically, in a land of suffering and more than 40 percent unemployment, Mr. Djukanovic builds a paramilitary force with unexplained resources and highly paid foreign mercenaries as trainers. This force resembles in more ways than one the KLA in its formative years; and in the heat of American presidential elections, it could provide an October surprise.”

PRISTINA, Sep. 10 - American officials in Kosovo are being accused of interfering with a UN police investigation into a senior Kosovo Albanian politician implicated in murder, drug-trafficking and war crimes, the London Observer reported in its today’s (Sunday) edition. Reporting for the Observer from Pristina, Nick Wood said that the U.S. officials had withheld evidence linking a leading politician to a gunfight, drugs and war crimes

“Ramush Haradinaj, a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was the key US military and intelligence asset in Kosovo during the civil war and the Nato bombing campaign that followed. In the latest twist in the saga of an increasingly flawed electoral process, United Nations police in the province complain that US personnel withheld evidence about a gunfight involving Haradinaj, who is now head of one of the province's leading political groups.

UN investigators leading the case say US officials based at their main base, Camp Bondsteel, removed forensic evidence from the scene of the gun battle, including bullets retrieved from walls. The incident, which took place in the village of Strellc in the west of Kosovo, is well out of the US Army's area of responsibility, which lies in the south-east of the province.

Following the shooting Haradinaj, known almost universally in the province as simply Ramush, was flown by helicopter to (the American) Camp Bondsteel and then onto Germany to be treated in an US Army hospital for shrapnel wounds. UN investigators were denied access to him during that time.

Evidence from the incident was eventually handed over after angry phone calls from Fred Pascoe, the American policeman heading the UN investigation.

The news of American reluctance to co-operate with the investigation comes amid a catalogue of accusations linking Haradinaj to murder, drugs trafficking and war crimes.

The shooting revolved around a dispute between Haradinaj and members of the Musaj family, who accuse him of ordering the murder of their brother and three other men shortly after the arrival of Nato troops in Kosovo in June 1999. The men were all part of FARK (Armed Force of the Republic of Kosovo ), a rival group to the Kosovo Liberation Army. Three Musaj brothers had visited Haradinaj's father to demand the bones of their brother, a right they had according to Albanian custom. Haradinaj admits he went to the Musaj family home at around one in the morning to stop the brothers from visiting his father again.

This is the second time this year Haradinaj has been caught up in violence. He was injured in a fight with Russian soldiers at a K-For checkpoint in the spring. Western diplomats say he has damaged his party's prospects in UN-organized local elections due this October. […]

NEW YORK, Sep. 10 - The London Observer’s reporter also noted that ironically, despite the fact that the U.S. government officials have been accused by American police officers serving in Kosovo of conspiring to protect Kosovo Albanian criminal-cum-“politician,” “this latest incident does not appear to have damaged his contacts with US military or political figures. His (Ramush Haradinaj’s) party officials were invited to a discussion on the future of Kosovo at a meeting organized by the US state department. He himself is currently in Washington on a fund-raising trip and as the guest of a US Congressman, Benjamin Gillman.”

More details about the royal treatment that Albanian-American community, some members of Congress, and the Clinton administration are giving this fugitive from justice in Kosovo came from a Sept. 8 report by the (Albanian?) Bota Sot news agency, in a report titled “Pizza with Heroin Topping” by the TiM reader who had sent it to us;

“In a statement issued today by AAK (Albanian Action Committee) spokeswoman in USA, Mrs. Shirley Cloyes Dioguardi said that AAK president Mr. Ramush Haradinaj will arrive today in USA for one week working visit.

As Mrs. Dioguardi stated, Mr. Ramush Haradinaj will attend Saturday Gala evening organized by the district of congressman Benjamin Gilman in New York.

Sunday September 10, Mr. Haradinaj will meet the Albanian-American community of New York at Royal Regency Hotel at 1:30 P.M. Also on Sunday in the evening Mr. Haradinaj will have a meeting with the Albanian community of New Jersey organized by the association "Albanian Joint Fund" in Paterson.

Tuesday September 12, Mr. Haradinaj will fly early in the morning to Washington D.C for a two day visit where he will have meetings with American senators and congressmen as well as with officials of Clinton's administration. A meeting will be organized for Mr. Haradinaj at American Congress in the Committee for foreign relations.

TiM Ed.: Rep. Gilman chairs the House Foreign Relations Committee. In addition, former Republican presidential candidates, Bob Dole and John McCain, as well as the current Democratic candidates, Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, have all been among the outspoken supporters of the Kosovo Albanian causes, and have all made rabidly anti-Serbia comments throughout the 1990s (see and “John McCain: Our "Fraud Hero;" Artemije, His Disgrace... and other Kosovo stories”).

Bipartisan Washington’s rolling out a red carpet for a Kosovo Albanian criminal is perhaps the best indication to-date of the extent to which our government has been criminalized under the New World Order (also see "Thugs of the World Unite!" - TiM GW Bulletin 98/6-7, 6/26/98).

SARAJEVO, Sep. 10 - Dr. Radovan Karadzic, former Bosnian Serb president who is being hunted down by for alleged war crimes during the Bosnian war (1992-1995) was seen last was seen last weekend in a bar in the Serb-controlled suburb of the capital Sarajevo, according to a Reuters report, which quoted a Sarajevo daily as source.

The “Oslobodjenje” newspaper quoted a source close to the Bosnian Serb government as saying that Karadzic dined and drank last Saturday (Sep. 2) in a small bar in Lukavica, a part of Sarajevo still controlled by Bosnian Serb hardliners. It did not name the bar.

The source told the daily that Karadzic appeared at the bar in casual clothes and looked exhausted. He did not have heavy security around him.

The daily also said that according to some information Karadzic, he had found refuge in homes of people he could trust living near Sarajevo. Sometimes he even stayed in the capital itself, the paper said, adding that he moved around during the night.

TiM Ed.: For what it’s worth. The TiM reader who sent us this report said that it was probably a hoax.