Srjda Trifkovic, former PR agent for Radovan Karazdic.Writes a column for the paleo-con Chronicles.
Diana Johnstone, former European correspondent for In These Times. Found now in The Emperors New Clothes.
Mary Mostert, Reaganite internut pundit. Michael Pugliese
http://www.google.com/search?q=Kosovska+Stari+Trg+mine&btnG=Google+Search
This is G o o g l e's cache of http://www.impactnet.org/KosovoLies-
Soros.htm.
>...Far more interesting than Ms. Guzy's "eloquent voice" and far more
revealing about the truth of Kosovo is the story about the Kosovska Mitrovica
mines at Trepca-Stari Trg, which is why it remains untold in the "mainstream"
media. Let's first look at a recent KFOR press release (www.kforonline.com:
Mining Industry - A Great Asset For Kosovo, 25 March 2000):
"The mines in the area around Mitrovica have a great potential for the future of Kosovo, and Saturday, KFOR was allowed to play a part in the reconstruction of the Stari Trg Mine just east of Mitrovica. KFOR Polish soldiers were able to provide mining uniforms with hard hats and other safety equipment- to the director of the Stari Trg Mine, Mr. Burhan Kavaja- Kavaja has 250 men working for him. But there is a lot of work to be done. "The mine is 800 meters deep with 12 levels. The two lowest levels are filled with water, and every minute we pump out between five and six thousand liters. Once the water is out, we can exploit 16 million metric tons of zinc, lead and silver, and there are enough metals to have work for 20 years," Kavaja said. At the moment, UNMIK has the administrative responsibility of all the mining resources in Kosovo, and when there is profit from the mines, the profit will stay in Kosovo to be a valuable asset to the reconstruction of the region."
What this story is NOT telling you is that:
1.Mr. Kavaja is not the mine's legal manager but an ethnic Albanian usurper who has illegally taken over the mine with his 250 "men" (not a single non- Albanian among them) after they had killed or ethnically cleansed every last Serb from the Stari Trg area;
2.The mine is owned by the Serbs who have a joint venture agreement with the Greek mining firm Mytilinaios SA to jointly develop the mine.
Almost two years ago Chris Hedges published an article in The New York Times under the title "Kosovo War's Glittering Prize Rests Underground" in which he pointed out that the real issue in Kosovo was control of the Trepca-Stari Trg mining complex. In that article Hedges quotes "Burhan Kavaja, an Albanian, who was the former director of the Stari Tng mine, who was dismissed and imprisoned" and who declared that the Kosovo conflict would only end "with our [Albanian] independence." Hedges went on to provide us with a timely reminder that when the Nazis seized Kosovo in 1941, they handed over the rest of the province to the Italians, 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 - `There is over 30 percent lead and zinc in the ore,' said Novak Bjelic, the mine's [Serbian] beefy director. `The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else. This is Serbia's Kuwait -the heart of Kosovo. And in addition to all this Kosovo has 17 billion tons of coal reserves. Naturally, the Albanians want all this for themselves.
Analyzing the background to the Trepca story Mary Mostert (www.originalsources.com) wrote recently that her contacts in Yugoslavia had told her, at the time of the bombing, that the war was really all about control of Kosovo mineral assets: "I didn't print that in 1999. I couldn't believe at that time that America would be a party to such a thing. The KFOR email and their report on the Stari Trg mine on the Internet is irrefutable proof that the Serbs were right."
But a month before the KFOR-supervised distribution of equipment to Mr. Kavaja's Albanian squatters at the mine, Diana Johnstone predicted what was going to happen in an amply documented and carefully researched article ("Taking over the Trepca mines: plans and propaganda," www.tenc.net). She looked at two documents, a November 1999 International Crisis Group (ICG) paper on the Trepca mining complex, and a February 23, 2000 article in the Toronto Star by ICG consultant Susan Blaustein, which offered an exceptionally clear glimpse into the workings of the "international community." The ICG is a think- tank founded in 1995 and supported by financier George Soros. Its brief is to provide policy guidance to governments involved in the NATO-led reshaping of the Balkans. Among its leading figures is Morton Abramowitz, the proponent of NATO's "humanitarian intervention" and sponsor of Kosovo Albanian separatists.
In November 1999 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. Three months later, in February of this year, an ICG associate published a follow-up article that - in Ms. Johnson's view - "represents a vulgarization of the anti-Serb position designed to prepare public opinion for carrying out the ICG policy." The ICG called on UNMIK, headed by Bernard Kouchner, to cut through legal disputes over the industry's ownership and take over management of Trepca itself. Already on July 25 1999, six weeks into the NATO occupation, 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 with a call on UNMIK and KFOR to "implement a rapid and categorical takeover of the Trepca complex."
The justification, as if any were needed, is to assure the long- downtrodden "Kosovars" (ethnic Albanians) "of their future." The brazen robbery of property worth billions of dollars and owned by a sovereign state is but a necessary measure to assure the oppressed Albanians' human rights.
"The return to work of even a few hundred Kosovar miners would represent, for all Kosovars, the reclaiming of their patrimony." But as Diana Johnstone notes, the ICG's love for the Albanians may be less than perfect: "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:
"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.
The ICG openly urged UNMIK to speed up the takeover before any future Serbian elections so that a new government - presumably 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 Trepca is taken over, but the study points out that 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.
Such cynicism is hard to surpass, Diana Johnstone thinks, but there is always room to add a few lies. The subsequent Toronto Star article by ICG senior consultant Susan Blaustein ("Mitrovica flashpoint for the next Balkan war") deserves "a Jamie Shea award" for shameless war propaganda, she says:
"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." 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."
Of course last year's NATO war against the Serbs was not "all about the mines." It was about many things. As I have argued elsewhere, it is also about finding a new role for NATO, appeasing our Muslim clients, pandering to the military-industrial complex, Arab oil, Israeli security, isolating Russia, getting closer to the Caucasus, acquiring European bridgehead if NATO disappears... it's all there to some extend. But such "rational" reasons - precious mineral wealth included - are insufficient to explain Washington's virulently anti-Serb, premeditatedly duplicitous policy.
The real answer is in the desire of the ruling elite to use the Balkans as a testing ground for the emerging post-national global empire of their dreams. They know that Kosovo is more than a piece of real estate, that it is to the Serbs what Alamo is to Texans or Jerusalem to Jews, that taking it and letting its churches and monasteries be demolished is an exercise in ethnocide that will take us a step closer to the global imperium without borders, memories, or meaning. But if there is a fast billion or two to be made in the process by the hyenic Mr. Soros and his ilk, of course they will take their chance. They will do their worst because of their vocation and their formation. They cannot do otherwise. We may pity the fact, but we must not forgive them.
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