September 23, 1996
The Washington Post reported Sunday that, according to a "senior Western Diplomat in the area," the Clinton administration knew of the activities of a so-called Relief Agency which was, in fact, funneling weapons and money into Bosnia to prop up the Izetebegovic Muslim government in Sarajevo In effect Clinton lifted the Arms Embargo SOLELY for shipments of arms and personnel from Iran to the Bosnian Muslims. The Administration's action was "in large part because of the administration's sympathy for the Muslim government" the Post said, "and the Third World Relief Agency and ambivalence about maintaining the arms embargo." We were told [by Washington] to watch them but not interfere," the diplomat said.
Throughout most of the Clinton Administration, beginning in 1993, Clinton not only knew of the arms smuggling scheme, he appears to have sanctioned it right up to the Dayton Peace Accord negotiations, in which he pretended a "neutral" role and promised additional weaponry free from America.
Elfatih Hassanein organized the "Third World Relief Agency" in 1987, evidently as a cover for his efforts to import Muslim fundamentalism into Yugoslavia. In a 1994 interview with Gazi Husrev Beg, a magazine focusing on Islamic affairs, Hassanein called for the creation of an Islamic state in Bosnia. "Bosnia, at the end, must be Muslim Bosnia, otherwise, everything has lost its sense and this was for nothing." When Bosnia broke away from Yugoslavia, the Muslims were not a majority in the province of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Hassanein and other Muslim fundamentalists worked to awaken a "religious sense among Bosnia's secular Muslims." In 1992 Muslims were the minority - Christians, either Catholic Croatians or Eastern Orthodox Serbs, were the majority in the Bosnia-Herzegovina. Muslim fundamentalism was not part of the scene in Bosnia until recently.
With the active assistance of the Clinton Administration in arming the Muslims, which enabled them to drive out thousands of Serbs, the election of Izetbegovic last week assured a Muslim Bosnia.
When war broke out in Bosnia, in 1992, Hassanein and his "relief agency" received the official backing of the Bosnian officials, opening offices in Sarajevo, Budapest, Moscow and Istanbul -- all key locations for the smuggling and purchasing of arms. The money, an estimated $350 million, came mostly from fundamentalist Muslims in the Sudan, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. " In October 1992, Haris Silajdzic, then Bosnia's foreign minister, visited First Austrian Bank in Vienna and vouched for Hassanein's credibility as the financial representative of the beleaguered Bosnian state," the Washington Post reported. In 1993, Izetbegovic , who, not surprisingly, just won the election in Bosnia, wrote a letter again assuring the bank that the Hassanein had the full confidence of the Bosnian authorities.
Hassanein acquired a diplomatic passport in March 1992 as a Sudanese cultural attaché. That allowed him to transport large amounts of cash through Austria and into Croatia and Slovenia without being subjected to police checks. The agency's first large operation came to the attention of Western intelligence agencies in September 1992, when Soviet-built transport planes began arriving in Maribor, Slovenia, from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. "While the, cargo was marked humanitarian aid," the Post article noted, " it contained more than 120 tons of assault rifles, mortars, mines and ammunition, intelligence sources said. Investigators say the arms originally came from surplus stocks of Soviet weapons stored in the former East Germany and were probably purchased by the Bosnians in Europe. Chartered Russian helicopters ferried some weapons to the Muslim-controlled towns of Tuzla and Zenica in Bosnia."
In 1993, German police stumbled across a weapons deal being negotiated in Germany by Bosnian Muslims and Turkish arms dealers, according to August Stern, a prosecutor in Bavaria. Germany indicted about 30 Bosnians and Turks on weapons and racketeering charges in connection with the illegal arms deal. It involved $15 million worth of light arms and Stern implicated the relief agency as the financial broker of the deal. Malaysian and Turkish troops who were participating in the U.N. Protection Force, then operating in Bosnia, smuggled the arms into the country from Croatia, several Western sources said. The weapons apparently came from arms stocks in Europe of the old Soviet Red Army.
Although Stern dropped the charges against some of the Bosnians and Turks because he had insufficient evidence against them, he was still waiting for evidence gathered by police in Vienna. In September 1995, German investigators -- and agents from Austria's anti-terrorist task force -- raided the headquarters of Third World Relief Agency seizing enough documents to fill three minivans" according to the Post article. The records showed that over the years it had moved hundreds of millions of dollars through its account at First Austrian Bank.
Bank officials noted that $80 million flowed into the agency's account in 1992; $231 million in 1993; and $39 million in 1994 and 1995. The chief of a Western intelligence agency estimated that more than half of the $350 million was used to buy weapons for the Bosnian Muslims, and to bribe Croatian officials to allow the weapons to cross their country. "Money was also smuggled into Sarajevo on flights of the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees; Bosnian government officials used the money to buy weapons from both Serb and Croat middlemen who operated inside Bosnia" one official said.
Apparently last year the Relief Agency was able to "wind down" its work, because of the "direct weapons pipeline between Iran and Bosnia that passed through Croatia starting in May 1995. With the approval of the Clinton administration in April 1995, that pipeline opened directly through the UN Arms Embargo when the Croatian government asked the United States if it opposed such a link. The Clinton Administration declined to respond, later defending the action by saying that "the US Congress wanted to lift the Arms Embargo." However, none of this was known to Congressional leaders.
Hassanein remains close to Izetbegovic. In August, the Bosnian government awarded the Third World Relief Agency with a gold medal for its "relief work here." Hassanein also hosted Izetbegovic on a private visit to Istanbul last month where Izetbegovic met other Sudanese officials and traveled to Bosnia this month as a guest of the president.
In October 1995, with much fanfare, Clinton announced the new Office of International Criminal Justice (ICJ) in his United Nations speech. The ICJ would" help in the negotiation of an international declaration in which nations would commit in principle to 1) protect the physical safety and collective well being of their citizens; 2) take effective measures to secure their territorial boundaries against transnational threats; and 3) take measures to strengthen the rule of law as essential to the establishment of open societies and open markets."
These stated goals were actually the opposite of Clinton's actions in assisting the Bosnian Muslims who receive aid from Iran, Sudan and other terrorist nations to establish a beachhead for Muslim fundamentalism in Europe. Apparently, he views Christianity in the Balkans with the same disdain he holds the Religious Right in American. Iranian style Muslim fundamentalism could only succeed by defeating the Serbian Eastern Orthodox Christians in Bosnia. Clinton Administration promises at Dayton of MORE weapons for Izetbegovic helped him finish the ethnic cleansing of Sarajevo and win the recently held election. Additional arms shipments to the Muslims, over and above the $350 million in shipments they had already received from Iran and other sources, has effectively placed America against the Christians in Bosnia. Funds and training personnel for a "Bosnia Police Force" under Muslim control is part of the Clinton Administration's Office of International Criminal Justice.
In January, 1996, Carl Bildt, the envoy charged with overseeing civilian aspects of the Bosnian peace accord, criticized planned U.S. arms deliveries to the Bosnian government in an interview for the German weekly magazine Focus saying:
"I would prefer fewer arms, as these are not what is lacking in Bosnia. The United States should think carefully. It is even more difficult to refuse to one camp what one gives to the other," he declared.
On January 19, an American senior official had indicated the U.S. would help finance a "reinforcement program for the Bosnian Army" and that they could even "furnish equipment for free."
Washington plans the shipments as part of its retreat strategy from Bosnia. Congress agreed to send U.S. soldiers to Bosnia with the NATO- led Implementation Force (IFOR) on condition the Bosnian Army would be reinforced and capable of facing the Serbs when IFOR pulls out in a year.
Bildt also said he was against a delay in elections planned for September. "If we put off the elections, we put them off forever. These elections are the condition necessary for common institutions (across Bosnia). As long as we drag out the process, the country will remain divided," he added.