By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
September 21, 2000
I had intended to write about the reports in the news about six year independent counsel investigation of the Clintons Whitewater investment coming to a close for "lack of evidence" (caused largely, apparently, by the White House's ability to block the investigation.) However, when I read my e-mail I found yesterday four separate warnings, some of them long and detailed, about what writers from three European countries tell me is a Clinton-Gore planned invasion of Serbia, which they believe, will be the "October Surprise" or another "Red October" designed to get Al Gore elected.
One report, from Poland, began,
Dear Friends,This morning (Sept. 19) I heard at Bulgarian radio that NATO plans big maneuvers in Southern Bulgaria on Sept. 24. This is the date of Federal Elections in nearby Yugoslavia. Few days ago the Yugoslav Minister of Information announced that also CIA prepared specific " maneuvers" for this occasion: the (NATO sponsored) Serbian "opposition" shall cry, early in the evening of Sept. 24, its victory in elections, and subsequently accuse Yugoslav Government of a fraud of elections. Following it, several hundreds of Albanian (KLA issued?) soldiers, dressed in Yugoslav Army uniforms, shall enter Serbia from the Southern Kosovo, while about 1500 Bosnians (Moslems?), dissimulated as motorised Serbian policemen, shall enter from Republika Srpska, and start to arrest local Yugoslav officials. We will see very soon whether these NATO/CIA "peace plans" will properly work. The fact is that Yugoslav Army has gathered heavily armed units in Southern Serbia, probably in order to prevent the construction of a "bridge" between the US-controlled Southern Kosovo and the US-controlled Bulgaria."
September 24 is the date of the elections in Yugoslavia. In those Federal elections, Clinton, who will be really angry if Milosevic is still in power when he has to leave the White House, has been giving millions of dollars to Pro-NATO candidate Voislav Kostunica to try to get Slobadan Milosevic defeated.
In fact, the report says:
"It is expected that over 200 MPs and other prominent public figures from 50 countries all over the world will attend the elections in Yugoslavia in the capacity of observer," Yugoslav Parliament's Chamber of Citizens Foreign Policy Committee President Ljubisa Ristic said. Sixteen parliaments would send official delegations to Yugoslavia.
He pointed out that the federal parliament had not invited official delegations from the aggressor countries, since he said this would be unacceptable for the Yugoslav people. Nevertheless, a number of public figures from certain countries that took part in the 1999 NATO aggression on Yugoslavia have arrived here, even some MPs, but in a private capacity, and not as official representatives of the respective parliaments, Ristic said.
More than 210 foreign observers have already arrived in Belgrade to monitor the federal presidential, parliamentary and local elections from Albania, Angola, Argentina, Belgium, Belarus, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Chad, Czech Republic, Chile, Denmark, Egypt, France, Ghana, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Armenia, Jordan, Canada, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Libya, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldova, Germany, Nepal, Nicaragua, Palestine, Portugal, Romania, Russia, the U.S.A., Salvador, Slovakia, Sweden, Spain, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Among the foreign observers is a joint delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of Russia and Belarus.
The foreign observers have attended the final rallies of various political parties, including one for Milosevic at the opening of a new hydroelectric plant at Djerdap, in which over 100,000 people showed up. His chief opponent, Kostunica, who as of yesterday became the official candidate of the European Union for the presidency of Yugoslavia, draws about one tenth that size audience and is sometimes pelted with rotten tomatoes. The observers will be present at most electoral stations all day on Sunday, September 24.
This brings to mind the charge that foreign observers, and the election of NATO backed Kostunica is "necessary" in order to bring "democracy" to the Serbs. Yet, as is pointed out by Jared Israel, in discussing the issue of "democracy" in Yugoslavia, "How many major newspapers in the US have allowed the opposition to the war against Yugoslavia to publish? The percentage of Yugoslavs who voted for the different parties in Yugoslavia's governing coalition is probably as high as or higher than the percentage of US voters who vote for anyone in US presidential elections. But nobody talks about 'the Clinton regime' do they?"
For that matter, how many major newspapers in the US have actually reported what has occurred in Yugoslavia, which has nearly one million refugees from Kosovo and Bosnia, as compared with the efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo, financed by the West, to rebuild? In spite of sanctions designed to prevent the Serbs f rom rebuilding, they have repaired about half the damage caused by the 79 days of bombing. New refineries opened and electrical power is fully restored. These accomplishments have done more to bring the voters into Milosevic's corner than the $77 million in US funds to the opposition has done to help his opponents.
The European newspapers are carrying stories which talk about what is termed "US meddling" in Balkan affairs. A member of parliament in German, Wolfgang Gehrke, was reported in Berlin's Neues Deutschland newspaper as accusing the German Government, the European Union and NATO of not wanting peace in the Balkans which, he said "is evident from their officious meddling in Yugoslavia's internal affairs ahead of September 24 elections."
Indeed, the West seems to have a selective memory where Yugoslavia is concerned. For example, it almost NEVER talks about upholding United Nations resolution 1244, which was agreed to by all parties to bring an end to the 79 days of bombing and which it INSISTED Yugoslavia follow to the letter.
It has been more than a year since the bombing stopped. After months of searching for bodies of "up to 100,000" bodies of Ethnic Albanians reportedly slaughtered by the Serbs in Kosovo, the forensic report, authored by experts from many nations, shows only about 2000 bodies - and many of them turned out to be Serbs and other minorities. There WAS no genocide. The reason given for the bombing in March of 1999 was false.
So, exactly why are NATO, the European Union and Bill Clinton still so determined to force the disintegration of Yugoslavia?
During the bombing, Serbs in Belgrade kept telling me that the war was really over oil routes and the Kosovo mines. That was an idea that seemed truly far-fetched to me at the time. I was told that the real motivation was economic, and was reminded that Secretary of Commerce, for the United States of America, Ron Brown, along with a planeload of American business executives died in a place crash as they were flying into Bosnia early in the Clinton administration.
The argument revolved around possible routes for oil that would be pumped and sent to the West, especially the USA, via large tankers, from the Caspian or Black Sea and who gets to control the lucrative Trepca Mine. That, frankly, seemed even MORE farfetched. Yet, the U.S. Department of Energy observes: "Many of the proposed export routes from the Caspian region pass westwards through the Black Sea and the Bosporus en route to the Mediterranean Sea and world markets. The ports of the Black Sea, along with those in the Baltic Sea, were the primary oil export routes of the former Soviet Union, and the Black Sea remains the largest outlet for Russian oil exports. Exports through the Bosporus have grown since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, and there is growing concern that projected Caspian Sea export volumes exceed the ability of the Bosporus to accommodate the tanker traffic. Caspian oil exports via Black Sea ports are expected to increase to 500,000 barrels/day (bbl/d) in 2000, and the development of additional Caspian Sea export routes such as the CPC pipeline could increase oil flows by almost another 2 million bbl/d by 2010. The extent to which additional oil flows through the Black Sea and/or Bosporus depends upon the location of export routes for additional oil exports in the next 10-20 years."
The huge super tankers, which carry 300,000 barrels of oil, cannot get through the Bosporus Straits. Recently, we read, contracts were signed which would bring the oil across Bulgaria, to Albania. The report ended with the note: "Political instability in the region" threatened the planned pipeline. And, of course, the Trepca Mine has been seized recently by NATO forces on the pretense that it was not environmentally safe. Of course, it was a whole lot safer than the bombs NATO dropped seemingly indiscriminating for 79 days in 1999, but what NATO wants, NATO does in the Balkans these days.
Does that mean our troops will remain in Bosnia and Kosovo and might, as suggested, attempt a pre-election "Red October" to put the rest of Yugoslavia under NATO and US military control? Many in Europe seem to think so. However, this is not 1992 when Bill Clinton had at his command a military which was able to take on a series of new military assignments. CATO Institute reminds us that,
"According to a front page story in The Washington Post, the military's mission in Kosovo has become a treadmill. In dozens of interviews, officers and enlisted men said they can do valuable work there but still never know whether they have achieved anything meaningful. For many GIs, Kosovo is a mission without goal posts or time limits."Some U.S. soldiers complain that neither Serbs nor ethnic Albanians seem interested in peace. More than half the troops interviewed in a recent survey conducted by Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, said they expected Kosovo would be the same when they leave as when they arrived.
"In "Bosnia Mission Weakens U.S. Military,"( http://www.cato.org/dailys/12-08-98.html) Foreign Policy Analyst Gary Dempsey finds that the U.S. Army has been used in 29 significant overseas operations, compared with 10 during the preceding 40 years. The strain of seemingly never-ending and aimless missions has had a negative impact on readiness and morale."
Would Clinton really attempt a ground war with Milosevic before the election? And, if he did, what could we expect would be the result? Nearly all the good feeling towards America that existed in the Balkans in 1992, at the end of the Reagan-Bush administrations, has been dissipated by the Clinton Administration. Our armies would face a still intact, well trained, efficient and very determined Yugoslav army, which would be fighting on its own turf for its own homes and families.
Would Clinton be that stupid? Just to get Al Gore elected? Time will tell.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
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