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December 07, 2003
ERP KiM Newsletter
07-12-03
Serbia: A Country
with 700.000 refugees
Uncertain future for more than
700.000 Serb refugees from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo
Two Serb refugee kids from a collective refugee camp at Resnik near
Belgrade
(article: AFP: Serb refugees - Out of sight, out of mind
)
CONTENTS:
 Sunday
Times: We buy bag of Semtext from [Kosovo] terrorists
"Posing as
members of the Real IRA, we were also offered three shoulder-held
missile launchers, an anti-aircraft gun, and enough machine guns, hand
grenades and landmines to equip a small army. We made our deal in
Kosovo, a breeding ground for fanatics with al-Qaeda links. Our contact
was the deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Niam
Behljulji, known as Hulji. The group were trained by Bin Laden's men.
Astonishingly, we met him under the noses of the British Army and UN
forces - who remain as peacekeepers following Kosovo's bloody war with
Serbia. Hulji, is said to supply terrorists across Europe and has been
accused of massacring Serbian women and children during the war".
UN: UN
bus damaged during disturbance in Kosovo
One person suffered minor injuries and a number of vehicles were damaged
today when a public disturbance flared up in Kosovo, the UN Mission in
the province reported.
Serbian PM says: Kosovo a haven for terrorists
Addressing
a conference in Belgrade on fighting organised crime, Zoran Zivkovic
claimed that terrorists were being protected in Kosovo.
AFP: Serb refugees - Out of sight, out of mind
Dragana
Vitosevic, a nine-year-old Serb girl from Kosovo, has spent almost half
her life in a refugee centre in Pancevo, a grim industrial town near the
Serbian capital Belgrade. She is just one of around 700,000 Serbs, those
who fled or were driven from their homes during the wars in Bosnia,
Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s. Now they make up about 10 percent of
Serbia's population.
For
Morality and Truth
A leading Serbian academician and
poet Matija Beckovic supports restauration of Parliamentary Monarchy in
Serbia
News from Kosovo and Metohija, Dec 5, 2003
More News Available on our:
Kosovo Daily News
list (KDN)
KDN
Archive
This newsletter is available on our ERP
KIM Web-site:
http://www.kosovo.net/erpkiminfo.html
We buy bag of Semtex from
terrorists
A
TERRIFYING threat to Britain's security can today be revealed by the
Sunday Mirror.
"Posing
as members of the Real IRA, we were also offered three shoulder-held
missile launchers, an anti-aircraft gun, and enough machine guns, hand
grenades and landmines to equip a small army. We made our deal in
Kosovo, a breeding ground for fanatics with al-Qaeda links. Our contact
was the deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Niam
Behljulji, known as Hulji. The group were trained by Bin Laden's men.
Astonishingly, we met him under the noses of the British Army and UN
forces - who remain as peacekeepers following Kosovo's bloody war with
Serbia. Hulji, is said to supply terrorists across Europe and has been
accused of massacring Serbian women and children during the war".
TOP
The
Sunday Mirror (UK) -
original article
Dec 7 2003
By Graham Johnson Investigations Editor
A TERRIFYING threat to Britain's security can today be revealed by the
Sunday Mirror.
With the country on its highest-ever state of alert amid fears of a
Christmas terror strike our investigators infiltrated a cell of Muslim
extremists - and bought enough Semtex to blow up Oxford Street and the
Houses of Parliament or down 40 Lockerbie jets.
Our Horrifying haul:
Graham and Donal (left)
bury the semtex for safety
Last night one of the men we dealt with was under arrest. The other was
believed to have been assassinated by his own terror masters for blowing
their cover.
Our 13.5kg haul of Semtex - in 108 sticks - is one of the biggest ever
seized from terrorists and could have potentially armed 30 suicide
bombers.
And chillingly the explosive, which we bought for £10,000, was of a form
that doesn't show up on metal detectors, making it much easier to
smuggle into Britain.
A small amount of the explosive was allegedly found here last week as
police arrested more than 20 terror suspects.
Posing as members of the Real IRA, we were also offered three
shoulder-held missile launchers, an anti-aircraft gun, and enough
machine guns, hand grenades and landmines to equip a small army.
We made our deal in Kosovo, a breeding ground for fanatics with al-Qaeda
links.
Our contact was the deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA) Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji. The group were trained by Bin
Laden's men.
Astonishingly, we met him under the noses of the British Army and UN
forces - who remain as peacekeepers following Kosovo's bloody war with
Serbia.
Hulji, is said to supply terrorists across Europe and has been accused
of massacring Serbian women and children during the war.
He even posed grinning for a photograph, holding the severed head of one
his victims.
But we won him over by playing on one of his weaknesses...he is a huge
fan of Irish rock band U2.
He couldn't wait to deal with us when we promised him one of the band's
CDs - which we had signed with a fake message from lead singer Bono.
He told us: "I can give you enough Semtex for a small war. Do you need
it for terrorism?"
Our investigation, carried out with Channel 5 sleuth Donal MacIntyre for
his series MacIntyre's Millions, began when we arrived in Kosovo posing
as members of the Real IRA.
Our first contact was with a Mafia arms dealer called Sinbad Sadkutz,
who acts as a middleman for Hulji.
Sadkutz arranged a meeting with Hulji in a KLA-run cafe which was
surrounded by armed guards and had been swept for "bugs".
Hulji said: "The plastics (Semtex) is the old type. No metal strips
inside. It cannot be detected at airports. It is untraceable - no
chemical markers."
He then offered us an anti-aircraft gun similar to one used by Iraqi
dissidents last week to hit a US DHL cargo plane as it landed in
Baghdad.
We next met Sadkutz in a Mafia-run brothel called The Massage Club, and
agreed to buy 15kg of Semtex for £10,000.
To make sure the deal went through smoothly, Hulji insisted that we hand
over a "human deposit" hostage and £7,500 in euros.
Our "deposit" was my fellow investigator Dominic Hipkins. He was to be
held in a terrorist-owned bungalow - opposite the British ambassador's
residence in Pristina - while the deal was sorted out.
Four days later Sadkutz took our man to collect the Semtex from his
nearby home and the pair returned to the bungalow, the explosives packed
into a sports holdall.
The grey-brown Semtex, wrapped in brown grease-proof paper marked
"explosive", looked and felt like child's play dough.
But when burnt with a lighter it produced an intense blue flame -
proving it was Semtex. As a Sunday Mirror investigator tested the
explosive, Sadkutz grinned as he said: "15kgs can blow up all this
neighbourhood."
After Sadkutz had left, we found the KLA had hidden 1.5kg of lead in the
lining of the bag so that the actual Semtex weighed 13.5kg, instead of
the 15kg we had negotiated for.
For safekeeping, our investigators buried the Semtex on a hill
overlooking the British Army base in Kosovo and took a satellite reading
of the exact position.
We then told the British Police in Kosovo, part of the UN presence
there, exactly were it was.
It was later retrieved by a our investigators and a Finnish bomb
disposal squad - who told us the hill had been mined during the war.
Following our investigation, with the whole country on red alert,
12 local policemen were arrested on terrorist charges.
The officers, said to be members of a secret cell aiding Kosovan
extremists, are suspected of plotting to blow up a bridge and a power
station.
Sadkutz was arrested on Thursday by British police operating in Kosovo.
And there were strong rumours last night that Hulji had been
assassinated for compromising the KLA's terror operations.
But the KLA were not the only group interested in selling terrorist
weapons. While we were in the Balkans word had quickly spread that the
Real IRA wanted to buy weapons. In neighbouring Croatia we bought a
machine gun and a Walther PPK pistol.
In Belgrade, the capital of nearby Serbia, the local Mafia emailed us to
offer a cache of anti-tank missiles, Kalashnikovs, a mortar and illegal
landmines for £50,000.
And in neighbouring Montenegro, on the Adriatic coast's version of the
Costa Del Crime, another war criminal was selling death on an industrial
scale.
The man, known as Vesko - a former bodyguard of Serbian warlord Arkan -
offered to supply us with 20 rocket-propelled grenades, 20
shoulder-fired missiles and 20 Spider machine guns used by the SAS.
To return to Britain, our investigators followed the route used by
gun-runners out of the Balkans. We drove the short distance into
Montenegro then sailed by car ferry from Bar to the Italian port of
Ancona, blending in with holiday makers.
Once there they flew home - but could have easily taken a coach through
Italy and France to Calais or hidden among thousands of asylum seekers
hitching rides on fruit lorries and train carriages.
Last night a spokesman for Scotland Yard said: "Britain is on a high
state of alert, only one below the highest level.
"That means we know the terrorists are planning to attack targets in the
UK."
MacIntyre's Millions: Semtex For Sale, Channel Five, 9pm, December 17.
TOP
UN bus
damaged during disturbance in Kosovo
One
person suffered minor injuries and a number of vehicles were damaged
today when a public disturbance flared up in Kosovo, the UN Mission in
the province reported.
TOP
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=9106&Cr=Kosovo&Cr1=
6 December – One person suffered minor injuries and a number of vehicles
were damaged today when a public disturbance flared up in Kosovo, the UN
Mission in the province reported.
The incident began this afternoon when a "delegation of an important
international organization" visited a local restaurant in north
Mitrovica where, by chance, the the Prime Minister of Kosovo paid an
unannounced visit. "While the delegation and the Prime Minister were
inside, several unknown subjects threw stones at the location, damaging
the windows," the Mission, known as UNMIK, said.
The Prime Minister left the location and was not injured, but the
international delegation, while leaving the scene by UN bus and cars,
"became disoriented in north Mitrovica and ended up at the North
Mitrovica Hospital, where regrettably the incident continued," UNMIK
said.
With a crowd of about 150 people gathered at the scene, the UN bus was
damaged and two Kosovo police vehicles were burned.
Eventually, the delegation made its way safely to Regional Police
Heaquarters, where one member was treated for minor injuries.
UNMIK said it was "greatly disturbed that a delegation of an important
international organization was attacked when their purpose was to seek
ways to further the economic development in Kosovo" and called those
responsible for the inident "reprehensible."
TOP
Serbian PM says Kosovo a haven for terrorists
Addressing
a conference in Belgrade on fighting organised crime, Zoran Zivkovic
claimed that terrorists were being protected in Kosovo.
TOP
www.b92.net
Beta News Agency, Belgrade
December 6, 2003
BELGRADE -- Saturday - Serbia's prime minister has branded the
UN-governed province of Kosovo a haven for terrorists.
Addressing a conference in Belgrade on fighting organised crime, Zoran
Zivkovic claimed that terrorists were being protected in Kosovo.
He said that the blame rested not on the Serbian government but on
"those that administer the territory".
Zivkovic called on the international authorities in Pristina "to do what
they know and can, if they want to".
"If our help is needed, we're prepared", the outgoing prime minister
told the conference.
TOP
Serb refugees: Out of sight, out of mind
Dragana
Vitosevic, a nine-year-old Serb girl from Kosovo, has spent almost half
her life in a refugee centre in Pancevo, a grim industrial town near the
Serbian capital Belgrade. She is just one of around 700,000 Serbs, those
who fled or were driven from their homes during the wars in Bosnia,
Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s. Now they make up about 10 percent of
Serbia's population.
TOP
RELIEF WEB
Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Date: 5 Dec 2003
by Aleksandar Mitic
PANCEVO, Serbia-Montenegro, Dec 5 (AFP) - Dragana Vitosevic, a
nine-year-old Serb girl from Kosovo, has spent almost half her life in a
refugee centre in Pancevo, a grim industrial town near the Serbian
capital Belgrade.
She is just one of around 700,000 Serbs, those who fled or were driven
from their homes during the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the
1990s. Now they make up about 10 percent of Serbia's population.
It is a burgeoning underclass which Serbia cannot afford to support, and
now even the United Nations is looking for an "exit strategy" so it can
focus on new crises such as Afghanistan and Iraq.
"The problem is donor fatigue. Donors believe that after eight years the
humanitarian crisis is ending here and they are turning to other hot
spots," Andrej Mahecic, spokesman for Serbia-Montenegro operations of
the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), told AFP.
He said the "trend of lower (aid) budgets will continue," noting that
the UNHCR had managed to raise only 12.8 million dollars for its
Serbia-Montenegro operations next year compared to 18.9 million in 2003.
"This does not mean an end of all UNHCR aid operations, but rather an
exit strategy from the humanitarian crisis situation," he said.
Paul Emes, the Belgrade delegation chief for the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said that by the end
of the year aid distributions from the World Food Programme and the
UNHCR will have "ceased."
"There is also no funding foreseen for soup kitchens from international
donors after the end of April," he said.
The Red Cross of Serbia and Montenegro distributes international aid to
56,000 refugees and provides food to 12,500 others in soup kitchens
every day, he said.
"The government of Serbia and Montenegro clearly understands that these
poor, vulnerable and hungry people are its responsibility, but despite
its commitment lacks the resources to finance these humanitarian
assistance operations fully," Emes said.
"As such, there is a real risk of hunger and increasing vulnerability.
The Federation therefore calls upon the international community to
support the government to assist its most vulnerable people."
For Dragana, there was no birthday cake or candles when she turned nine
last week in the tiny room which she shares with her family.
Crowded in by stacked beds and a small refrigerator, there is barely
enough space for the oven where Dragana and her mother, Ankica, prepared
their favorite meal: "Kosovo pie" with cheese and cabbage.
"This is not life, this is a fight for survival. My smile is not a
smile, it is a grimace of hopelessness," said Ankica, who worked for 25
years in the textile industry in Kosovo before the family fled the war
there in 1999.
They receive no more than 30 euros (36 dollars) per month in foreign
aid, and even that may disappear next year.
"The announced international disengagement is premature. These people
should not be forgotten," said Vesna Milenkovic, the secretary of
Serbia's Red Cross.
More than a decade since the fall of communism in Serbia, the benefits
of capitalism are not trickling down to ordinary people. Two thirds of
the population live on less than 160 euros a month and more than one
million people are unemployed, out of a population of 10 million.
Industrial production actually fell this year, according to government
figures. Political instability following the ouster of former Yugoslav
president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 has stymied foreign investment.
Analysts say the poverty and hopelessness is good news for a new breed
of nationalist politicians. Opinion polls last week showed the
ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party will emerge as the strongest
single party in the country after general elections on December 28.
Milan Skoko, a senior Red Cross official based near Pancevo, said the
wealthy nations of Western Europe should be ashamed of the poverty in
their own backyard.
"The situation is catastrophic. If the international aid runs out of
steam, people will begin dying of hunger. It will bring shame to Europe
in the 21st century," he said.
TOP
Monarchy or Republic
From one of receptions of the
Royal Couple at the White Palace in Belgrade
For Morality and Truth
Introductory summary
"NIN”, Belgrade weekly
Belgrade, 5 December 2003
The article by Mr. Matija Beckovic academician and the member of the
Crown Council to the weekly magazine "NIN"
How can we reestablish our institutions if we don’t reestablish the one
that had established all the others
For more than a decade the state and the ideology that abolished
monarchy and introduced republic have gone. The Day of the Republic has
gone, too, but there is the inheritance , a “change” after we have paid
the bill of communism – the republic without its birthday.
On the eve of the bicentennial of Karadjordje’s Uprising and the modern
Serbian state, Serbia has no national anthem, no coat of arms, no flag,
no government, no parliament, no president of the republic. Jajce
reappears in Orasac, and Serbia is neither republic, nor monarchy, and
it is hardly a state at all. If it is not a state, it is difficult to
talk about the state system. In the general chaos, there is everything,
left from the center, right from the center, only there is no center. At
this moment Serbia has almost no institutions, except the one that is
separated from the state and that has, as the carrier of continuity,
said its word loud and clear. The word has been said for moral reasons
and commitments to truth, and it could not have been different , for the
Church had no choice. Someone has said there are no republics in heaven,
and no one is elected for four years by the Grace of God.
One half of the decree that deprived the Karadjordjevics of their
property and their citizenship was nullified, another half wasn’t. The
decision of the communists’ assembly on abolishment of monarchy remained
in power. Any democratic government would have to make such decision
null and void, and until it has not been done, that issue can’t be taken
as resolved. The Church has only asked for that decision to be
nullified, and then what steps would be taken to reestablish monarchy
would be the responsibility of the authorities in charge.
The Crown and the altar have had the same opponents during the last half
of a century, even when they didn’t have the same supporters. And just
the same as those who don’t believe in God think that it is the proof
that there is no God, so do the supporters of republic believe that it
is the proof that there is no Crown. Ever since Serbia exist, and ever
since the Serbs know who they are, Serbia was a Kingdom. It is its
Christian name. But during the fifty years of tyranny it seems if it has
forgotten what a Kingdom is, and that it has ever been a Kingdom. Hail
to the King was for the last time heard in front of the firing squads
and in the courts, so it was forgotten, although many people vowed they
wouldn’t.
Of course, this is not a debate about republic and monarchy. This only
our case, the case of a republic established in blood and lawlessness,
which were unprecedented in Serbian history, and this is about the
constitutional parliamentary monarchy as a centuries long institution of
Serbian people which is as old as the Serbian state itself. It is enough
to be against lawlessness, there is no need to be a monarchy supporter.
And the most important thing is that in Serbia there are more opponents
of tyranny, then supporters of monarchy. This is a matter of principles,
not of somebody being a monarchist or not. There is hardly any issue
that reflects more clearly respect of human rights, freedom and
democratic values. The worst approach to this issue is ideological and
daily politics. Regrettably, precisely this approach is the loudest and
speaks most of itself, and nothing of monarchy.
There are many reasons to reestablish monarchy and only one not do so.
That one being the wish to preserve the continuity of communism and
lawlessness. That is why there is no more obvious change nor more
striking evidence that we have broken up with communism and its heritage
than the reestablishment of monarchy. What it will look like, perhaps
can be best seen by looking at today’s European Kingdoms, and by looking
at any of the constitution of the twelve Kingdoms, the EU members. How
can we reestablish our institutions if we don’t reestablish the one that
had established all others. It is an insult to our national minorities
and other confessions to say they are against the reestablishment of the
Kingdom of Serbia.
The Church has spoken. It is up to us to decide whether we are going to
listen to it or argue with it and lecture it how this is not the right
moment for the morality and truth.
TOP
News from
Kosovo and Metohija, Dec 5
TOP
www.inet.co.yu
I*Net News, Belgrade
Friday 05 December 2003
20:20 German defense minister Peter Struck stated today in Pristina that
NATO and Germany should stay in Kosovo and Metohija until their presence
become unnecessary and he opposed the sending of NATO troops to Iraq.
20:00 UNMIK police arrested a Kosovo Albanian for telephone bomb threats
against the German liaison office in Kosovo and Metohija after his visa
application for Germany was rejected, a police representative advised.
19:40 Serbian Resistance Movement leader Momcilo Trajkovic assessed
today that Albanian renunciation of the demand for the independence of
Kosovo and the willingness of the Serbian side for dialogue would create
an environment for resolving of problems in Kosovo and Metohija.
12:20 On Thursday UNMIK conveyed its concern to local government in the
southern, Albanian-inhabited part of Kosovska Mitrovica due to the
hoisting of an Albanian flag on the municipality building, the barring
of UNMIK officials from local government and threats pf physical
liquidation of international staff.
12:00 At a meeting of NATO ministers U.S. State Secretary Colin Powell
assessed that the international community had given a stimulus to Kosovo
leaders to make progress in all fields by setting mid-2005 as a target
date for assessment of whether democratic standards were being
implemented in the Province.
11:40 Yesterday evening the Kosovo Protection Corps general staff [sic]
accepted UNMIK's decision to suspend 12 KPC officers.
TOP
ERP KIM Info-Service is
the official Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Raska
and Prizren and works with the blessing of His Grace Bishop
Artemije.
Our Information Service is
distributing news on Kosovo related issues. The main focus of the
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as well as the Kosovo Daily
News (KDN) News List
Disclaimer:
The views
expressed by the authors of newspaper articles or other texts which are
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do not necessarily represent the views of the Serbian Orthodox
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Additional information on
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Copyright 2003, ERP KIM Info-Service
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