SECURITY COUNCIL HEADS AGREE ON NEED FOR COORDINATION

The six security officials agreed it was necessary to coordinate efforts, under the auspices of the collective security treaty, to tackle the problem. The treaty was signed in 1992 between some ex-Soviet states.

Commenting on the possibility of airstrikes against alleged terrorist training bases run by the Taleban in Afghanistan, the secretary of Russia's Security Council, Sergei Ivanov, said: "I would not exclude that possibility."

Ivanov told reporters after the meeting that a joint anti-terrorism center would likely be set up soon in Moscow.

Ivanov signed two cooperation agreements with the security councils of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, both of which look largely to Russia for their defense. Tiny Kyrgyzstan appealed to Russia for help last year in repelling the Islamist invaders.

Kyrgyz security council secretary Bolot Dzhanuzakov told reporters another invasion was being planned by guerillas hiding in the remote Tajik mountains.

He said Kyrgyz armed forces were being strengthened in preparation.
REST OF ARTICLE
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=149698 ITHINK THEY ARE LONG OVER DUE IN BOMBING TERRORIST BASES

Col. Yuri Budanov - a former commander of the 160th tank regiment in Chechnya accused of raping and killing an 18-year-old Chechen woman - has been transferred to a detention facility in Rostov-on-Don. Meanwhile, a senior Justice Ministry official, Gennady Lysenkov, confirmed earlier reports that the Chechen woman, allegedly raped and killed by Budanov, was in fact a sniper working for the rebels. The autopsy of the woman's body produced no evidence that she was raped. http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/082499/aviation/chechnya/040700.htm

Well done Oleg...Vodka Army disintegrates... saving Chechen bullets for final showdown...Beginning of the end

Russian Police Arrest Soldier Suspected Of Killing 7

MOSCOW, Apr 9, 2000 -- (Reuters) Russian police have arrested a soldier suspected of shooting dead seven other Interior Ministry troops in the Volga River city of Saratov, a ministry spokeswoman said on Saturday.

The bodies were found on Friday in a train carrying military equipment, which the troops had been guarding as it traveled from southern Russia to the Sverdlovsk region in the Ural Mountains.

The Interior Ministry spokeswoman named the detained soldier as 19-year-old Private Oleg Dovzhenko from the central Russian city of Penza. An investigation was continuing.

ORT television reported that two cases of vodka were found in the wagon where the bodies lay.

How far can the Nation of Russia continue to decay before it completely disintegrates?

At the most 'couple' of years before 'prison of nationalities' finally collapses and ushers into the mushrooming of confederation of independent republics of Tatarstan, Dagestan, Bashkiristan, Chechnya and 7 other former semi-autonomous Muslim republics.

They won't be like the so called 'independent' 'banana' republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tadjikistan, ruled by former communist apparatchiks and are still subservient to their erstwhile colonial masters in Moscow.

According to Gen. Manilov, the 9 OMON soldiers captured by the rebels
during the recent attack on an OMON convoy from Perm are still alive.
Chechen rebel leaders earlier released information that all captured
OMON soldiers were executes. A pro-terrorist web site qoqaz.com
published photos of what it claims to be executed OMON troopers.
However, dead soldiers of the photos are dressed in standard army-issue
winter uniforms and are not OMON troops. The photos were most likely
taken during the 1994-1996 conflict. Qoqaz.com is a propaganda web site
maintained by Chechen rebel leaders and their foreign supporters. This
site specializes in producing fake photos often stolen from legitimate
news sites, then retouched and published with bogus descriptions.
According to Network Solutions, Inc. registrar, qoqaz.com's webmaster is
Maria Alcala from Chuao, Caracas federal district of Venezuela.

Nour Eldeen:

You know, don't think that muslims are the only people in the world, that can fight the best. In stalingrad, about 100 russians held a house for 59 days untill reinforcements arrived. it was named Pavlov's House. they were totally encircled by thousands of geramns but held. how the •••• did they do that? germans lost more troops fighting that house than they lost during conquering Paris!
and when you talk about afganistan:

"My friend, how long did the lions of Afganisan fight ? can you answer me ? They lost 2 millions, but they conquered the russians."

Well, that's something totally different if you want to compare WWII and afganistan. I'll tell you this. germans WOULD WIN, if they would send all of their forcers on russians. but they had to fight west, north, africa, everybody. and how did they do?? they conquered every country they entered. hah, if geramns would concetrate all of their military on russia, russia would be done in few months without any problems.
and afganistan? what did they do? russians really didn't want to fight, and afganistan wasn't fighting with the whole world. so what if they lost 2 millions. germans lost about 3 million soldiers, not civilians just in eastern front. when you add that together, you can't compare WWII german military to shity afganistan army, which is led by fanatics.
and one more thing: fighting 6 years against the whole world is i think much harder, than fighting weak russians, who don't have money to equip their army.

Israeli Interior Minister Natan Sharansky is visiting Ethiopia to investigate the claims of some 26,000 Ethiopians who say they are Jewish and want to move to Israel.
They belong to the Falash Mura community - Jews who converted to Christianity generations ago.

Under Israeli law, Jews anywhere in the world have the right to citizenship. But Israel has expressed doubts that many of the claimants are eligible.

Israeli officials say large numbers of impostors are attempting to escape Ethiopia's poverty and famine.

Thousands of Ethiopians are living in compounds in Addis Ababa and Gondar hoping to be allowed to immigrate to Israel.

Claiming Jewish ancestry

During the mid-1980s and early 1990s thousands of Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel.

North American aid organisations believe 26,000 more Falash Mura are eligible to immigrate under Israel's law of return.


Sharansky: Wants swift answers for applicants


But sceptical Jewish Agency officials argue that the number of eligible people is no more than 5,000.

Many Falash Mura left their homes and farms two years ago believing that they were about to be allowed to go to Israel.

About 18,000 live in refugee camps near the Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa and consular building in Gondar.

Mr Sharansky says he wants to make a more accurate assessment of the situation himself and that the purpose of his trip is to minimise the suffering of those waiting.

"Even those people who are not eligible have to get their answer as soon as possible," he said before leaving Jerusalem.

Jewish roots

Israel's government has never recognised the Jewish status of the Falash Mura because their ancestors converted to Christianity.

Members of the community argue they never lost their Jewish roots but they were forced to convert for economic reasons.


Israel says many Falash Mura are attempting to escape poverty and famine


Many have relatives in Israel making it difficult for the government simply to turn down all applicants.

Falash Mura who go to Israel undertake a one and a half year "Return to Israel" course. This includes intensive study, a commitment to observe orthodox rituals, and, for the men, a symbolic circumcision ceremony.

BBC Jerusalem correspondent Paul Adams says activists for the would-be immigrants will take heart from the fact that Mr Sharansky - a man so closely identified with the cause of Russian Jews - has now chosen to turn his attention to this difficult problem.

Great post, Vladamir. It would be impossible to even imagine more relevant info on the Russia-Chechnya conflict. Keep up the good work.

When the bullet hit your forehead, there is no room for an aftherthought.
______________________________________________
Mask:

It's "when" and not "if". Because it's when the bullet hit his forehead that the mujahedeen may thing it over or express regret and at this moment only.

Nemesis,

"It is in Russia's interest to return to cold war politics, not America's "

No, absolutely not.
It's not America's or Europe's or nobodies.
But the West is very slow to adapt to new situations. They are realy old poeple with old prejudices and old shortsighted mind.

One of the pioneering feats of its sort in the ongoing struggle to discover the truth and uncover the media manipulation behind the Balkans wars of the 1990s, Emperors-Clothes’ first film, Judgment, accomplishes all it has set out to do in a remarkably short period of time.

At only thirty minutes in length, Judgment does not waste time on lengthy exposition or meaningless quotes by "experts" sitting in book-filled libraries. It is based entirely on facts – more specifically, the footage filmed by a Serbian radio-television crew in Omarska and Trnopolje in the summer of 1992, at the same time as the ITN TV crew was putting together their infamous "death camp" story.

The ITN crew is shown picking a location in the Trnopolje refugee camp to film from, then picking their interviewees, all in a way calculated to create an impression of a concentration camp. It becomes obvious at the very beginning that ITN had full cooperation of the Serbian authorities, which had nothing to hide. The contrast between footage seen in this film and the shots ITN made infamous around the world is startling.

But Judgment goes further. We are shown the step-by-step process of doctoring the photos, used by ITN editors. In just a few tricks of the editing software, pictures of refugees outside a fenced-in storage area morph into what appear to be pictures of tortured inmates in a "death camp."

All this is done with the minimum of editorializing. Judgment uncovers a vicious lie in a somewhat minimalist fashion. Given that ITN’s report was all editorializing, based on no facts, this is strangely appropriate.

As its producers say, this documentary will change minds. It does not aspire to match the slick, careful presentation of fantasies that the media like ITN have so specialized in. Instead, it presents the simple truth, with shattering effects to the deeply rooted current propaganda. And it does it exceptionally well.

This short film packs a powerful punch. After you see it, you will never see a TV report the same way again to order tape

CIA punishes 7 for embassy bomb

By Vernon Loeb Washington Post, 4/9/2000


ASHINGTON - The CIA has dismissed one intelligence officer and reprimanded six managers, including a senior official, for errors that led to the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia last year, officials said yesterday.


The CIA director, George J. Tenet, took the disciplinary action late last week after two internal reviews of the May 7 bombing, which killed three Chinese citizens, wounded more than 20 others, and deeply strained US-Chinese relations.


The United States has apologized to Beijing and offered $28 million to the families of those who died. But China rejected explanations and demanded that the United States conduct ''a thorough investigation'' and ''severely punish the perpetrators.''


A CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, said yesterday that the reviews had concluded that intelligence officers had meant to target a Yugoslav arms agency but had marked the wrong building on a map. ''The evidence shows that this was clearly a tragic accident,'' he said.


Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington could not be reached last night for comment.


The CIA did not release the names of the officers who have been punished.


Roy W. Krieger, a lawyer representing one of the reprimanded managers, denounced Tenet's action.


''It's shameful that the CIA caved in to political pressure to produce scapegoats,'' Krieger said. ''It has already been publicly admitted that the map which these officers used contained errors, absent which the embassy would not have been mistakenly targeted. The result may have been tragic, but the failure was systemic, and the remedy cannot be retribution.''


Shortly after US B-2 bombers struck the embassy in central Belgrade, Tenet and other senior officials accepted responsibility and promised an investigation. The error was particularly embarrassing to the CIA because the Yugoslav arms agency was the only target chosen by the CIA during the entire 78-day NATO air campaign.


Most of the 900 targets struck during the raids were chosen by NATO and the US military's European Command. But as NATO forces began to run short of sites to bomb, US intelligence agencies were invited to propose targets.


According to the CIA, an intelligence officer in the Directorate of Operations, the agency's clandestine branch, obtained the correct address of the Yugoslav Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement, No. 2 Umetnosti Blvd. But the 2-year-old map used for targeting did not show the numbers of the buildings on that street, so the officer used the numbering of buildings on parallel streets to mark what he thought was the Yugoslav arms agency.


The intelligence officer then took the map to an expert in aerial photography who determined coordinates for the building. A crosscheck of various databases listing sensitive sites, such as schools, hospitals and embassies, failed to catch the error because the data had not been updated after the Chinese Embassy moved from another part of Belgrade in 1996.


Harlow said yesterday that a key finding of the CIA reviews was that ''the CIA lacked formal procedures for preparing and forwarding target nomination packages to the US military.''


Harlow said he could not comment on classified procedures that have been implemented to prevent such targeting errors in the future. He also declined to comment on Tenet's disciplinary action, other than to say that ''numerous CIA officers at all levels of responsibility failed to ensure that the intended bombing targets - the Yugoslav Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement headquarters - had been properly identified and precisely located before CIA passed a target nomination package to the US military for action.''


One senior intelligence official, who asked not to be quoted by name, confirmed that the operations officer reponsible for identifying the arms agency headquarters on the map was fired and escorted out of CIA headquarters late Thursday.


On Friday, the official said, Tenet took disciplinary actions against a senior official and five other managers ranging from oral warnings to letters of reprimand that impose one-year probationary periods in which the officials will not be eligible for promotions, financial awards, or other forms of recognition.


The senior official is below the level of the agency's seven deputy directors but among the next tier of top managers, numbering several dozen, the official said.


Two of the disciplined line managers, the official said, have also been directed by Tenet to develop case studies identifying ''lessons learned'' for use in training other agency personnel. Another CIA officer on assignment at another intelligence agency, the official said, will also receive ''counseling'' as a result of mistakes in the bombing.


Tenet, however, has also identified one near-hero. According to Harlow, the CIA director praised one intelligence analyst for ''going well beyond the call of duty to try to rescind what he believed - correctly in hindsight - were discrepancies in the target's location.''


The midlevel analyst, who worked for another intelligence agency but was assigned to CIA headquarters, persistently questioned the targeting of the arms agency, based on his personal familiarity with the building's location in Belgrade.


The analyst also expressed his doubts in a telephone call May 4, three days before the strike, to an officer at a European Command task force in Naples, Italy.


When the analyst returned from the training exercise May 7 and saw the arms agency on that day's target list, he again called Naples. But the officer with whom he spoke believed the analyst was only questioning whether the building was the agency's headquarters, not whether it belonged to the agency at all.

Anti-Americanism growing across Europe
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/today/news_830f3192c0b6c1580010.html

Hey Fred, looks like your blending result went way beyond its ingredients, more on a dong side.