Kosovo Mining Complex Taken Over
The Associated Press
Monday, Aug. 14, 2000; 12:57 a.m. EDT

ZVECAN, Yugoslavia –– NATO-led peacekeepers took control of a Serb-run mining complex in the northern part of Kosovo in a pre-dawn raid Monday.

British peacekeepers acting in support the U.N. mission seized the premises of the lead smelter near Kosovoska Mitrovica. The United Nations said last week the plant was spewing pollution into the air, raising lead levels to 200 times the accepted norms.

U.N. spokesman Michael Keats confirmed the operation was under way.

News of the lead levels sparked a rare moment of solidarity in the divided city of Kosovoska Mitrovica, prompting Serb and ethnic Albanian leaders to join U.N. personnel in publicly having their blood tested.

Kosovo Serb leader Oliver Ivanovic claimed the lead scare was a ruse, however, to be used as an excuse for the United Nations to take over the Zvecan plant.

Kosovska Mitrovica has proved the most violence prone city in Kosovo in the year since NATO-led peacekeepers took control of the province following a 78-day air war that forced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to pull his forces out.

The city is one of the few in the province in which a significant Serb population remains. Tens of thousands of Serbs have fled attacks leveled in revenge for Milosevic's 18-month crackdown on ethnic Albanians and a decade of repression.

Concerning Today's NATO Assault on Northern Mitrovica

www.tenc.net

Unless current news reports are mistaken, early Monday morning, squads of NATO troops seized Northern Mitrovica, the only remaining multiethnic part of Kosovo.

Northern Mitrovica, where thousands of Serbs, "Gypsies," Slavic Muslims and others driven from the rest of Kosovo lived side by side with local Serbs, Albanians and others, was defended by mass, non-violent action from UN police abuses and vicious armed assaults by Kosovo 'Liberation Army' forces trying to take control.

This popular movement infuriated the NATO humanitarians; hence today's apparent invasion by French and British NATO troops.

The excuse: to curb 'violence' (that is, theunarmed, non-violent movement) and, of all things, to limit pollution at a smelter. Amazing. The same NATO that has dropped thousands of deadly cluster (time) bombs on Kosovo's children, the same NATO, which, as Prof. Chossudovsky has proven, deliberately created an environmental disaster at Pancevo (1), now is worried about...a smelter.

These fabrications insult our intelligence. NATO's real goals: a) to crush resistance to KLA fascism, which NATO and the UN have installed elsewhere in Kosovo (2) and b) to position NATO troops close to the administrative border between Kosovo and inner Serbia, an area that has for months been under attack by NATO proxy troops of the KLA variety. (3)

Recently Al Gore announced that Sen. Joseph Lieberman will be his Vice Presidential running mate. This is the same Lieberman who said, while attending a pro-war rally in Washington last April:

"The "United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles...Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." ('Washington Post, April 28, 1999)
Recently, George Bush commented that if elected he will immediately issue an arrest warrant for Yugoslav Pres. Milosevic. Amazing isn't it how casually these men, even half-wits like little-Bush, how casually these men, no matter how limited their abilities, assume Imperial Rights. Thus - poof! - and little Bush issues his threat to arrest - arrest? - the President of a sovereign country. How does one arrest somebody else's President? No problem, didn't big daddy once pulverize a smaller country, Panama, supposedly to arrest its President? This is Rome, complete with cruelty and greed. All that's missing is brains.

The Lieberman announcement and the threat by Little Bush, as well as and today's attack on Mitrovica, make eminently clear that the American establishment is not through with Yugoslavia. It wishes to escalate the attack. The Serbs, for a century the obstacle to Imperial conquest of the strategic Balkans, must be crushed as a politically coherent force.

By sending British and French troops to seize Northern Mitrovica the United States has positioned NATO troops close to the administrative border with inner Serbia. This would make it easier for NATO troops (after a suitable provocation is invented) to attack inner Serbia from the south and, simultaneously, to support provocative actions by the weak, gangster-ridden quisling regime in Montenegro, where British SAS (Special Forces) are currently training whatever rifraff they can scrape together (they call it a police force) to be used as provocateurs to a) assassinate Yugoslav officials and b) provide some incident9s) to 'justify' NATO intervention.

The line, put forward by NATO, that it is Milosevic who wishes to destabilize Montenegro and Mitrovica, etc., etc., is ridiculous on the face. Do they take us for fools? Are we to accept a comic book vision of world politics in which Milosevic plays "Super Bad Guy" to the US "Super Good Guy," where "Super Bad Guy" does absurdly self-destructive things for no reason but irrepressible malice.

In reality, it is Yugoslavia (its people AND government) who have suffered NATO's cruel and unwarranted assaults. It was Yugoslavia which tried, prior to last year's bombing, to work out some kind of peace accord and it was NATO which presented Yugoslavia with an agreement (which would have legalizedthe occupation of all Yugoslavia by NATO troops!) - a proposal designed precisely to ensure Yugoslav rejection. It was only Yugoslavia whose parliament actually discussed this (anti-)peace proposal. Not one of the NATO democracies voted, by plebiscite or even in parliament, before initiating the brutal 78 day bombing of Yugoslav civilians and infrastructure and the subsequent invasion and ethnic decimation of Kosovo.

d-chan et.al.


i can go back 'there' now, if i want; dunno why this stoopit AOL IE browser quit like that, but i can do just fine w/the netscape...


ps> URN: the cafe kim aint _our_ kim.

THANKS FOR THE INFO L'MENEXE

KOSOVO

I dont' understand "take over" or "invasion" of the Trepca smelter.

Since kafor is in kosovo, didn't it de facto and administratively take over all the facilities in the province (including the smelter)?

I doubt Serbia was taking any profit from the smelter since the Kafor entered Kosovo.

All serbian workers and ingeneers keep theyr job and there is an official statement by G Krouchner that nobody will be replace by ethnic albanian.

The lead polution level is something very plausible, also for serb leaders as read: "News of the lead levels sparked a rare moment of solidarity in the divided city of Kosovoska Mitrovica, prompting Serb and ethnic Albanian leaders to join U.N. personnel in publicly having their blood tested". (see above)

____________________________________________________

KIM

I wish you good revover!
I hope you will get a laptop at the hospital so that we can spent a little visit on line to you.

Fred

Sory
don't read "revolver" but "recover"

URN:


maybe this back and forth stuff wont work for me.


here, you say 'thanks for the info'


there, you call my late mother a 'sick mixture'.


you made me _real_ angry just now....you'll see.


=


i havent said a f*ckin' thing about russians.

m'sieu ledingue:


no, no, 'revolver' was that beatles lp, 1966.


heh.


[+1]

URN:


you're as big a hate-filled ••••••• as ANTONIO.


so now you know.


surprise! -_-


======


igor, please don't step into this.


we've never had a conflict.

igor:


maybe i should apolgize for my generalization there.


if so....gomen.

WELL L'MENEXE, HAD I KNOWN IT WAS YOU I WOULD NEVER HAVE SAID THAT. I ADMIT I WAS WRONG, I DID MISUNDERSTAND YOU. I HOPE YOU REALIZE I DIDNT MEAN IT TO YOU. PLEASE ACCEPT MY APOLOGY. I DO BELIEVE YOU MISUNDERSTOOD ME TOO FRIEND. TAKE CARE, NO HARD FEELINGS.

URN:


well, as i said at the 'other place'...."there blows the cover".


but for everyone else, was that the best in dinner theater entertainment or WHAT?


nitey-nite, y'all


[+1sk4tq]

Although Mr Kouchner claimed the move to shut Zvecan was made because of its high pollution levels, this was an argument which could have been made at any time. The true reason, as the Serb reaction makes clear, is political. The UN is belatedly moving to assert its dominance over northern Mitrovice, which has spent the last year as a mini-enclave run by Serb nationalists under close coordination with Belgrade and in defiance of the international peacekeepers. http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a399870bb54b5.htm Zvecan is part of the sprawling Trepca mining complex, which has long had mythical significance among Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanian community as the cradle of its independence struggle. For some, it is almost as important as the Gdansk shipyard was for the Solidarity trade union movement which helped to overthrow communism in Poland in the 80s.

With this building now being just about empty, I have taken the liberty of discharging the security guards and turning off the heat for now.

Ultra Russian Communist, have some
Dignity! Stop Groveling! - Aug 15, 2000 00:59 (*.thegrid.net)
Ultra Russian Communist, have some dignity! Stop groveling and sniveling up to L'Meownexe!!!

Whadya want people to think that Ruskies have to suck up to Larry? Look at the way he grovels before Kissie/Kisako/Delenn the Jewish woman. And you want to kiss up to him??!!! Where is your sense of honor and dignity?! Are you L'Meownexe's kitty?