Welcome to occupied (oops, as Russians call it - 'liberated') Chechnya, Mr. Judd!

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/20000311/wl/russia_chechnya_nn7.html

Yeah and that's a nice neighborhood of Grozny. LOL.

CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army
Tom Walker and Aidan Laverty



AMERICAN intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia. The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians.
Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police.

When the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which co-ordinated the monitoring, left Kosovo a week before airstrikes began a year ago, many of its satellite telephones and global positioning systems were secretly handed to the KLA, ensuring that guerrilla commanders could stay in touch with Nato and Washington. Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander.

European diplomats then working for the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American policy that made airstrikes inevitable. Some have questioned the motives and loyalties of William Walker, the American OSCE head of mission.

"The American agenda consisted of their diplomatic observers, aka the CIA, operating on completely different terms to the rest of Europe and the OSCE," said a European envoy.

Several Americans who were directly involved in CIA activities or close to them have spoken to the makers of Moral Combat, a documentary to be broadcast on BBC2 tonight, and to The Sunday Times about their clandestine roles. Walker dismissed suggestions that he had wanted war in Kosovo, but admitted the CIA was almost certainly involved in the countdown to airstrikes.

Initially some "diplomatic observers" arrived, followed in October by a much larger group that was eventually swallowed up into the OSCE's "Kosovo Verification Mission".

Walker said: "Overnight we went from having a handful of people to 130 or more. Could the agency have put them in at that point? Sure they could. It's their job. But nobody told me."

Walker, who was nominated by Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, was intensely disliked by Belgrade. He had worked briefly for the United Nations in Croatia. Ten years earlier he was the American ambassador to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government there to suppress leftist rebels while supporting the contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, concluded from Walker's background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The picture was muddied by the continued separation of American "diplomatic observers" from the mission. The CIA sources who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected to the agency.

"It was a CIA front, gathering intelligence on the KLA's arms and leadership," said one.

Another agent, who said he felt he had been "suckered in" by an organisation that has run amok in post-war Kosovo, said: "I'd tell them which hill to avoid, which wood to go behind, that sort of thing."

The KLA has admitted its long-standing links with American and European intelligence organisations. Shaban Shala, a KLA commander now involved in attempts to destabilise majority Albanian villages beyond Kosovo's border in Serbia proper, claimed he had met British, American and Swiss agents in northern Albania in 1996.

Belgrade has alleged the CIA also helped to arm the KLA, but this was denied by the guerrillas and agency sources.

"It was purely the Albanian diaspora helping their brothers," said Florin Krasniqi, a New York builder and one of the KLA's biggest financiers. He described how sniper rifles were exported from America using a loophole in federal law that allowed them to be shipped to "hunting clubs". Armour-piercing Barratt rifles made their way to the KLA's "hunting club" in Albania.

Agim Ceku, the KLA commander in the latter stages of the conflict, had established American contacts through his work in the Croatian army, which had been modernised with the help of Military Professional Resources Inc, an American company specialising in military training and procurement. This company's personnel were in Kosovo, along with others from a similar company, Dyncorps, that helped in the American-backed programme for the Bosnian army.

The Pope has publicly asked for forgiveness for
the sins of the Roman Catholic Church
throughout the ages.

The unprecedented gesture by the spiritual
leader of the world's one billion Catholics is one
of the first major events of the Vatican's
year-long celebrations marking the beginning of
the new Christian millennium.

"We are asking pardon
for the divisions among
Christians, for the use
of violence that some
have committed in the
service of truth, and for
attitudes of mistrust
and hostility assumed
toward followers of
other religions," said Pope John Paul II, dressed
in the purple robes of Lent.

The phrase "violence in the service of truth"
was an often-used reference to the treatment
of heretics during the Inquisition, the
Crusades, and forced conversions of native
peoples.

The Pope said he was seeking pardon for sins
committed against Catholics, describing his
action as an attempt to "purify the memory"
from a sad history of hate and rivalry.

Sweeping forgiveness

The Pope's homily at The Day of Pardon Mass
in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican did not
mention specific groups.

But confessions of sin
made by five Vatican
cardinals and two
bishops, each with a
response from the
Pope, did ask for
forgiveness for named
wrongs.

Cardinal Edward
Cassidy, raising the
issue of the treatment of Jews, said:
"Christians will acknowledge the sins committed
by a not a few of their number against the
people of the Covenant."

"We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of
those who in the course of history have
caused these children of yours to suffer, and
asking your forgiveness we wish to commit
ourselves to genuine brotherhood," the Pope
responded.

Igor -

Important but not surprising is it?

March 12 2000
RUSSIA


Putin caught in food scandal

Mark Franchetti, St Petersburg
IN THE murky world of Russian politics, Vladimir Putin, the
hawkish acting president, presents himself as a relentless
opponent of corruption. However, documents dating back to
his time as a bureaucrat in St Petersburg reveal a man who
appeared less eager to enforce the law during the chaotic and
crime-ridden days that followed the collapse of the Soviet
Union.

Putin was accused by a parliamentary inquiry eight years ago
of presiding over an import-export regime that allegedly
deprived the city of millions of dollars in revenue. The report
recommended he be dismissed.

Details of the investigation, made public last week by Marina
Salye, who headed the inquiry, seem likely to embarrass
Putin two weeks before presidential elections he is virtually
certain to win.

The inquiry was set up in January 1992, at a time when
Russia was plagued by hyperinflation following the decision
by Boris Yeltsin, the former president, to end decades of
state control on prices.

In the ensuing chaos, communist apparatchiks and ruthless
businessmen seized the chance to make fortunes by stripping
the state of huge resources. Fears grew of food shortages. In
Moscow and St Petersburg, Russia's second city, mile-long
queues for bread began to appear.

After an early career in the KGB, Putin, then 39, had gone to
work for Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St Petersburg and
his former law professor. As Sobchak's deputy and head of
the city's committee for external relations, Putin was
responsible for a complex bartering system to help feed the
city.

Under the system, Russian companies were given lucrative
licences to export oil and rare metals. The money raised was
earmarked to buy food. In the space of a few weeks, large
numbers of licences were issued and contracts signed, many
by Putin himself.

It was not long before the city's soviet - as the local
parliament was then called - became suspicious. Despite
contracts worth more than $92m (£58m) signed by Putin's
office, the city was receiving little food. Rumours of
corruption and theft began to circulate when it emerged that
the prices the companies had to pay for raw materials were
only a fraction of what they would fetch on world markets.

"We were tipped off and we smelt a rat," said Salye, then a
member of both the local and national parliaments. For
weeks, she and a group of fellow deputies investigated the
nature of the contracts and Putin's possible involvement. Their
conclusions, compiled in a report dated March 23, 1992,
were damning.

Putin and his deputy, Alexander Anikin, were accused of
"complete incompetence bordering on lack of
conscientiousness" and of "unprecedented negligence and
irresponsibility in providing the investigating commission with
documents.

"The main task the committee of external affairs of St
Petersburg was given, namely to provide the city with food in
the first quarter of 1992, was not fulfilled."

Salye's committee further recommended that both Putin and
Anikin be dismissed and that the material gathered be passed
to the city's prosecutors. Their evidence was sent to
Moscow.

Yuri Boldirev, then a member of Yeltsin's presidential
administration and the chief inspector of the Russian
Federation, wrote that Putin should not be considered for any
other position until the evidence had been examined. City
prosecutors do not appear to have followed up Salye's
report. Sobchak also stood by his former pupil.

The committee found Putin had
failed to gain official permission from Moscow to
allow companies to sell oil or rare metals on behalf
of the Russian state. When Salye asked him to
hand over documents signed by his office, Putin
initially refused on grounds they contained
commercial secrets. Eventually, he was forced to
produce the documents.

"When we compared the original contracts with
the table he had first given us we discovered a
discrepancy of $11m which he had tried to
conceal," Salye said. "To this day we have no idea
what happened to that sum." Examination of the files showed
Putin and his office had signed agreements allowing
companies to receive thousands of tons of raw metals at
prices which, in some cases, were up to 2,000 times lower
than their true value on the world market.

One contract alone, signed with Dzhikop, a company that
had been registered only two and a half months before being
granted an export licence from Putin's office, was found by
the commission to have deprived the city of $7m in potential
earnings.

The committee never accused Putin of benefiting personally
from the alleged irregularities. Putin has denied accusations of
wrongdoing. He rejected complaints at the time that the
companies were obtaining the raw materials too cheaply,
saying prices on international markets were too volatile to
track precisely.

Nevertheless Salye remains convinced of the seriousness of
what her inquiry uncovered. "Most of the contracts signed
were fraudulent," she alleged. "The companies were highly
dubious, the contracts were riddled with mistakes, fictitious
sums and irregularities that meant in practice they were legally
non-binding. Millions of dollars were earned, and millions of
dollars vanished. Whereto remains a mystery."

ok then, balalaika:
saw the picture of the sign held by the 2 kids.
so what did their sign say?

Russian pigs, get out of Chechnya.

bal:
okay, um, thanks, i guess...

l'menexe,

I was kidding. the sign actually says 'Maskhadov is the legitimate president of Chechnya'.

Have you heard that Mr. Judd was 'entrapped' in anti-russian demo when he visited Chechen refugies. Well done... The chances of Russia being expelled from the Council of Europe has become even higher :o)

The picture of 2 kids was taken during the demo.

bal:
okay, um, thanks again, i guess...

Look again what Civilized Russains have done with the human beings.

wellwisher,

Spooky...

But where have you seen "Civilized Russains" (why in capital letters?!) in Chechnya (or in any other Russian war, all of which rather resemble the tatar-mongol invasion in 13 century).

For all the blind supporter of PUTIN.

---

Take care Tony, that man has blood on
his hands Evidence shows secret police were behind'terrorist' bomb
John Sweeney
Sunday March 12, 2000
The photograph below of a detonator
pre-set to explode a bomb calls into
question Russian leader Vladimir Putin's
line - endorsed by Tony Blair during his
visit to Russia yesterday - that Chechen
terrorists were responsible for the explosions that killed more than 200
Russians last year.
Two bombs went off in Moscow, but a
third bomb planted in Ryazan, 100 miles
south, was defused by bomb squad officer
Yuri Tkachenko who said: 'It was a live
bomb.' It was made of the same explosive, Hexagen, and planted in a similar target - a working-class block of flats.
The third bomb did not go off because the
bombers were caught red-handed. They were Russian, not Chechen, and when they were arrested by local police they flashed identity cards from the FSB - the new styling for the KGB, the secret police
Putin headed before he became Russia's acting President. Two days later the FSB
announced that the third bomb had only
been 'a training exercise'.
The Kremlin's evidence that Chechen
terrorists bombed Moscow is extremely
thin. After the bomb outrages, secret
police in the FSB handed out Photofit
pictures of unnamed Chechens. No suspects were arrested and no convincing explanation was given to the public.
The third bomb was found in the
basement of the flats on the night of 22
September at around 9pm. Tkachenko
said: 'It was a live bomb. I was in a
combat situation.' He tested the three
sugar sacks in the basement with his
MO-2 portable gas analyser, and got a
positive reading for Hexagen, the
explosive used in the Moscow bombs. The timer of the detonator was set for 5.30am, which would have killed many of the 250 tenants of the 13-storey block of flats. The sacks were taken out of the
basement at around 1.30 am and driven away by the FSB. But the secret police forgot to take away the detonator, which was left in the hands of the bomb squad. They photographed it the next day.
The bombers were discovered by the people they meant to kill. Vladimir Vasiliev, an engineer com ing home for the night, noticed three strangers acting suspiciously by the basement of his block
of flats at 14/16 Novosyolov Street, literally New Settlers Street. Vasiliev noticed that the number plate at the front of the car had been covered up
with a piece of paper, on it '62', the Ryazan regional code. At the back of the car the plate had the Moscow regional code. Vasiliev, puzzled, decided to call the police. 'As we were waiting for the lift, one of the young guys got out of the car and the girl asked: "Have you done everything?" ' Vasiliev observed the three in the car: 'They were Russian, absolutely, not
Asiatic. The girl was a blonde.' The local police arrested two men that night, according to Boris Kagarlitsky, a member of the Russian Institute of
Comparative Politics. 'FSB officers were
caught red-handed while planting the bomb. They were arrested by the police and they tried to save themselves by showing FSB identity cards.'
Then, when the headquarters of the FSB
in Moscow intervened, the two men were
quietly let go.Police Inspector Andrei Chernyshev was the first to enter the basement. He said: 'It
was about 10 in the evening. There were
some strangers who were seen leaving the basement. We were told about the men who came out from the basementand left with the car with a licence number which was covered with paper. I went
down to the basement.
'This block of flats had a very deep basement which was completely covered with water. We could see sacks of sugar and in them some electronic device, a few wires and a clock. We were shocked.
'We ran out of the basement and I stayed
on watch by the entrance and my officers
went to evacuate the people.' The following day, on 24 September, the FSB in Moscow announced that there had never been a bomb, only a training
exercise. Vasiliev said: 'I heard the official
version on the radio, when the press
secretary of the FSB announced it was a
training exercise. It felt extremely
unpleasant.'