The latest UN proposals for Kosovo have been widely viewed in the international media as marking an important step towards independence. However, for many commentators, the plan put forward by the UN’s special mediator, Martti Ahtisaari, does not go far enough. Instead, it is seen as a sign of UN and EU weakness, in the face of Serbian and Russian reluctance to allow the people of Kosovo to have their freedom.
Under the UN plan, Kosovo would not have full sovereignty and would, for example, be ineligible to apply for membership of the UN. However, the government would be able to join some international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and to have more of the formal trappings of sovereignty, such as its own security forces (1).
There is an air of déjà vu about these discussions. It seems that eight years after Kosovo was first ‘freed’ from the rump Yugoslav state – following a 78-day NATO bombing campaign and the establishment of an ‘autonomous’ regime under a United Nations-run administration – the same international parties are again attempting to free the tiny province from Serb rule. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2823/
A 1942 Nazi plot to wreck Britain’s economy with forged banknotes is detailed in a film shown in Berlin this weekend.
Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters) sheds new light on one of the biggest currency forgery attempts in modern history. As the film tells it, the SS turned out notes with a face value of £134 million, much more than the total in the Bank of England. Had the fraud succeeded, the economy would have been crippled and the war lost.
The original idea was to drop the notes over remote parts of Britain, in expectation that few civilians would surrender the cash and that most of it would enter circulation. However, by 1943 Germany had lost control of the skies and it was decided to circulate the currency in Europe and the Middle East.
Adolf Burger, 89, a survivor of the team of concentration camp prisoners that made the notes, told The Times that Britain later kept silent about the operation. “They didn’t want it mentioned at Nuremberg because they didn’t want it known that a huge part of their currency was worthless. Instead, they slowly withdrew it from circulation.” http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article1368626.ece
Britain is pressing President Bush to roll out the red carpet at the White House for both Sinn Fein and Unionist leaders next month in an attempt to keep the Northern Ireland peace process on track.
The US Administration has, without fanfare, recently lifted a two-year-old fundraising ban imposed on Sinn Fein in America in recognition of the progress made on decommissioning weapons and cooperating with the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
But the St Patrick’s Day celebration at the White House next month is taking on extra significance, being so soon before the March 26 deadline for the resumption of a power-sharing devolved government at Stormont.
Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, on a visit to Washington, yesterday ruled out the Government giving Northern Ireland parties more time to resolve differences. “It would not be possible to change the legislation even if we wanted to,” he said. A delay would put the peace process into “cold storage until at least after the next general election, which is two years away”.
The Northern Ireland Secretary has flown to the US capital this week to ask the Bush Administration and Congress to help.
In 2005 Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, was banned from the White House altogether, and last year — although invited to the Shamrock ceremony — was accorded second class treatment, not being allowed to meet Mr Bush personally. Instead, the President again chose to spend time with relatives of people who had been killed by the IRA.
But British sources are now hopeful that both the First Minister-Designate, the Rev Ian Pailsey, and the Deputy First Minister-Designate, Martin McGuinness, will this time be invited to meet Mr Bush. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1387302.ece
| Somali Government Calls for Peacekeepers | |
| Nairobi 13 February 2007 |
Listen to Ryu report (Real Audio)
Uganda's parliament on Tuesday approved sending 1,500 peacekeepers to Somalia. Faced with a worsening security situation in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, the country's prime minister says a robust peacekeeping force is urgently to stabilize the country. VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu has more from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi.
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| Residents vacate homes near government buildings fearing more attacks in Mogadishu, 13 Feb 2007 |
Commerce Minister Abdullahi Ahmed Afrah was at home, but was not hurt in the attack.
A short time later, a police station was attacked and four mortars exploded near the port of Mogadishu.
Somali journalists report that many civilians living near places where attacks have occurred - the airport, seaport, the presidential palace, military bases, and police stations - are fleeing the city.
Earlier in March, the Bulgarian spy chief Kircho Kirov issued a more specific warning on presence of al Qaeda in the Balkans and bluntly stated that extremists with links to Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network are present in the Balkans and are infiltrating other European countries. In a joint NATO-Bulgarian report published in March 2005, Kirov cities Kosovo as a direct source of regional instability and a hub for international terrorism.
Indeed, speaking by proxy is nothing new, so these broad and sweeping statements by Bulgaria are significant because it is the US with its FBI offices in Sofia that ultimately stand behind these statements. What is not new is that Washington itself, as usual, has elected to remain mute on the specific al-Qaeda presence among Kosovo Albanians so one is left to search for the terrorist dots elsewhere in order to connect them.
For example, Reuven Paz, who teaches at Haifa University and is regarded as one of Israel's leading researchers of radical Islamic movements, says that the Islamic countries and particularly Saudi Arabia view the conflicts in Kosovo as that of Islam against Christianity. "All of the Sunni Muslim groups as well as Iran are making lots of propaganda for Kosovo and see it as a symbol," Paz said. The reason for the propaganda is to attract Muslim volunteers to go to Kosovo and fight. Al-Qaeda then is the only well established network that can provide such a trip for a young prospective Muslim eager to do his Islamic tour of duty and willingly die for Allah.
While reports abound that Bosnian Jihadists simply swerved upon Kosovo during the 1995-1999 period, Jane's International Defense Review reported that some fresh Jihadists were entering Kosovo via Albania as well. In February 1999 Jane's cites that documents found on the body of a KLA member showed that he had escorted several volunteers into Kosovo, including more than a dozen Saudi Arabians.
A more specific case is that of a Syrian-German businessman, Mamoun Darkazanli, who was arrested in Hamburg in October of 2004 on charges that he “helped fund the al-Qaeda terrorist network for years and who is seen in a video at a mosque with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.” According to the Hamburg authorities, “Darkazanli is alleged to have been involved in the purchase of a ship for bin Laden, handling administrative details, and paying bills. He also allegedly traveled to Kosovo in late 2000 on an al-Qaeda mission”.
In 2003, NBC News acquired a videotaped statement of Muhammad Talal al-Jafar al Tallani Ackbar al-Walid, described as al-Qaeda's Deputy Under-Emir for Defensive Intelligence and Holy War Operations, denouncing US and calling for world Jihad against the West. The report then goes on to describe Muhammad Talal as one that was “involved in noteworthy military operations in the past, serving in covert operations alongside the CIA in Afghanistan and in Bosnia and Kosovo before joining al-Qaeda.” The report cites that American soldiers Lt. Gen. William Boykin and Will Dunham contributed to the report.
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Alarmed that al-Qaeda may hit Britain during the run-up to the May 5 general elections, UK says that "the main threat is posed by around 200 people based here who have been trained by al Qaeda in Afghan camps for conflict in places such as Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo."
Also stated as an inadvertent afterthought that al-Qaeda is in Kosovo came few weeks earlier by the FBI citing an arrest warrant for a certain Kifah Wael Jayyousi accused of "conspiring with two other men in the 1990s to finance, recruit and provide equipment to extremists fighting in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo and Somalia."
The question then is no longer whether al-Qaeda is in Kosovo, but rather how could al-Qaeda have infiltrated Albanian inhabited areas of the Balkans precisely during the period when the US was blanketing it with its own troops.