1. Second Russian Spy Ship
Sails to Ionian Sea
WASHINGTON, May 24 - The second Russian spy ship, the Kilden, which
left the Black Sea port of Sevastopol on May21, arrived in the Ionian Sea over the weekend
to begin electronic eavesdropping and other surveillance of NATO's war against Yugoslavia,
the Pentagon sources told the Washington Times on May 24. The Kilden joins the Limen,
which has been monitoring the NATO electronic traffic in the Adriatic since early April
(see Day 8, Update 2, Item 4, Mar. 31).
"The Kilden's presence there will mark the first time since 1991
that two Russian intelligence ships have operated in the same area," one Pentagon
intelligence official told the Washington Times.
The Limen is expected to sail to the Syrian port of Tartas in the next
few days for refueling and resupply and probably will return to the Ionian, the officials
said.
Serbia's military also provided wreckage of a crashed U.S. F-117
stealth fighter to Moscow, the Times said.. A classified report by the National
Counterintelligence Center, an interagency group within CIA headquarters, stated in March
that Russia was recruiting spies, collecting technology and sabotaging international
peacekeeping activities in the Balkans. The report, made available to the Times, said
current and former Russian intelligence officials were cooperating with the Serbs.
The increase in Russian spying on NATO follows an earlier intelligence
report from Moscow indicating the Russian government has ordered all military officers to
sever ties to U.S. and Western defense attaches.
2. German Foreign Minister:
Russia Might Abandon Serbia; Next Two Weeks Crucial
WASHINGTON, May 25 - Despite the reports about the alleged intelligence
sharing between the Serbs and the Russians, such as that implied in the previous story,
the German foreign minister thinks that when the push comes to shove, Russia will abandon
Serbia.
Speaking in a joint news conference with Madeleine Albright, the
secretary of state, during his official visit to Washington, Germany's Joschka Fischer
(yes, the one who got red paint in his ear from his Greens - see S99-77, Day 51, Update 2,
Item 1, May 13), said the Russian government "might abandon Milosevic and side with
the West." The Russians, Fischer said, "did not have a lasting interest in
having their relationship with the West sidelined by the Kosovo war." ---TiM Ed.:
Well, the NWO quisling-Russians of the Boris Yeltsin and Viktor Chernomyrdin ilk may feel
that way, as we've pointed out in our earlier reports (see S99-69, Day 45, item 1, May 7
and S99-73, Day 49, Update 1, Item 3, May 11). But a vast majority of Russians are
outraged by NATO's unprovoked attack on Yugoslavia (see S99-70, Day 46, Update 1, Item 3,
May 8). And many of them are doing something about it, such as the Russian volunteers in
Serbia (see S99-88, Day 62, Item 5, May 24).
With Yeltsin being as frail and apparently out of it mentally, it is
far from certain as to how things may shake themselves out in Moscow in the end.
---Meanwhile, "we are in a very decisive situation in the conflict, because within
the next two weeks, we will see whether we get a political solution or not," Fischer
told reporters at a breakfast meeting at the Germany embassy in Washington, according to
the New York Times (May 26).
3. Radioactivity in Macedonia
8 Times Above Normal
LONDON, May 25 - TiM's sources in Britain say that Channel 4, a major
TV network in the U.K., reported during its May 15 prime time newscast radioactivity in
Macedonia, a neighboring country to Serbia, has been measured to be eight times higher
than normal, due to NATO's bombing of Serbia. The lab tests were carried out in Bulgaria,
the Channel 4 said, also citing opinions by scientists, such as Dr. Klaus Dodds of the
London University.
The Channel 4 reported linked the increased radioactivity to NATO's use
of the depleted uranium bombs. It also said that the air in many Balkan states around
Serbia has been contaminated with carcinogenic toxins released into the atmosphere
following NATO's bombing of chemical plants in Serbia.
The British TV report also said that much of the fish stock in the
Danube is now poisoned. ---TiM Ed.: TiM's sources in London say that this was the first
time a major British TV program has recognized the environmental consequences of NATO's
war on Serbia. Amid the commendable concern for the ecological impact of the bombing on
neighboring countries, and even the fish in the Danube, notably absent was the sense of
outrage about the people living in the target country - the main victims of the
environmental disaster unleashed by NATO. Maybe that's what Channel 4 is saving up for the
sequel to this program?
4. Albanian Gangs Abduct
Kosovo Refugee Girls for Prostitution; Some Are Killed If They Resist
VLORE, May 25 - While the Washington and Brussels Kosovo "Wag the
Dog" producers keep spinning tales, real or imagined, about alleged rapes of Kosovo
Albanian women by the Serb soldiers, heinous crimes are taking place right under the
western reporters noses in Albania. The victims are the same - Kosovo Albanian girls. But
the perpetrators of the are the Albanian gangsters. They abduct female refugees, often at
gun point, and sell them off to prostitution, mainly in Italy.
Sometimes, however, they also kill them. Such as was the fate of the
16-year old Jola Spasolli. Albanian gangsters killed a Kosovo refugee teenager and wounded
her father after he tried to prevent them kidnapping her for a prostitution ring, police
said on Tuesday (May 25), according to a Reuters news wire report.
Five armed men broke into a house rented by ethnic Albanian refugees on
the outskirts of this crime-ridden southern city in search of the 16-year-old girl.
"They were looking for a girl called Jola. Her father, Agim Spasolli, 36, tried to
drive them back," the Vlore police spokesman Ali Hajdini said.
"The gangsters shot both the girl and her father after they failed
to separate them,'' Hajdini said. The girl died later in hospital. Her father was in a
critical condition.
Police said they had the five suspects in custody. Relief agencies in
Albania have warned that gangs are trying to kidnap young Kosovo girls to set them up as
prostitutes in Italy or Greece.
In an earlier (May 22) report, the Knight Ridder correspondent, Lori
Montgomery, also reported from Vlore about 10 speedboat rafts leaving this port city in
southern Albania every night, headed for Italy, and ferrying to the Italian bordellos
their daily catch of Kosovo girls.
Sometimes, the women are lured on board by promises of safe passage to
Italy, for which families pay up to $800 per head. But much of the time they abducted and
forced into prostitution against their will. Such as the 27-year Pristina woman whom the
Italian police rescued from a whore house in Rome, where she had been forced to work as a
prostitute by her Albanian captors, the Knight Ridder said.
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