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29, April-2002.

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Monday.

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Tourists who arrived with the Ocean Majesty, the first cruise ship for the current season carrying 416 passengers, were welcomed at the Varna port terminal with the traditional "bread and salt" and a dance show. Pressphoto BTA photo: Krassimir Krustev

ETHNICALLY MIXED POLICE TEAMS ENTER IN VEJCE.
 
MIA
 
The ethnically mixed police patrols continue to execute their activities in the Skopje, Gostivar and Kumanovo-Lipkovo areas.
 
As the Media Activity Center of the Governmental Coordination Body announced, the patrolling in the Tetovo area is proceeding regularly except for the village of Poroj. After a several weeks of absence, the police patrols also entered in the village of Vejce.
 
Last night, the public peace and order in the Tetovo and in the Kumanovo areas was violated on several occasions. The gunfire was with lower intensity compared to previous days.
 
In Tetovo and Kumanovo-Lipkovo crisis region, occasional low-intensity violations of the public order and peace were registered.
 
More frequent shootouts were heard over the night and early Monday morning in Tetovo and its surrounding villages, reported MIA's correspondent.
 
Series of rifle and sporadic shots were registered in the area of the barracks Kuzman Josifovski Pitu, the railway station, the storage facilities of Makpetrol gas station, the district board of the Red Cross, the Tetovo Teke, as well as in the area of the settlements of Drenovec 2, the residential complex no. 82 and in several streets in the town.
 
Some shots were also noticed to come from the villages of Vejce, Lavce, Trebos, Neraste, Dobroste, Odri, Dzepciste, Poroj, Semsevo and Palatica.
 
According to the Interior Department in Tetovo, the armed provocations over the night and in the morning had no determined targets.
 
Monday morning at about 6:00h, some big flashlights were noticed in the own of Tetovo, spreading light from the village of Gajre.
 
It is calm Monday morning in Kumanovo - Lipkovo region. No violations of the public order and peace were registered in the morning, unlike the night, when some armed provocations were registere in about 12 occasions, reported MIA's correspondent.
 
In the period from 13:00 to 23:00h, there were frequent shots, coming from the villages of Vistica, Nikustak, Ropaljce, Slupcane, Vaksince and Matejce, while in the area of Glaznja Dam, a heavy machinegun firings were heard.
 
The patrolling through the villages of Lojane, Vaksince and Slupcane proceeds without any obstacles, as scheduled in the General Plan for police redeployment.

RELIGIOUS SERVICE HELD IN MONASTERY COMPLEX "ST. ATANASIJ" IN LESOK.
 
MIA

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A religious service was held Monday in monastery complex "St. Atanasij" in Tetovo village of Lesok in the memory of the eight members of the Macedonian security forces that were massacred by the Albanian terrorists on 28 April 2001 in Vejce.
 
The Macedonian policemen and soldiers were killed, when defending the sovereignty and integrity of Macedonia.
 
Representatives from the Interior Ministry including General of the Uniformed Police Department Zoran Jovanovski and many orthodox believers attended the service, which was held in the yard, as "St. Atanasij" Church was destroyed with bombs by the Albanian terrorists in August 2001.
 
The members of the choir of Retired Persons Association from Tetovo performed the spiritual song "Dignity.

Moderate earthquake rattles southwestern Bulgaria.
 
AP
 
SOFIA, Bulgaria - A moderate earthquake rattled southwestern Bulgaria on Monday, causing no injuries or damage, civil defense officials said.
 
The temblor had a preliminary magnitude of four and occurred at 1:10 p.m. (1010 GMT), the report said. Its epicenter was 140 kilometers (87 miles) southwest of Sofia.
 
Alan Tsagaev Won 3 Gold Medal for Bulgaria.
 
Standartnews
Vladimir Nikolov, Antalya
 
Olympic Vice Champion Alan Tsagaev won the European title in the category up to 105 kg at the European Weight-lifting Championship in Antalya yesterday.
 
BULGARIA-ROMANIA-ENVIRONMENT.
 
BTA
 
Petru Lificiu: Bulgaria Leads Romania in Enviro Legislation.
 
Sofia, April 29 (BTA) - Bulgaria leads Romania in the process of aligning domestic to EU environmental legislation, Romanian Environment Minister Petru Lificiu said after a working meeting with his Bulgarian counterpart Dolores Arsenova. He added that the two countries can assist each other in environmental protection at transborder and global level.
 
Arsenova and Lificiu discussed the idea to reinstate the intergovernmental commission on environmental protection whose operation was terminated in 1998.
 
The suggestion of the Romanian side to organize an official ceremony for the inauguration of the joint monitoring system for the management of ambient air quality in transborder towns along the Danube was approved. The system is expected to be launched in September, Arsenova said.
 
The Romanian delegation was scheduled to visit the Rila national park and the Parangalitsa nature reserve on Monday. The guests will also be shown around the laboratory at the Regional environmental protection inspectorate in Blagoevgrad.
 
TURKEY-VISIT-BULGARIAN MINISTER.
 
BTA
 
Energy Minister Kovachev to Meet with Turkish Counterpart Cakan, Deputy PM Yilmaz.
 
Sofia, April 29 (BTA) - Bulgarian Energy Minister Milko Kovachev met Monday with his Turkish counterpart Zeki Cakan, the press office of the Energy Ministry told BTA. He arrived on a visit to Turkey on Sunday and will be there until May 1.
 
In the early afternoon, Kovachev is scheduled to meet with deputy prime minister and state minister in charge of relations with the EU Mesut Yilmaz. He will then meet with representatives of Turkish electric company TEAS and national gas company BOTAS.
 
Bulgaria's National Electric Company executive director Vasil Anastasov and Bulgargaz executive director Kiril Gegov are also on the roster of the Bulgarian delegation.
 
Mouravei and Kraus Investigated By Prosecution.
 
Standartnews
Victoria Seraphimova
 
The two ex-ministers robbed the fisc of 125 million levs sealing unprofitable deals on jets.
 
Former Ministers Mouravei Radev (Finance) and Wilhelm Kraus (Transport) robbed the fisc of 125 million levs sealing unprofitable deals, show the results of the audit made by independent experts, sounded by Promiana (Change) Trade Union yesterday. The audit established that, by the consent of the two ministers and the managers of the Air Traffic Control (ATC), two jets were bought illicitly for the needs of the then Cabinet and the fisc was robbed of $27. 987 million. The contract with an Italian firm on the equipment of the ATC robbed the fisc of other $25.656 million. The employees from Promiana Trade Union will inform Chief Prosecutor Nikola Filchev about the violations as early as today. To them, the losses amounting to 125 million levs would suffice to pay Easter bonuses to all the 2.3 million of pensioners or one-off allowances amounting to 40 levs per capita to 2.2 million socially handicapped Bulgarians.
 
Sunny Beach Welcomes Tourists Muddy and in Ruins.
 
Standartnews
Elena Dimitrova
 
The Sunny Beach (Slanchev Briag) Black Sea resort welcomed the first tourists who arrived in end-week dug up. Sewers are being dug up round the clock and pipes are laid. The resort is sinking in mud and dirt and there are stones, lime and concrete in front of the hotels. All approaches are blocked by heavy machines. "By May 24 there should not be a single excavator here and all the streets have to be clean," Malina Bakalova, CEO of Slanchev Briag Ad said. Because of the delayed overhauls, however, the resort may lose some of its guests. Few days ago it transpired that big tour-operators started canceling the bookings and re-directing tourists to Albena and Golden Sands.
 
Foreigners Invest $ 451 Mln in Walnut Orchards.
 
Standartnews
Krastina Marinova

Three big European companies trading in nuts are ready to invest millions of dollars in Bulgaria. At the end of the last week "Bogelssen" based in Hambourg, "Balsen" of Italy and Foodex" of France required information from the Foreign Investments Agency on the terms for the establishment of joint ventures with the BG companies, said chairman of the FIA Nikolay Marinov. These three companies are the biggest producers of almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts and chestnuts in Europe. The foreigners offer to invest $ 450 million in Bulgaria and create 50,000 new jobs. They are ready to ensure markets for their products. From the Bulgarian party a apport contribution is required into a joint venture and 2,8000 ha of land for plantations. If the project is realized, Bulgaria may become the major exporter of nuts in Europe, explained Nikolay Marinov.
 

Punitive Measures Must Be Taken against Money Laundry.
 
INTERVIEW Standartnews: Roumiana Georgieva

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Roumiana Georgieva is an MP from the NMS. She graduated from the University for World and National Economy and worked as a senior expert for the Bank Consolidation Company. She also was an executive director of Teximbank. From 1996 Roumina was a chief of the "Special Supervision" Derectorate in the Bulgarian National Bank. The Directorate deals with the problems of the non-banking financial institutions and is in charge of fighting money laundry and shady financial dealings.

Juridical persons carry out shady financial deals, while the law punishes the physical persons, says NMS deputy Roumiana Georgieva.

Pavlina Zhivkova

- Mrs. Georgieva, do you think that the law against money laundry is efficient enough?

- The first law against money laundry was adopted in 1996. However, it didn't work efficiently. Two years later it became necessary to adopt a new one, which was amended in 2001. According to the new law, the list of people liable to report about the suspicious financial deals was expanded. The principal authorities of the "Financial Intelligence Agency" (FIA) were also defined. The parliamentary commission for national security and internal order will outline the parameters and measures that will lay the foundation of the new laws.

- Has the Penal Code be amended?

- Yes, we have envisaged punitive measures against juridical persons. Because most often the deals are sealed between the juridical persons, while currently the sanctions are used against the physical ones. The criteria underlying the law against money laundry are not based on the existing economic realia.

- Who exercises control over the FIA?

- Unfortunately no one does. It has transpired after the chief of the FIA, Nikolai Ivanov, had been replaced. Mr. Ivanov didn't provide detailed information about the suspicious financial operations, but he did receive reports on them from banks and other financial institutions. There must be better coordination between people reporting to the Financial Intelligence Agency and the divisions of the Interior Ministry authorized to enforce this law.

(Abr)

Camp Bondsteel And Americas Plans To Control Caspian Oil.
 
WSWS - Reality Macedonia
By Paul Stuart
 
Camp Bondsteel, the biggest from scratch foreign US military base since the Vietnam War is near completion in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. It is located close to vital oil pipelines and energy corridors presently under construction, such as the US sponsored Trans-Balkan oil pipeline. As a result defence contractorsin particular Halliburton Oil subsidiary Brown & Root Servicesare making a fortune.

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In June 1999, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Yugoslavia, US forces seized 1,000 acres of farmland in southeast Kosovo at Uresevic, near the Macedonian border, and began the construction of a camp.
 
Camp Bondsteel is known as the grand dame in a network of US bases running both sides of the border between Kosovo and Macedonia. In less than three years it has been transformed from an encampment of tents to a self sufficient, high tech base-camp housing nearly 7,000 troopsthree quarters of all the US troops stationed in Kosovo.
 
There are 25 kilometres of roads and over 300 buildings at Camp Bondsteel, surrounded by 14 kilometres of earth and concrete barriers, 84 kilometres of concertina wire and 11 watch towers. It is so big that it has downtown, midtown and uptown districts, retail outlets, 24-hour sports halls, a chapel, library and the best-equipped hospital anywhere in Europe. At present there are 55 Black Hawk and Apache helicopters based at Bondsteel and although it has no aircraft landing strip the location was chosen for its capacity to expand. There are suggestions that it could replace the US airforce base at Aviano in Italy.
 
According to Colonel Robert L. McClure, writing in the engineers professional Bulletin, Engineer planning for operations in Kosovo began months before the first bomb was dropped. At the outset, planners wanted to use the lessons learned in Bosnia and convinced decision makers to reach base-camp end state as quickly as possible.
 
Initially US military engineers took control of 320 kilometres of roads and 75 bridges in the surrounding area for military use and laid out a base camp template involving soldiers living quarters, helicopter flight paths, ammunition holding areas and so on.
 
McClure explains how the Engineer Brigade were instructed to merge construction assets and integrate them with the contractor, Brown & Root Services Corporation, to build not one but two base camps [the other is Camp Monteith] for a total of 7,000 troops.

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According to McClure, At the height of the effort, about 1,000 expatriates [former military personnel] hired by Brown & Root, along with more than 7,000 Albanian local nationals, joined the 1,700 military engineers. From early July and into October [1999], construction at both camps continued 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
 
Brown & Root Services provides all the support services to Camp Bondsteel.
 
This includes 600,000 gallons of water per-day, enough electricity to supply a city of 25,000 and a supply centre with 14,000 product lines. It washes 1,200 bags of laundry, supplies 18,000 meals per day and operates 95 percent of the rail and airfield facilities. It also provides the camps firefighting service. Brown & Root are now the largest employers in Kosovo, with more than 5,000 local Kosovan Albanians and another 15,000 on its books.
 
Staff at Camp Bondsteel rarely venture outside the compound and their activities are secretive. Whilst other KFOR patrols are small and mobile with soldiers wearing soft caps and instructed to integrate with the local population, US military personnel leave Bondsteel in either helicopters or as part of infrequent but large heavily armed convoys.
 
In unnamed interviews US troops complain that hostility to their presence is growing as local inhabitants compare the investment in Camp Bondsteel with the continuing decline in their own living standards.
 
Those visiting Camp Bondsteel describe it as a journey through 100 years in time. The area surrounding the camp is extremely poor with an unemployment rate of 80 percent. Then Bondsteel appears on the horizon with its mass of communication satellites, antennae and menacing attack helicopters circling above. Brown & Root pay Kosova workers between $1 and $3 per hour.
 
The local manager said wages were so low because, We cant inflate the wages because we dont want to over inflate the local economy.
 
The escalating US presence at Bondsteel was accompanied by increased activity by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Since its appearance most Serbs, Roma and Albanians opposed to the KLA have been murdered or driven out. Those remaining dare not leave their houses to buy food at the local stores and the need for military escorts stretch from childrens swimming pools to tractors taken away for repair. According to observers the KLA continue to act with virtual impunity in the US sector despite the high tech military intelligence facilities at Bondsteel.

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When US troops arrive at Camp Bondsteel, they are more likely to be met by a Brown & Root employee directing them to their accommodation and equipment areas. According to G. Cahlink in Government Executive Magazine (February 2002), Army peace keepers joke that theyre missing a patch on their camouflage fatigues. We need one that says Sponsored by Brown & Root, says a staff sergeant, who, like more than nearly 10,000 soldiers in the region, has come to rely on Brown and Root Services, a Houston based contractor, for everything from breakfast to spare parts for armoured Humvees.
 
The contract to service Camp Bondsteel is the latest in a string of military contracts awarded to Brown & Root Services. Its fortunes have grown as US militarism has escalated. The company is part of the Halliburton Corporation, the largest supplier of products and services to the oil industry.

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Brown & Root first rose to prominence in 1992 after Dick Cheney, as Secretary of Defence in the senior Bush administration, awarded the company its first contract providing support for the US armys global operations.
 
Cheney left politics and joined Halliburton as CEO between 1995 and 2000.
 
He is now US vice president in the junior Bush administration. In 1992 Brown & Root built and maintained US army bases in Somalia earning $62 million. In 1994 Brown & Root built bases and support systems for 18,000 troops in Haiti doubling its earnings to $133 million. The company received a five-year support contract in 1999 worth $180 million per-year to build military facilities in Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia. It was Camp Bondsteel, however, that was dubbed the mother of all contracts by the Washington based Contract Services Association of America. There, We do everything that does not require us to carry a gun, said Brown & Roots director David Capouya.
 
The aim of outsourcing military support and services to private contractors has been to free up more soldiers for combat duties. A US Department of Defence (DoD) review in 2001 insisted that the use of contractors would escalate: Only those functions that must be done at DoD should be kept at DoD.
 
In sectors controlled by other Western powers, KFOR soldiers who are living in bombed out apartment blocks and old factories joke, What are the two things that can be seen from space? One is the Great Wall of China, the other is Camp Bondsteel.
 
More seriously a senior British military officer told the Washington Post, It is an obvious sign that the Americans are making a major commitment to the Balkan region and plan to stay. One analyst described the US as having taken advantage of favourable circumstances to create a base that would be large enough to accommodate future military plans.
 
Camp Bondsteel has become a key venue for important policy speeches by leading officials of the Bush administration.
 
On June 5, 2001 US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld explained to troops at Camp Bondsteel what role they played in the new administrations economic strategy. He declared, How much should we spend on the armed services? ...My view is we dont spend on you, we invest in you. The men and women in the armed services are not a drain on our economic strength. Indeed you safeguard it. Youre not a burden on our economy, you are the critical foundation for growth.
 
One month later, President George W. Bush made his first trip abroad to see US troops at the camp. He traveled directly from the Rome G8 summit, where tensions with European governments had come to the fore. In a speech described as a retrenching of the US in Europe, he insisted that US troops were in Kosovo to stay, had gone in together and would leave together. In a break from normal procedure, in front of cheering troops, Bush signed into law a Congress-approved increase in military spending of $1.9 billion.
 
Since then Camp Bondsteel has continued to grow, as it spearheads the first phase in a realignment of US military bases in Europe and eastward. The Bondsteel template is now being applied in Afghanistan and the new bases in the former Soviet Republics.

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According to leaked comments to the press, European politicians now believe that the US used the bombing of Yugoslavia specifically in order to establish Camp Bondsteel. Before the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Washington Post insisted, With the Middle-East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly over rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil.
 
The scale of US oil corporations investment in the exploitation of Caspian oil fields and the US government demand for the economy to be less dependent on imported oil, particularly from the Middle-East, demands a long term solution to the transportation of oil to European and US markets. The US Trade & Development Agency (TDA) has financed initial feasibility studies, with large grants, and more recently advanced technical studies for the New York based AMBO (Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria Oil) Trans-Balkan pipeline.
 
Announcing a grant for an advanced technical study in 1999 for the AMBO oil pipeline through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania, TDA director J. Joseph Grandmaison declared, The competition is fierce to tap energy resources in the Caspian region....Over the last year [1999], TDA has been actively promoting the development of multiple pipelines to connect these vast resources with Western markets. This grant represents a significant step forward for this policy and for US business interests in the Caspian region.

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The $1.3 billion trans-Balkan AMBO pipeline is one of the most important of these multiple pipelines. It will pump oil from the tankers that bring it across the Black Sea to the Bulgarian oil terminus at Burgas, through Macedonia to the Albanian Adriatic port of Vlore. From there it will be pumped on to huge 300,000 ton tankers and sent on to Europe and the US, bypassing the Bosphorus Straitsthe congested and only route out of the Black Sea where tankers are restricted to 150,000 tons.
 
The initial feasibility study for AMBO was conducted in 1995 by none other than Brown & Root, as was an updated feasibility study in 1999. In another twist, the former director of Oil & Gas Development for Europe and Africa for Brown & Root Energy Services, Ted Ferguson, was appointed as the new president of AMBO [1997] after the death of former president and founder of AMBO, Macedonian born Mr Vuko Tashkovikj.
 
According to a recent Reuters article, Ferguson declared that Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, two of the worlds largest oil corporations, are preparing to finance the AMBO project.
 
The building of AMBO risks antagonising Turkey, the USs main ally in the region. According to the Reagan Information Interchange, While the United States is making an advantageous economic decision, it is overlooking its crucial strategic relationship with Turkey.
 
The US is also antagonising its European allies and Russia with Camp Bondsteel and other smaller military bases run alongside the proposed AMBO pipeline route. It has been built near the mouth of the Presevo valley and energy Corridor 8, which the European Union has sponsored since 1994 and regards as a strategic route east-west for global trade.
 
In April 1999, British General Michael Jackson, the commander in Macedonia during the NATO bombing of Serbia, explained to the Italian paper Sole 24 Ore Today, the circumstances which we have created here have changed.
 
Today, it is absolutely necessary to guarantee the stability of Macedonia and its entry into NATO. But we will certainly remain here a long time so that we can also guarantee the security of the energy corridors which traverse this country.
 
The newspaper added, It is clear that Jackson is referring to the 8th corridor, the East-West axis which ought to be combined to the pipeline bringing energy resources from Central Asia to terminals in the Black Sea and in the Adriatic, connecting Europe with Central Asia. That explains why the great and medium sized powers, and first of all Russia, dont want to be excluded from the settling of scores that will take place over the next few months in the Balkans.

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