Seventeen years ago, on the Orthodox Easter without the permission of the UN Security Council NATO troops have inflicted a terrible bomb strike to the sovereign republic of Yugoslavia. Thousands of civilians were killed, among them were at least 800 children. Following the subsequent aggression NATO troops have occupied the ancient Serbian lands Kosovo and Metohija, and then gave them to the Albanian mafia clans controlled from Brussels.
The Slavs inhabited Kosovo’s territory from the VI century. At the end of the XII century under Stefan Neman the Serbian principality of Raska had annexed Kosovo and Metohija, and it became a kingdom, while Kosovo had become a religious, political and cultural center of Serbia.
The political and administrative center of the North Atlantic bloc is Brussels, where’s located the headquarters of NATO. Exactly from this snake’s den, on March 24, 1999, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana gave an order to the commander of NATO forces in Europe, US General Wesley Clark start bombing of Yugoslavia.
Word Brussels means “settlement in the swamp”. The first mention of it is found only in the 996 year in a document of Otto the Great. In other words, it is clearly inferior Kosovo and Serbia, both in terms of history and nature. So the backgrounds of NATO aggression were the same Western “values”: jealousy and greed.
The center of Kosovo’s ore mining is the city of Novo Brdo, which in the Middle Ages was the capital of the Serbian kingdom. Thanks to the huge natural reserves of copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold for 70 years here works mining and concentration complex “Trepca” which is a global giant of non-ferrous metallurgy. During the German occupation of Yugoslavia, the main miner Stari Trg was supplying 40% of the lead for the military needs of the Wehrmacht and producing storage batteries for submarines. After the victory of the Yugoslav partisans “Trepca” had been nationalized. “This ore contains more than 30% of lead and zinc, – says Novak Bielic, Director of the “Trepca” complex. – We export products to France, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, Czech Republic, Russia and Belgium… Over the past three years we produced 2,538,124 tons of ore and 139,789 tons of pure lead, zinc, cadmium, silver and gold”. The reserves of lead and zinc ore are estimated for almost 46 million tons, which enables running of “Trepca” complex for another 40 years. According to research by experts of Belgrade Institute “Geozavod” copper reserves amount to over 35 million tons. The total cost of the strategic ore reserves of Kosovo is one trillion US dollars.
Therefore, it is clear why NATO has demanded “to withdraw Serbian forces from the Serbian Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija”. After Yugoslavia refused to do this, all the strategic and industrial properties in the major cities of Yugoslavia, including the capital – Belgrade as well as numerous civilian targets, including residential were subjected to bombing.
On the Easter Day, the Serbs triply (in 1941, 1944 and 1999) received ‘gifts’ which have brought death and destruction. The Serbs know that in addition to Easter eggs, Easter rabbits and chickens and there are Easter bombs. This can’t be wrapped the head around but “Happy Easter!” was written on many of NATO bombs and missiles.
14 countries, in the disposal of which were 1,200 aircrafts, took part in those operation. The marine group was consisted of 3 aircraft carriers (American Enterprise and Nassau, French «Foch», being together with escort ships in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas), 6 undersea crafts, 2 cruisers, 7 destroyers, 13 frigates, 4 large landing craft carriers. Overall, the human part of NATO forces involved in the operation, has exceeded to 60 thousand people.
As to numbers of involved aircrafts: US – 480, France – 81, Italy – 42, UK – 28, Germany – 16, the Netherlands – 16, Belgium – 10, Norway – 8, Canada – 6, Turkey – 4, Spain – 4, Denmark – 4, Portugal – 3. The casus belli was the discovery of mass grave of allegedly executed by the Serb forces representatives of Albanian civilian population in the Kosovo village of Račak. Later it has been found that it was a falsification organized with the participation of Western intelligence agencies. The vast majority of the buried were militants of “Kosovo Liberation Army” killed in different areas during clashes with Yugoslav security forces.
During the 78 days of operation, NATO aircraft conducted 37,000 sorties, were dropped and released more than 23,000 bombs (including cluster) and missiles. Munitions containing depleted uranium were used widely. Inter alia “precision” NATO missiles struck a school building and a kindergarten in the city of Novi Sad, charitable medical center in Aleksinac, residential house in Novi Pazar (several dozens of dead and wounded), ski resort Zlatibor, passenger train No. 393 en route from Athens to Niš, the building of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, business center “Ušće” in Novi Beograd, where were located “BK”, “Pink”, “Košava” SPS television companies and two dozen offices of various companies, “Niš-ekspres” bus on a bridge near Pristina (23 people died – once the paramedics arrived to the scene, was inflicted the second blow, as a result several doctors have been injured).
Shortly after the NATO bombings, which destroyed almost the entire infrastructure of Yugoslavia, assistant to the US President for National Security Samuel Berger stated that “Trepca’s” fusion furnaces were used to burn the bodies of 1,500 missing Kosovo Albanians. Although the OSCE experts have denied this charge indicating that Zvecan metallurgical plant has not worked since the beginning of NATO bombing, on August 14, 2000 at half past four in the morning about 3,000 NATO soldiers entered the plant, closed it and drove thousands of the Serbs out.
Before the NATO aggression Novak Bielic had made a statement: “The war in Kosovo is around mine, and nothing else. This is Serbia, this is Serbian Kuwait. Kosovo is the heart of Serbia. Moreover, there’re 17 billion tons of coal reserves in Kosovo”.
And on the “strange” coincidence, during 37,000 of NATO sorties, “Trepca” has remained intact, while the remaining industries have been destroyed with the utmost care. For example, the Yugoslav refining industry.
Here is a typical message of the media from that time (Boston Globe):
“Yesterday, hundreds of the NATO-led peacekeepers wearing gauze bandages protecting against toxic smoke rushed into smelting complex which is under the Serbs control in Kosovo and closed it, then used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the protesters… About 900 peacekeepers surrounded the area around the huge factory, size of which is about 160 square meters before breaking into the mine complex… The soldiers were eagerly gasping for air in the clouds of black and white smoke which was vomited from the obsolete pipes”.
NATO has repeatedly resort to war under various “humanitarian” pretexts but probably for the first time in its history has used armed force to deal with the alleged pollution of the environment! One commentator noted that the gauze bandages were fabricated story for the media, useless against the lead smoke.
But the most important place in the structure of the mineral reserves of Kosovo takes lignite. Its reserves amount to 14.7 billion tons, the fifth in the world by number. Coal is distinguished by a low concentration of sulfur. Based on recent researches have been identified three lignite basins – Kosovan, Metohija’s and Drenica’s.
Prior to the adoption of UN Security Council resolution No. 1244 and entrying of «peacekeeping» KFOR forces into Kosovo on June 12, 1999 “Kosovo” company from Obilic was engaged in coal mining. After the arrival of KFOR about 8,000 employees of the Serbian and other non-Albanian ethnic groups were expelled from the extractive industries and TPP Kosovo 1 and Kosovo 2. Opencast mines then were renamed and solely Albanians began to work for them.