Home

Saturday.

Enter content here

Argentina soccer legend, Diego Armando Maradona (R), embraces Bulgarian Christo Stoichkov in his farewell match attended by more than 50,000 fans that filled the Boca Juniors stadium in Buenos Aires, November 10, 2001. Maradona, 41, bid farewell to fans as a player after a professional career that began when he was just 15 years old, saw him lead his country's national team to become world champions in 1986, and ended with him being elected one of the greatest players in the sport's history. REUTERS/Andres Moraga

RETRANSMITTING TO CORRECT THE NATIONALITY OF PLAYER AT RIGHT: Argentine Dario Husain carries soccer ace Diego Maradona during his farewell game in Buenos Aires, Saturday, Nov. 10, 2001. At right is Bulgaria's Christo Stoichkov. (AP Photo/Daniel Luna)

MIA

Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski set the foundations of the Reproduction center for production of healthy and quality vine material in Kavadarci village of Trstenik on Saturday.

It is a project worth DM 2 million, which will be realised with the means from the sale of "Macedonian Telecommunications".

"The Reproduction Center starts a new era of production of high-quality plants, that would enable wine production with European quality", Georgievski stressed and added that this project, which is in the framework of the global determination of the Government for reforms in the area of agriculture, will significantly contribute in the modernisation of Macedonian vine growing.

The capacity of the Center in the first phase encompasses 1 million vines, but building of additional vine areas of 25 hectares is envisaged.

According to Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Supply Marjan Gjorcev, this project enables "production of healthy, non-virus and quality vine material on Macedonian soil, thus increasing our national richness".

Minister of Transport and Communication Ljupco Balkovski and Metropolitan of Veles and Povardarie Jovan attended the formal start of building of the new object.


Prime Minister Georgievski visited private enterprise for production of iron and nickel "FENI Industry" on Saturday.

"The rule that real privatisation is the one when we have one owner and one strategic partner has been confirmed, thus completing a successful strategic reform of companies in the Republic of Macedonia", Georgievski stressed, expressing his satisfaction from the results that "FENI Industry", which, as he said, "works and functions on all cylinders".

According to him, the sale price of a company in Macedonia is not important. It is much more important, Georgievski said, to see if we have chosen the right strategic partner that will invest in it, keep it up, develop it and provide placement of its products.

According to "FENI Industry" General Manager Jacques Naisie Mopa, as a result of the efforts of the Macedonian Government, "FENI Industry" proved that it is not only a "pile of old iron" but "a company that we can be proud of".

Mopa informed that around 23 companies in the world produce iron and nickel, but "we are the first in Europe".

MIA

Skopje, 10 November (MIA) - After Today's final consultations with the representatives of the HAG tribunal, OSCE and the international expertise, the exhumation of the bodies from the Tetovo mass grave will start Sunday. As it is been claimed, the bodies of the kidnapped Macedonians by the so-called NLA are burried inside.

The Minister himself gave the statement late Friday night during the visit of the Interior Ministry department in Struga.

According to the Minister Boskovski, during today necessary arrangements for the exhumation will be taken on, as well as complete secure by the security forces on the spot where the mass grave presumably exists.

During his Friday visit to Debar, Gostivar and Struga, The Minister estimated the Security situation in the country as stable especially the region from Gostivar to Struga.

Boskovski pointed out that there have been certain terrorist movements in crises regions.

The Guardian

There are four things to consider when deciding who is a terrorist.

Timothy Garton Ash
The Guardian
Saturday November 10, 2001

Terrorism, they say, is like an elephant on your doorstep. You recognise it when you see it. But it is not that simple. The United Nations, Nato and the European Union have all tried to find a common definition of terrorism. None has got very far. When they have come up with a form of words, it has been so general as to be mostly useless. The member states of these organisations, many of them with ethnic oppositions or insurgencies of their own, cannot agree on anything more specific.

Yet nothing would be more dangerous in the world after September 11 than to fall back into the easy relativism of "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". We do need a working, operational definition of terrorism, but it has to be sophisticated, and customised for each case.

There are four things to look at in deciding whether someone is a terrorist, and, if they are, what kind of terrorist: biography, goals, methods, and context. Only a combination of the four will yield an answer.

First, the biography. Who are they, where are they coming from, and what do they really want? The classic questions of intelligence work are also the first intelligent questions about any suspected terrorist. Biography may not be at the heart of all history - but it certainly is on this patch. Why did 15 of the 19 assassins of September 11 come from Saudi Arabia? Does Osama bin Laden really want to destroy the west, to purify Islam, to topple the Saudi royal house - or merely to change the Saudi succession?

The second element to be considered is the goal. Whatever the tangle of biographically conditioned motives - and human motives are often unclear even to ourselves - one also has to look at the proclaimed goals of a terrorist group or movement. Sometimes, as in the case of al-Qaida or the German Red Army Faction, the proclaimed goals are so vague, apocalyptic and all-embracing that they could never be realised in any real world. But sometimes they are clear and in some sense - much as we deplore the resultant sacrifice of innocent lives - rational objectives, which may sooner or later be achieved in the real world.

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) wants independence for Kosovo; the IRA, a united Ireland; the Basque terrorist organisation Eta, independence for the Basque country; the Albanian National Liberation Army seeks equal rights for Albanians in Macedonia.

Next there are the methods. An old man who stands on a soapbox at Speakers' Corner of a rainy Saturday afternoon demanding that the Lord raze to the ground all branches of Marks & Spencer is not a terrorist. He is a nutter at Speakers' Corner. The Scottish National Party has goals much more far-reaching than the National Liberation Army in Macedonia - it wants full independence for Scotland - but it works entirely by peaceful, constitutional means.

Does the individual or group use violence to realise personal or political goals? Is that violence targeted specifically at the armed and uniformed representatives of the state, or does the group also target civilians? Does it attempt to limit civilian casualties while spreading panic and disruption - as Irish paramilitaries have sometimes done, by telephoning bomb warnings - or does it aim for the mass murder of innocent civilians, as al-Qaida plainly did on September 11?

And finally there is the context. Basic Principle 1.1 of the Nato-brokered "framework agreement" for a peace settlement in Macedonia says: "The use of violence in pursuit of political aims is rejected completely and unconditionally." An admirable principle, but not to be taken too literally. After all, in bombing Afghanistan, America and Britain are pursuing political aims through the use of violence. Ah, you reply, but that is justified by all the time-honoured criteria of "just war", and made legitimate by international coalitions, organisations and law. Anyway, it is directed against organised international terrorism. To use political violence from inside and against a legitimate state is a quite different thing. But who decides if a particular state is legitimate?

Even within an internationally recognised state, there can be such oppression that armed resistance may be considered legitimate. This is the position expressed with incomparable force in Schiller's Wilhelm Tell. When the oppressed man can nowhere find justice, writes Schiller, then he reaches up into the sky and pulls down his eternal rights that hang there, inalienable and imperishable, like the stars. If no other way remains, then he must take up the sword. Such were the Polish uprisings for freedom in the 18th and 19th centuries. Such was the American war of independence.

It therefore matters hugely what kind of state you're in. It is one thing for groups like the IRA and Eta to use political violence in states like Britain or Spain, where the means of working for peaceful change are equally available to all in a mature democracy. It is another thing for Palestinian groups to use political violence against an oppressive military occupation in the Gaza strip or the West Bank. Another again for the ANC against the South African apartheid regime. Yet another for the violently repressed Kosovo Albanians to take up arms against the Milosevic regime in Serbia.

We may want to uphold the universal principle "no violence", but we all know that these are, in political fact and in moral content, very different things, and some violent political actions are - shall we say - less unjustified than others.

It is not treachery or weakness to make these distinctions. It is common sense.

We cannot realistically hope that everyone will agree on who fits what label. Russia will continue to denounce armed Chechens as terrorists while others celebrate them as freedom fighters. The same goes for Turks and Kurds, Israelis and Palestinians, Macedonians and Albanians. But if analysts drawn from as wide a range of countries and cultures as possible were to use this fourfold template to make an examination of each particular case, they might at least agree on some of them. (There's a nice job for a global think tank here.)

This would be a basis for the UN to persuade as many states as possible, from as many regions and cultures as possible, to subscribe to that finding, case by case. Where possible, common actions should follow from shared analysis.

We won't identify all the elephants this way, let alone shoot them. But it might help us to corner a few.