Posted on 09/22/2007 12:32:31 PM PDT by lupo-de-mare
The UN state and the seven robbers
When Bernard Kouchner lands in Kosovo in the summer of 1999 there is no mobile telecommunication. German Siemens and French Alcatel submit one offer each. A panel of local experts select Siemens. The offer is the cheapest and it is not colonial. At a fixed lump sum the Germans promise to build a network for Kosovo. The French offer says the network would remain French property and the country code of Monaco would be utilized.
Kouchner and the Kosovo Gangster
What happens? Bernard Kouchner, Kosovos legislator, head of government and head of justice, all in one person, replaces the UNMIK director of post and telecommunications, an Albanian, with a certain Pascal Copin, who in turn awards the contract to Alcatel. It is the only feasible solution, claims Copin, because only Alcatel (in a collaboration with Monaco Telecom) can provide Kosovo, not a formal state, with a country code.
Result: Seven years later Kosovo boasts the worst and most expensive telephone system in the region, concludes the European Council. Yet every time a Kosovan lifts the receiver, money rattles into French and Monegasque bank accounts, and we are not talking about small money. Close to a hundred million euros over the years, more than Swedens annual aid to Kosovo.
Well paid, you must admit, for lending a country code (0377) and for some ancillary services. But why, a naïve Swede might ask, he who thought he was helping Kosovo and not France, why couldn't UN arrange a country code for Kosovo? When the ITU, which issues country codes, is a UN organ? Kosovans were the first to ask this question. In 2002 they got the answer. They found a letter from UN man Copin to the ITU board. In the letter he asks ITU not to issue a country code for Kosovo.
Bedri Rama, at the time head of PTK, wrote an open letter to the UN. How am I going to explain to aid organizations that donate money for the basic needs of Kosovo that Kosovo assets at the same time disappear to Monaco? he asked.
"How can we explain this to different donors from whom we are seeking help for the elementary things in Kosovo's everyday life? How can we explain this to pensioners, to the many unemployed, to teachers, to professors and to our doctors who live on the edge of existence?"
An impossible question. If someone thinks that the corruption in Kosovo has grown to bizarre proportions, he should bear in mind that the human being is an animal that adapts to its environment. These Trutschlers and Johansens would not have been able to carry on the way they did unless the UN had created an adequate biotope. Because in Kosovo they were privileged in a way that not even monarchs of the Middle Ages could have dreamt about. This is the theme of the next article.
Maciej Zaremba, Translated by Oliver Grassman
Mrs Hisari and Mr Bo Olsson in reality are called something else. OIOS reports can be read on www.un.org/Depts/oios/otheroiosreports.htm The analysis of the Trutschler case is number A58/592, the report on employment procedures is called AP2005-600-18.
The Ombudsperson reports can be found on www.ombudspersonkosovo.org
Information about French MIESE can be found in the French magazine L’expansion http://www.lexpansion.com/art/134.0.125047.1.html and in the government report “Les acteurs francais dans le ‘post conflict’" http://www.hcci.gouv.fr/travail/avis/post-conflit-crise.html Information about Kosovo on UNMIK’s website: www.unmikonline.org
The currency in the UN-protectorate is euro.
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=2502&a=664657
Welcome to the forum. A rather esoteric article, however.
If they aren’t planting evidence to mislead the US into ultimately going into Iraq, they are screwing impoverished nations out of aid meant to help bring them out of despair.
At least Sarkosy seems a decent guy.
Can’t say that for the ruling party from before and the many minions who voted to keep it in power.
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