Free Republic

MOSCOW (Mineweb.com) -- It is almost forty years since those fine falsettos, the Bee Gees, put their pop classic, “Massachusetts”, on the top of the charts. They had no idea that their lyrics might become the alleged plot of a scheme by a trio of Ukrainian metal men to steal hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the processing of manganese ore, and the sale of ferromanganese, ferrosilicon, and silicomanganese to steelmakers around the world. “And the lights all went out in Massachusetts,” sang Robin and Barry Gibb. “They brought me back to see my way with you.” On...

The US is turning on old friends in Europe, writes John Laughland. Before he denounced the "prevailing influence" of the US in the "anti-constitutional coup" that overthrew him, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan used an interesting phrase to attack those who were stirring up trouble in the drug-ridden Ferghana Valley. A criminal "third force", linked to the drug mafia, was struggling to gain power. Originally a label for covert operatives shoring up apartheid in South Africa before it was adopted by the US-backed "pro-democracy" movement in Iran in November 2001, the third force is also the title of a book...

17:36 Berlusconi defies allies, invites Kuchma to Rome Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, defying U.S. efforts to isolate Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma over alleged arms smuggling to Iraq, said on Friday he had invited him to Rome to discuss joining NATO. Berlusconi told Reuters after a NATO summit which Kuchma attended despite being told he would be unwelcome, that the Ukrainian leader would visit Italy mid-next week. "We will speak about our relationship and about the idea of President Kuchma to enter NATO," he said. "I believe we will have a strong relationship with so important a country." //Reuters

A leading Ukrainian judge, Yuri Vasylenko, has opened a criminal case against the country's president, Leonid Kuchma after accusations that he violated 11 articles of the country's criminal code. Mr Kuchma is alleged to have been involved in the sale of sophisticated Kolchuga radar systems to Iraq. He is also accused by political opponents of ordering the murder of an investigative journalist, Georgiy Gongadze, who wrote about corruption in high places. "I had no grounds not to open the criminal case against the president," Mr Vasylenko said before a news conference by opposition leaders. The opposition has also accused Mr...

On 20 September, US President George W Bush unveiled the new US national security strategy. It calls for a first strike against rogue states that possess weapons of mass destruction and strive to "acquire dangerous technologies". Three days later, Washington accused Ukraine of violating UN sanctions against Iraq by selling it four sophisticated Kolchuga radar system units. At the centre of the Iraqi arms scandal stand the hundreds of hours of tapes made illicitly in the office of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma by security guard Mykola Melnychenko. The portion of the tapes dealing with Iraq was only released in March...

Filed at 2:48 p.m. ET KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A meteor may have caused the flash that alarmed an Israeli pilot flying over Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said Saturday, insisting it was not a missile. An El Al pilot reported seeing a missile fired from the ground over central Ukraine during a Tel Aviv-Moscow flight on Thursday night. Israeli officials said the missile exploded a few miles from the plane. Pilots of two other planes flying over the Dnipropetrovsk region reported seeing a big blue fireball that resembled a missile explosion at the same time, the ITAR-Tass and Interfax news agencies...