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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldsnow who wrote (15032)	10/22/1999 3:21:00 PM
From: George Papadopoulos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

dailynews.yahoo.com US Concerned By Chechnya Violence, Urges Dialogue [very touching] WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said Friday it was troubled by a rocket strike that killed and wounded scores in a crowded market in Chechnya's capital of Grozny and urged Russia to pursue a political solution. The White House said it had made its concerns known through the U.S. ambassador in Moscow and urged Russia not to repeat the errors of its 1994-96 war in the rebel province that killed tens of thousands and ended in a humiliating Russian withdrawal. ''There is a tragic situation there with terrible loss of life,'' White House spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters. ''It is certainly troubling to see this kind of loss of life and we have repeated to the Russians that we believe that a constructive political dialogue is the only way to end this and that we should not repeat the mistakes of 1994 and 1996.''[of course all the loss of life in Yugoslavia was not too terrible, afterall it was Milosevic's fault] Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin blamed the carnage at the marketplace on rival Chechen gangs, saying Moscow's forces had nothing to do with the blast that left at least 60 dead, including women and children. Chechen fighters in Grozny said the blast was caused by surface-to-surface missiles. Noting the conflicting reports, the White House said it was trying to figure out what happened. [really?] ''We will continue, regardless of this incident, to make clear to the Russians and to both parties that there is no way to find a purely military solution to this situation,'' he added. ''There needs to be a constructive political dialogue and ... both parties need to engage in that dialogue.''[LOL...this is the pits...but I forget, the Raimboullet scam was also blamed on Milo for refusing to talk...] Russian leaders say they are determined not to repeat the mistakes of its 1994-96 war Chechnya, but they also say they are determined to root out Islamic rebels who are blamed for bomb blasts in Russia. It is difficult to see how they can do that without either seizing or negotiating their way into cities, including Grozny, where the guerrillas operate freely.

To: goldsnow who wrote (15032)	10/23/1999 6:39:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

Goldsnow, As I said in dozens of previous posts on this thread --such as: Message 9580254 --this whole Kosovo campaign highlighted the geopolitical discrepancies between (western) Europe and the U.S. I think that France's long-term objective is to lead Europe's military endeavours: France is a permanent member of the UN's Security Council, she has nukes, she enjoys a worldwide imperial network (Guyana, New Caledonia, Reunion islands, Martinique, subsaharan Africa, Comores, etc.), and, last but not least, France considers herself as morally and as destined as the U.S.A. to politically lead the world. Although the term world leadership is not a slogan as popular in French politics as it is among US political leaders, the belief that France is nonetheless a great country that has to secure its rank among all the other powers-that-be is widely shared among French politicos.... Frenchmen can't face the resentment of countries such as India (close to one billion inhabitants), Indonesia (approx. 220 million inhabitants), Japan (120 million inhabitants), or even China (1.2 billion) whose say in world politics weighs less than the opinion voiced by an 'arrogant' small European country populated with only 55 million Frenchies.... Some of the French elites are sincerely scared about the future: they're afraid of being diluted, politically and culturally, in a Germanic-minded Europe. With Berlin as the new German capital; Frankfurt as the ECB's official hangout; Brussels, as a Froggy enclave in a Flemish (read: Germanic) country, most of Europe's key power levers are located in Northern Europe. Furthermore, they're well aware of the US strategy consisting in playing Germany against France: as Germans want to become more assertive on the diplomatic arena, they know that only the US can help Germany's geopolitical interests to prevail over France's.... Ultimately, France, together with other tacit European allies, can't stomach the prospect of a XXIst century doomed to be ideologically and economically ruled by the U.S.A. Hence their relentless advocating of the 'European model' vs. the allegedly cheap American one. Now, the question is, IMHO: the US model fosters an across-the-board free-market rationale --whether for mundane goods and services, for cultural productions (movies,...), and, to some extent, the free flow of workers within ever larger economic agregates. Besides, because of its history, the US has to stick to some sort of melting-pot agenda: US political elites are more often than not confronted to a discrimination-aware society --this is dubbed (pejoratively) 'communautarisme' by the French power elites. The French still praise a sociological model wherein one size fits all. Howbeit, what's the alternative society that would be promoted by a European venture which brands itself as a challenger to the American model? In other words, what kind of social fabric is being cooked by the European elites. Is it a Europe that will never favor a Hollywood-like movie business, that will never acknowledge its own minorities (Gypsies, Arabs, Blacks,....), that will favor the economic status quo --by maintaining its guild-like corporate framework, that will define itself as a Christian fortress, that will indulge in petty parochialisms for the sake of 'cultural diversity',....? You tell me! Gus.