Some Macedonian Truths

[Mikail]

Where are you Buktop? Come on, 'Bratstvo i Jedinstvo', remember?

He's busy defending his Tato on the Zoran Vraniskovski thread

[Pelister]

Isn't it interesting folks that 88,500 Macedonian were sent to the Srem front to defend Serbia! The largest contingent of the "Jugoslav Forces".

These Partizani joined to raise arms against our oppressors. Macedonians were waiting in every village, town & city in Egej and Pirin to join them.

Chento raised an armed force of 88,500 in Vardar. How many more were waiting to join them?

Tito followed Churchill's orders as Macedonian armed force numbers would have swelled to more than 200,000 most likely.

We would have been free in 1944 if it wasn't for some peoples Tato!

The only "Bratsvo" the 88,500 sort was a Macedonian one!

The only "Bratsvo" Macedonians who joined the Greek communist during the Greek Civil War were after was a Macedonian one!

I agree.

If the Macedonians were allowed to join into a combined force we would be in a very different situation today. The mind boggles just how many hundreds of thousands of Macedonians were ready to fight to reverse the partition of 1913.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Hundreds of thousands, our people were ready at arms, and again, fooled by our neighbours and sold-out leaders, may they all burn in hell for this treachery against the Macedonian people.

It brings the heart to the throat everytime something like this is read, to realise how close we were to reaching our Macedonian dream, to realise that it was within reach, almost in our grasp, and then snatched away to serve the purpose of foreign interests.

Bratstvo i Jedinstivo? What a joke, Macedonian corpses rest in Srem because in life they were forced to fight somebody else's battle.

Bratstvo i Jedinstvo = Macedonians divided.

[Mikail]

Hundreds of thousands, our people were ready at arms, and again, fooled by our neighbours and sold-out leaders, may they all burn in hell for this treachery against the Macedonian people.

It brings the heart to the throat everytime something like this is read, to realise how close we were to reaching our Macedonian dream, to realise that it was within reach, almost in our grasp, and then snatched away to serve the purpose of foreign interests.

Bratstvo i Jedinstivo? What a joke, Macedonian corpses rest in Srem because in life they were forced to fight somebody else's battle.

Bratstvo i Jedinstvo = Macedonian divided.

Well said Brat!

How many Macedonians today are prepared to stand with us, ramo za ramo, to show a sign of strength?

There are many fence sitters here and many who just read the posts.

The time has come to cast YOUR vote!

Macedonia For The Macedonians

[julie]

Mikail does a fence sitter constitute people in support of and in line with our dushmanite brainwashing propaganda?

[julie]

If people can bring down the Berlin wall by hand peacefully, then if Macedonians were to unite then anything is possible.

However, we have fellow Macedonians that are not in support of the Macedonian Cause that argue in defense of people and groups with their own self serving interests that serve to support anti-Macedonian propoganda .

ako tsel nash narod zaedinstveno da se soberi, da se razbudat tie ushte shto kako slepi vodat po ramkite na Srbite, Grtsite, Bugarite, Makedonia pak mozhe da bide edna.

ama za zhalost imame budali shto se prodadeni dushi , za pari, spioni, izmegu nas shto se pove ke gordlivi da se raduvat na budalshtinite na dushmanite.

[Mikail]

No, the fence sitters would be those who don't want to comment for fear of offending.

I believe it's an offense staying quiet about all this in this day and age. We know more about the past and the present than the generation before us.

So let's all stand together just like our forefathers before us in 1903 and 1944!

[Mikail]

Well said Julie! That's exactly right!

[julie]

Cheers Mikail, Let it be known to the readers out there , if it is not already.
I dont give a flying toss what anyone thinks of me or what I write , say or believe in.

I speak my mind, am an honest person and will speak my truth
If someone gets offended for my beliefs in wanting basic human rights, in fighting for the truth and justice for my people, and in my personal dream of seeing my country whole again, then they can go and jump in the proverbial lake, preferably with bricks tied around their ankles, and take their spawn offspring with them
I dont kiss Srbo arse , Vulgar arse or Greek arse, nor is money my god.(some Macedonian organisations need to see that not everyone is stupid)
I would go in frontline battle for my people, and for the freedom of my Macedonian brothers and sisters.
There are people here I would trust alongside of me and people on this forum who I know would sell me out, it doesnt take a genius in reading posts to work out what peoples beliefs are and the nature of their honour and integrity
Its quite simple really

[Mikail]

Ex-Macedonian Diplomat Reveals
Who Caused Delays in Recognition

By Sasha Uzunov

June 8, 2004

An ex Macedonian diplomat has now revealed that valuable time was lost by politicians trying to gain international recognition for The Republic of Macedonia when it seceded from the collapsing Yugoslavia in 1991.

The ex diplomat, aged 54 and living in New Zealand, agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. He was recently on a business trip to Australia.

"I hold three men responsible for Macedonia losing precious time and in allowing Greece to block recognition of Macedonia under the name of Macedonia," he said.

He accused the then Macedonian President, Kiro Gligorov, and Macedonia's delegate to the Yugoslav collective Presidium, Vasil Tupurkovski, of spending too much time in trying to resuscitate a dying Yugoslavia by coming up with a plan of a looser confederation of six republics: Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro plus the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina.

"Rather than worrying about Macedonia, Gligorov and Tupurkovski were obsessed with preserving Yugoslavia. It was only when Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic realised that full independence was the only solution that Gligorov and Tupurkovski concluded Macedonia would be left trapped in a Serbian dominated rump Yugoslavia."

Slovenia was the first republic to break away in June 1991. The Serbian dominated Yugoslav army, JNA, fought a limited war there and then pulled out. Next was Croatia, and Bosnia, who copped the full brunt of the Yugoslav military for the next five years. Macedonia declared its independents in September 1991, but avoided any bloodshed.

The European Union, lead by Germany, were quick to recognise Slovenia and Croatia's independence. Greece used its veto to block recognition, despite Macedonia fulfilling the criteria set out by the EU's Badinter report. Macedonia's status was left in limbo until a UN brokered deal allowed the new state recognition under the temporary name of "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)."

"If Gligorov and Tupurkovski had expended the same amount of energy in getting Macedonia recognised instead of trying to save Yugoslavia, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in now," the ex-diplomat said.

"The Greeks had time to begin their diplomatic offensive. This is where I also hold the then Macedonian Foreign Minister, Denko Maleski at fault. He was obsessed with Macedonia gaining EU recognition that he refused advice from his Ministry officials to try gaining support from other countries. By the time he came to his senses, the Greeks had won the diplomatic war over the name issue.

"The last straw for me was when I saw a CNN TV news report of Maleski attending the meeting of Islamic Countries in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1992. He was there to plead for recognition. But it was a case of too little, too late.

"People within the Ministry were jokingly calling Maleski the Sheik, or Denko of Arabia, after British adventurer, Lawrence of Arabia.

"Tupurkovski made matters worse when he pushed the plan to have Macedonia recognised under the name of Central Balkan Republic. This is something he likes to keep quiet these days. Not many people know that.

"It was at this point that I made the decision to resign from the Foreign Ministry. I was just fed up. Deep in my heart I knew that Macedonia had no long-term future. So I decided to move my family overseas for a better life.

"I spent over 10 years as a diplomat in the former Federal Yugoslav Foreign Ministry before transferring to Macedonia's Diplomatic Service in 1991.

(end)

Sasha Uzunov is an Australian freelance photo-journalist who specialises in Defence issues and The Balkans.

[Mikail]

The 1992 Plan for War in Macedonia

By Sasha Uzunov
Melbourne Australia

October 18, 2005

Don't you just hate it when you make a prediction in an article and it comes true and newspaper editors don't take you seriously? Well, it's happened to me a number of times, which is very frustrating.

In January 1991 I warned five months in advance that war would break out in Yugoslavia; that the Yugoslav Army would invade the republics of Slovenia and Croatia. In the same article, I was one of the first to reveal Yugoslavia supplying weapons to the Saddam regime of Iraq. No one wanted to run the story. It finally was picked up by the Croatian Herald, Melbourne, Australia and published on 25 January 1991.

Eleven years later British journalists, Nicholas Wood and Ian Traynor, wrote in the Guardian newspaper, "Yugoslavia the hub of arms sales to Saddam," November 26, 2002, picked by the Mlebourne Age.

European Parliament passes for
Sasha Uzunov (Saso Trajcevski-Uzunov)

During an interview in 1993 for Melbourne radio station 3ZZZ I said that war would breakout in Macedonia unless a strong and large United Nations peacekeeping force was deployed to safeguard Macedonia's borders with Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria, Albania and Greece.

Eight years later, I was a soldier in the Australian Army patrolling the East Timor - Indonesia border when I heard that an ethnic Albanian insurgency had erupted in the west of Macedonia.

Every journalist dreams of finding a high-ranking source like Deep throat of Watergate fame. In 1992 I came across a high-ranking NATO source in Brussels, Belgium.

He revealed to me the secret plan to partition Macedonia along ethnic lines after a short war: the west would be incorporated into a Greater Albania and the left over parts would be incorporated either by Serbia or Bulgaria.

I found the plan to be far-fetched when I first heard it. I thought this person was pulling my leg. But later events showed that it wasn't far-fetched.

We met at the European Parliament's (EP) Brussels office. I was an Australian journalist hired by the MILS news agency to train young Macedonian reporters and to fine tune its daily news wire service, which was being supplied to subscribers: foreign embassies and international media agencies.

MILS's main office was in Brussels and had a branch in Skopje, the Macedonian capital. Skopje was manned by respected local journalist Saso Ordanoski, and his assistant was Mircela Casuleva, a Reuters correspondent and wife of Slobodan Casule, who later became Foreign Minister.

I found Mircela to be an excellent journalist with a great personality.

I was sitting at the bar in the EP with MILS Managing Director, Dr Ljupco Naumovski, a former Macedonian diplomat. A man introduced himself as working for NATO and showed me his ID card. We made some small talk and he left.
Sasha Uzunov (far left) and Dr Ljupco Naumovski, (far right), Director of MILS news agency, in London for a media conference for visiting Macedonian President, Kiro Gligorov, October 1992

few weeks later, MILS got an interesting phone call from the Belgian police saying it had been screened and given a clean bill of health to operate as a news agency; that it had no links to any foreign governments or intelligence services. The call was unusual to say the least and why it was made has never been made clear to me.

The NATO source invited me out for drinks a number of times. He was a big vodka drinker. He must have had 5 or six when he let rip with the revelation that Macedonia's days as an independent nation were numbered. I laughed and said, "I agree with you unless the problem of corruption and the economy are fixed."

"No it's not just a matter of money," he said. "There are greater outside forces at work that you don't know about." He would not elaborate. He had another 5 vodkas and left. This cat and mouse game kept going for a month or two, until he let it all hang out.

He revealed in great detail how war would start in Macedonia; he named names; told me how weapons were being smuggled by ethnic Albanian insurgents into Macedonia through Kosovo and from Albania. He said a favourite supply route was through the western town of Debar, which sits on the Macedonian-Albanian border. He mentioned there were a number of mountain caves near Debar being used to hide weapons. Donkeys were being used to ferry ammunition.

But he would not tell my who was pushing for war in Macedonia.

By 1993 UN peacekeepers from the UNPROFOR mission were deployed to protect Macedonia's borders. This mission later became UNPREDEP. Years later, for some crazy reason the Macedonian government recognised Taiwan and China in retaliation used its seat in the UN Security Council to stop the mission. With UN peacekeepers out of the way, the 2001 war in Macedonia began as a spill over from the Kosovo conflict of 1999.

The whole thing was mind-boggling. I remember talking to Mira, an elderly Serbian woman who was teaching the Macedonian language to Belgian children. She asked me what I was interested in writing about Macedonia. I said to her I would like to investigate the claims made by the NATO source and look into past Yugoslav communist crimes in Macedonia such as the infamous Chento show trial of 1946.

Her response was "You don't need to dig up the past nor worry about the future." I found her lack of curiosity surprising considering her ex-husband was famous Macedonian writer Meto Jovanovski, and both her children are journalists. Son Borjan Jovanovski was a former Presidential media spokesman whilst daughter Svetlana Jovanovska is the Brussels correspondent for major newspaper Dnevnik.

One day walked into our Brussels office a fit looking man in his late 30s or early 40s. He had very short blonde hair and had a military bearing. He introduced himself as Andreas Renatus Hartmann, a Member of the European Parliament for the German political party, The Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Mr Hartmann invited Dr Naumovski and myself to dinner at a swanky Moroccan restaurant. The dinner went well. We talked about a wide variety of subjects but the attention inevitably turned to the Balkans. I was enjoying eating the couscous and almost choked when Mr Hartmann said matter of fact that German Intelligence was about to open its first "station" in Tirana, Albania since World War II, and the British were pissed off at being beaten to the punch.

I though to myself why is this guy telling me this? He dropped more bombshells when he said that Europe, in particular German and France did not want an Islamic state in the Balkans namely Bosnia-Hercegovina or a Greater Albania. The German and French right wing parties wanted to strengthen Macedonia to act as a buffer state against possible Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

I found this at odds with the NATO source's revelations. Was Macedonia caught in the cross-fire of a power play between competing European nations? What could it possibly all mean?

And why was I told this? I could only speculate and say maybe they saw me as a young and enthusiastic journalist wanting to make a name for myself who would float the information in my articles. But what they didn't count on was unbelieving newspaper editors!

-----------------

Published in the Australian Macedonian Weekly newspaper, 18 October 2005

Sasha Uzunov is a freelance Australian journalist who has covered the Balkans and Iraq.

[Soldier of Macedon]

"Tupurkovski made matters worse when he pushed the plan to have Macedonia recognised under the name of Central Balkan Republic. This is something he likes to keep quiet these days. Not many people know that.

"It was at this point that I made the decision to resign from the Foreign Ministry. I was just fed up. Deep in my heart I knew that Macedonia had no long-term future. So I decided to move my family overseas for a better life.

I see that as part of the problem, good men got fed up and gave up, rather than remain firm in their positions on not giving up to the very end. By resigning from such positions, it allows idiots like Tupurkovski and co. to have a free reign.

[Mikail]

Yes. I am surprised SoM so many have chosen to keep quite on this topic. This is a stereo typical Macedonian trait that need to be broken.

[Soldier of Macedon]

We need to admit and confront the hard truths, and move forward form our past mistakes. There has always been a Macedonian spirit, we need to do everything we can, together, to bring it up to its true potential. And people who are pro-Macedonian need to get involved, irrespective of the amount of time they can spend, every Macedonian needs to start getting interested in their heritage so we can realise our true strength.

[Mikail]

No-one can argue with that Brat. So what does the silent majority say? Guess we'll never know!

We have some females here among us with more balls that most of the men.