Posted on 12/24/2008 9:43:51 PM PST by LjubivojeRadosavljevic
Russia and Serbia have signed a controversial energy deal that will hand Russian gas giant Gazprom control of NIS, Serbia's oil monopoly.
Under the deal, Gazprom is to build a gas pipeline through Serbia and an underground gas storage facility there.
Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev and his Serbian counterpart Boris Tadic signed the agreement in Moscow.
The plan is for Serbia to host part of a new pipeline called South Stream, to deliver Russian gas to southern Europe. Gazprom is taking a 51% stake in NIS for 400m euros (£380m; $560m), officials say.
Diplomatic tensions
Both countries signed an energy co-operation agreement in January, but the details have only just been finalised. Belgrade had delayed signing because a small party in Serbia's ruling coalition had argued that the terms on offer to Gazprom were too generous.
Critics say Russia's pledges to build South Stream by 2015 are not firm enough, given the current economic downturn. South Stream is designed to take Russian gas under the Black Sea to Bulgaria and then to Serbia for transit towards the lucrative markets of southern Europe.
Washington and the European Union are backing a rival pipeline project called Nabucco, to bring gas from Central Asia, which would bypass Russia.
Correspondents say the planned pipeline could undermine the European efforts, which aim to reduce European dependency on Russian gas. Serbia's energy diplomacy is complicated by the fact that Nabucco has EU backing - yet Serbia wants to join the EU.
Political tensions over Kosovo are also a complicating factor, with the EU supporting Kosovo's independence, while Belgrade and Moscow insist the territory remains part of Serbia.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Nice move on Serbia’s part to get back at the EU for what went down in Kosovo. Check, checkmate.
Thanks for posting the article.
yitbos
The Oily Tracks Running Through Kosovo
Michael Savage
November 30, 1999
Kosovo was about oil and nothing but oil, with maybe some uranium thrown in and a dash of “wag-the-dog.” And you thought it was to save the poor Kosovar Albanians.
Of all the ethnically “cleansed” peoples around the world, some numbering in the millions, the beneficent powers of NATO decided to draw the line with the Kosovar Albanians. About 2,000 of the ethnic Albanians had been reportedly killed by Serbs in the last several years, so it was time for the humanitarian guard to take action.
No matter that about as many Serbs had been killed by the Albanians, and that Kosovo is a part of the sovereign state of Yugoslavia, and that this conflict had been ongoing for centuries. Big Oil required a pipeline through Kosovo and the poor Serbs just happened to own the wrong real estate at the wrong time.
How do I know that the Kosovo action was about oil or, to be exact, about establishing a safe haven for an oil pipeline? Just recently Bill Clinton signed an historic agreement with Azerbaijan on this very matter. Azerbaijan is one of the former Soviet republics that became a separate country with the breakup of the USSR. Formerly, Caspian oil would have come into the world market as a Soviet export but not anymore. It now comes under the flag of this newly independent nation via Turkey where it is transshipped by way of Turkish seaports. And Russia has been deftly unlinked from the world oil market.
Now, keen interest in Azerbaijani oil is nothing new. The Germans have had a compelling interest in this oil going back to 1905 and extending through the two world wars up to and including the present. One of Hitler’s primary goals in his push to the east was to capture the Azerbaijani oil fields. But where the Kaiser and Nazi Germany failed, it seems the New World Order — featuring Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and other socialists — is going to succeed. The plan is now to route the oil in a way that will fulfill Germany’s long-sought-after objective.
Here is how the oil is going to run. It starts from the oil fields of Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital on the Caspian Sea. It is piped from there across Azerbaijan and Georgia through Turkey. But the plan of Clinton, and the rest of the present-day Neue Ordnung, is now to have it piped from Turkey directly through Bulgaria. In this way it can reach the Danube and the Adriatic Sea — the Danube being a direct route to Germany and the Adriatic bringing it much closer to Western Europe. And Russia is expected to look on, while it’s being aced out of this highly lucrative action.
But before reaching the Danube and the Adriatic, as you’ve probably guessed, the pipeline must first go from Bulgaria through Yugoslavia and Kosovo! Slobodan Milosevich, however, has had other plans for oil shipment through his country that are more to his liking (and Russia’s) and was unwilling to cooperate with this scenario. The NATO socialists were attacking Russia, by proxy, in stealing Kosovo from Serbia.
Now it begins to make sense, doesn’t it? The reason becomes clear why, of all the ethnic and religious oppression in the world, NATO chose this area tucked away in the Balkans for its ground-leveling “humanitarian” aid. And why the One World media places Slobodan Milosevich, a small-time local tyrant, alongside Hitler and Stalin.
During the shameful and cowardly NATO bombing of the historic bridges across the Danube River, the mouthpieces of the Government-Media complex ceaselessly propagandized. Jamie Shea, the English soccer thug; James Rubin, Mad Half-Bright’s Stooge; Solana, the Spanish socialist; an unnamed Luftwaffe general; and others continued the Big Lie. They were bombing Serbian civilians (hospitals, schools, trains, powerplants, apartments, orphanages) to save Albanians!
They were also destroying Kosovo to save it. These international war criminals were led by General Wesley Clark (a Rhodes Scholar from Arkansaw) who clicked his shiny heels for the commander-in-grief, Bill Clinton (another Rhodes Scholar from Arkansaw).
But the greatest shame must fall upon the tendentious media hacks. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and most columnists of the neo-right all fell in line: “The criminal bombing was just. It was to save the innocent ‘ethnic’ Albanians from the evil [non-ethnic] Serbs.” Have you now heard one of these hacks apologize or admit they were duped? Used by Big Oil to apologize for, no, to justify, NATO war crimes?
Even their “reportage” on the recent demonstrations of more than 25,000 Greek citizens was biased. Both by under-reporting the number (”hundreds,” blared the San Francisco Examiner) and by ascribing the legitimate protests against Clinton’s war crimes to “communists” and anti-American sentiment going back to the 1970s!
With the NATO presence in Kosovo, the way is now clear for the pipeline — and for the ethnic Albanians to ethnically cleanse the province of the remaining, helpless Kosovar Serbs, Gypsies, and Jews. To make the world safe for Big Oil’s trans-Kosovo pipeline.
Stupid move. Serbia’s state-run oil monopoly just became Russia’s state-run oil monopoly. Serbia has completely disregarded its own country’s interests. Would the Russians allow a foreign power to control their own oil industry? Of course not. They are not that stupid.
Yeah and piss off the only freind they ever had the Russians??? Russia has stood by Serbia for centuries. Russia has stood by them even when NATO led by Bill Klintoon, was boming them into submission.
Why should Serbia make nice nice with NATO and the west.
You dont kiss the people trying to kill you.
Just brilliant.
yitbos
And, Ratko Mladic?
—Nice move on Serbia’s part to get back at the EU for what went down in Kosovo. Check, checkmate.—
Yup. Can’t blame Serbia for being ticked off at the EU (and the USA, for that matter), given recent history.
Sorry the U.S. is on the wrong side of this conflict.
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