UFO Info Week-End

Last month investigators in Berlin revealed they had cracked the code to the Stasi’s databank

Last month investigators in Berlin revealed they had cracked the code to the Stasi’s databank. The resignation of the West German chancellor Willy Brandt in 1974 after the unmasking of his close colleague, Gunther Guillaume, as a spy, is regarded as the Stasi’s finest hour. But allegations persist that there was a second highly placed Social Democrat politician on the Wolf payroll.It should not be too difficult to find out. Nato’s battle plans and logistics would find their way to East Berlin hidden in train lavatories. Against that the West could muster nothing, not even, for 20 years, a photograph of its chief adversary.Nearly 10 years after the fall of the Wall, it is still a matter of conjecture how thoroughly the Stasi penetrated the West. There is no evidence to suggest BND agents found out much about East Germany or captured many Stasi spies.Under Markus Wolf, head of the Stasi’s foreign intelligence operations, Communist agents rummaged through the West’s secrets at will.

What had seemed like a simple jigsaw puzzle has turned in recent weeks into a diplomatic nightmare. For Germany’s new government, determined to assert itself on the world stage, the bickering has revealed that the US still refuses to recognise Europe’s most powerful country as anything other than an American client.The CIA never had much respect for the West German security service (BND), whose spies were regarded by their US bosses as low in morale and intelligence and lacking initiative. The CIA’s pile of Stasi documents is in its vaults in Washington, while the recently decoded files to which it corresponds are kept in Berlin.
Never the twain may meet. But the clues to the secrets of the Stasi, the East German secret police, are separated by a vaster distance than the breadth of an ocean. When the two sides come together to compare notes, thousands of former agents will be unmasked

So ran the theory. THE GERMANS have the lock, the Americans the key to the mysteries of the Communist world’s most formidable spying machine. There are positive signs from both sides,” said Mr Moussa at the end of a two-day European-Mediterranean foreign ministers’ meeting in Malta’s capital, Valletta.The United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992 for failing to hand over for trial two Libyans accused of planting a bomb on the Pan Am airliner that exploded over Lockerbie in December 1988, killing 270 people.Mr Moussa said the dispute would figure high in talks between Colonel Gaddafi and President Hosni Mubarak when they meet at the Qubba presidential palace today..

Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Amr Moussa, said in Malta he expected a solution “within the next few weeks” to the lengthy conflict pitting Libya against Britain and the United States.
“There are great prospects for optimism in this question. He accepted, though, that “the United States is responsible for this terrible tragedy” and pledged to “do what is appropriate” by the victims’ families.. LIBYA’S LEADER, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, starting a week-long trip to Egypt amid signs of a possible breakthrough in the Lockerbie dispute, drove towards Cairo in a cavalcade of some 200 vehicles yesterday. He was under pressure to appear tough over what Italian public opinion regards as a whitewash and said he had been “shocked” by the verdict.The US Defence Secretary and the Italian Defence Minister are to conduct the safety review and their report is to be submitted to Mr Clinton and Mr D’Alema “as soon as possible”.Mr Clinton refused to comment on the verdict, saying that the judicial process was not yet complete.

The review was announced in Washington yesterday by President Clinton and the Italian prime minister, Massimo D’Alema, as the Italian public and relatives of the victims voiced outrage over the acquittal of the American pilot whose low-flying surveillance plane caused the accident in which 20 people died on 3 February at Cavalese.
The court martial jury’s “not guilty” verdict on Marine pilot Richard Ashby, on Thursday, created a difficult atmosphere for Mr D’Alema’s first official visit to Washington yesterday. THE UNITED States and Italy have announced a comprehensive review of safety regulations relating to US forces in Italy in an attempt to ensure that the cable car disaster of a year ago is not repeated. They look helplessly as the car carrying Maja and her mother races out of the village.Perhaps those lessons in empowerment and assertion are catching on, after all.Sue Lloyd-Roberts’ film Bridestealing in Kyrgyzstan will be shown on BBC2’s `Correspondent’ programme at 7.30 tonight. The “happiest day” of his life is not turning out as planned, Norguz and her daughters, surrounded by the prepared banquet, are in shock. “My daughter is finishing her university education”, and she gathers up her weeping daughter.Sanjal is mortified. I then order a car which brings Maja’s mother to the house.Half an hour later, she storms in “No, it’s not our custom,” she yells at Norguz.

Norguz agrees: “Your mother will tell you it is alright, it is our custom.”At this point, it becomes clear to me that this is much more sinister than the “courtship ritual” I had been led to expect I intervene but I am brushed aside by the family. The women are unperturbed, they all say “come on, it is always like this”, “It happened to us all”, “You’ll be happy.” Maja, now hysterical, demands that someone goes back to the city to fetch her mother. Maja screams and starts to fight like a caged animal, holding her hands above her head to stop the headscarf from covering here head. Unsuspecting, she walks across the threshold and is greeted by the women in the family who hover like predators.Norguz, a formidable woman, lunges at the tiny girl with the headscarf. Astonishingly, given the regularity with which kidnaps take place, the girl selected by Sanjal, 19-year-old Maja, has agreed to come along with a friend to a birthday party at his house. Various daughters and daughters-in-law are busy preparing the house and the wedding banquet. The whole village has been invited to the wedding party.Norguz reaches into an ancient leather trunk for the red crushed-velvet dress that her three daughters-in-law wore after they were kidnapped by her older sons and the “platok”, the ritual headscarf.According to custom, she explains, it is only necessary for the intended bride to cross the threshold of a boy’s house and for the mother-in-law to cover her head with the headscarf for her honour to be compromised and for the marriage to become a fait accompli.After this, it is left only for the local mullah to be summoned to bless the couple.