Bureaucracy: ASIO DELAYS OVER SPY FILE

ASIO DELAYS OVER SPY FILE

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the nation’s counter-intelligence agency, has inexplicably delayed responding to a request for a file on a former communist Yugoslav diplomat who might be linked to the Croatian Six case.

Sasha Uzunov, an Australian independent film maker and journalist, has tried to obtain under Australia’s National Archive Act access to the ASIO file of the late Dr Georgi Trajkovski, the Yugoslav Consul General in Melbourne during 1978-79.

Any federal government documents over 30 years become open to the public. Exemptions can apply on the grounds of national security. However, ASIO has 90 days to respond to any request.

So far Uzunov’s request, made on 4 November 2011, has taken almost double that time.

“I’ve made other requests for files and ASIO has responded within a matter of weeks,” He said. “I don’t know why this has taken over 150 days, almost double the time, just for a simple answer of yes or no.”

Uzunov, who is producing a documentary film about Yugoslav spying on Australia soil, titled UDBa down under, believes there is strong circumstantial evidence to link Trajkovski to the Croatian Six Case.

One of Australia’s worst miscarriages of justice, the Croatian Six terrorism case in 1979-80, may have been perpetrated by Trajkovski, a master spy posing as a diplomat and who, would you believe it, not once but twice managed to outsmart Australia’s domestic spy catchers, ASIO, and even shook hands with an unsuspecting Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser.

Intelligence sources in Washington and in the Republic of Macedonia, one of the successor states of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), have confirmed that Dr Georgi Trajkovski, the Yugoslav Consul General in Melbourne, Australia during 1978-79 was “hardcore UDBa (Yugoslav intelligence) and a key player in the Croatian Six set up.”

In 1988, Trajkovski with the same modus operandi, the use of agent provocateurs and exaggerated claims of anti-Yugoslav subversion, had a fellow Yugoslav diplomat removed from his post in Melbourne right under the nose of ASIO.

In 1991 legendary ABC TV investigative reporter Chris Masters dropped a bombshell on the Four Corners program about The Croatian Six case.

An agent provocateur set up members of Australia's Croatian community in 1979. Six Croats were imprisoned on false charges of wanting to plant bombs in Sydney.

Masters tracked down the agent provocateur, Vitomir Visimovic, who was an ethnic Serb living in Bosnia but had passed himself off as a Croat.

In fact, ASIO, the Australian Federal Police (successor of the Commonwealth Police) and the infamous and corrupt New South Wales Police Special Branch were all aware that Visimovic was an UDBa operative but suppressed the information during the trial of the Croatian Six. Moreover, the alarming thing was the Australian authorities let the man depart the country. This was during Malcolm Fraser’s tenure as Prime Minister (1975-83).

An UDBa hitman Vinko Sindicic was arrested in Scotland in 1988 after a failed assassination attempt on Croat dissident Nikola Stedul. At Sindicic's trial it was revealed he “had been in Australia in 1978, working with another Yugoslav agent on a plan to link Croatian political activists with terrorism.”

Hamish McDonald, an award winning Australian journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, has been following the Croatian Six case. He had this write on the subject: 

“In a new video, the Macedonian-Australian documentary journalist Sasha Uzunov says he has evidence Sindicic set up the Croatian six conspiracy with the main UDBa official in Australia, Georgi Trajkovski, who operated under diplomatic cover as Yugoslav consul-general in Melbourne."

Links:

www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1107/S00270/who-was-the-croatian-six-mastermind.htm

Previews of UDBa down under

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuMIDTPyGe0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMA0QTTayxE

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EMAILS – Request for ASIO FILE on Dr Georgi Trajkovski (reference number 11/21566 - National Archive of Australia)

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Subject: RE: Your Inquiry - Ref: 11/21566 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:59:41 +1000

From: ######@naa.gov.au

To: sashauzunov@hotmail.com

UNCLASSIFIED

Dear Mr Uzunov,

Unfortunately we have not yet received a response from ASIO, however please be assured that we will continue to process your application and will notify you as soon as we receive a response. 

As it has gone over the 90 days you do have rights of appeal which are outlined in the following link:

http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs12.aspx

Sincerely, ######

	t  02 6212 3924 f  02 6212 3999 e        @naa.gov.au
	Queen Victoria Terrace,Parkes ACT 2600 PO Box 7425, Canberra Business Centre ACT 2610

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From: Sasha Uzunov [mailto:sashauzunov@hotmail.com] 


Sent: Tuesday, 10 April 2012 10:31 AM


To: ######

Subject: RE: Your Inquiry - Ref: 11/21566 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Hi ####,

Its been over 4 months (120 days) and no response on this request?

cheers

sasha

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Subject: RE: Your Inquiry - Ref: 11/21566 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]


Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 09:36:38 +1100


From: ######@naa.gov.au


To: sashauzunov@hotmail.com

UNCLASSIFIED

Dear Mr Uzunov,

I refer to your request for an update on your request for ASIO files relating to Dr Georgi Trajkovski.

Unfortunately I have not yet received a response from ASIO, however please be assured that we will continue to process your application and will notify you as soon as we receive a response.

Sincerely,

 ###########

Reference Officer

Reference and Information Services 
Access and Communication

National Archives of Australia


Queen Victoria Terrace, Parkes ACT 2600 
PO Box 7425, Canberra Business Centre ACT 2610  t  02 6212 3924 f  02 6212 3999
e   ####@naa.gov.au


naa.gov.au

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From: Sasha Uzunov [mailto:sashauzunov@hotmail.com]

Sent: Thursday, 2 February 2012 7:14 PM


To: ########

Subject: Your Inquiry - Ref: 11/21566 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Dear #####

Just wanting to know any progress on my request?

cheers

Mr Sasha Uzunov

mob 0419 635 808

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From: Sasha Uzunov <sashauzunov@hotmail.com>


Date: 4 November 2011 1:42:12 PM AEDT


To: ########>


Subject: RE: Your Inquiry - Ref: 11/21566 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Thanks ##### for the quick response.

Georgi Trajkovski was under ASIO surveillance between 1977, 78, 79. He was Yugoslavia's consul general in Melbourne. He may have been a Yugoslav intelligence (UDBa / SDB) officer under diplomatic cover.

Cheers Sasha.  

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Subject: Your Inquiry - Ref: 11/21566 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]


Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2011 13:06:41 +1100
From:

########@naa.gov.au


To: sashauzunov@hotmail.com

UNCLASSIFIED

Dear Ms Uzunov,

Thank you for your request for an ASIO file relating to Dr Georgi Trajkovski.

ASIO records are eligible for release under the Archives Act 1983 after 30 years, subject to exemption of any material of continuing sensitivity as prescribed by section 33 of the ACT.  They are generally only transferred to the Archives in response to applications for access under the Archives act.

In order to submit an application to ASIO I need you to provide the following information about Dr Georgi Trajovski:

Date of Birth
Period you believe he was under surveillance (eg. 19XX-19XX)
State he was living in a time of suspected surveillance
Reason you believe he was under surveillance (eg. Membership of organisations, participation in events, etc)

Once I receive this information I will submit the application to ASIO, and I will contact you as soon as we receive a response. Please note this process can take up to 90 days.

Sincerely,

#########

Reference Officer

National Archives of Australia - Canberra Office 


Telephone: (02) 6212 3924
Fax: (02) 6212 3999
Email: ######@naa.gov.au

EXPERTS DOUBT UDBa "TORTURE CHAMBER"

Australian counter-intelligence experts, speaking on the strictest conditions of anonymity, have told TEAM UZUNOV they doubt the existence of a torture chamber in the old Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra, Australia.

The extraordinary claims were made by Melbourne photographer Nikola Stavrevski in a filmed interview for an upcoming documentary film, UDBa down under.

Mr Stavrevski was invited by the Ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia to Australia, Mr Pero Stojanovski, to photograph the handover-takeover ceremony of the former Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra by the Macedonian government in July 2011. Serbian diplomatic officials handed over the keys.

After the collapse of Communist Federal Yugoslavia (SFRJ) in 1991, the various diplomatic missions were split up amongst the successor states, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia.

“Ambassador Stojanovski told me,” Mr Stavrevski said, “that I wasn't permitted to photograph a particular room inside the embassy. This room had been left closed up and unused for many years.”

“When we opened the door to have a look inside, I was shocked at what I saw,” Mr Stavrevski.

“The room was sound proofed, dark, and had a bathtub in the middle with a wooden rack used to either tie down or secure something.”

He said that he immediately got the impression it had been a torture chamber used by the then Yugoslav Embassy and its secret police, UDBa.”

“Ambassador Stojanovski said to me that it was a delicate matter at the moment and that in due course the matter would be revealed in full detail.”

Australian counter-intelligence experts have told TEAM UZUNOV that it would be highly unlikely that UDBa would have run a torture cell on Australian territory.

“Anything is possible but ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) would have been monitoring the Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra during the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. They would’ve bugged the place. If anything of that nature occurred, then there would be details in ASIO files. The Australian media would have gotten wind of it long ago.”

Another expert said: “It would’ve been too risky for UDBa to have kidnapped people off the streets and taken them back to the Canberra. For that to happen you would need ASIO or the various Australian state police forces to have been either incompetent or outsmarted by UDBa.”

Mr Stavrevski stands by his allegations.

TEAM UZUNOV is in the process of trying to contact Mr Pero Stojanovski, the ex-Republic of Macedonia Ambassador to Australia, for comment.

(end)

UDBa "TORTURE CHAMBER" IN CANBERRA

“UDBA down under” – documentary film about Communist Yugoslav spying in Australia.

FILM'S SHOCKING ALLEGATION: COMMUNIST TORTURE CHAMBER IN CANBERRA

The Former Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra with the alleged torture chamber. In 2011 it was handed over to the Republic of Macedonia.

Photo: The handover takeover ceremony of the Embassy of the Republic of Macedonia, July 2011. Mr Nikola Stavrevski is on the far right of photo. The Ambassador Mr Pero Stojanovski is in the centre, white shirt, black suit and wearing glasses.

Mr Nikola Stavrevski, who runs a successful photography business in Melbourne, has revealed in a camera interview for an upcoming Australian documentary film, that he saw what appeared to be a torture chamber in the old Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra, the Australian capital.

Mr Stavrevski, also the editor of a popular news website for the Australian-Macedonan community known as Informator, agreed to make his shocking allegation on camera for the documentary film “UDBa down under”, directed and produced by Melbourne independent film maker Sasha Uzunov, which details the former Communist Yugoslav regime's use of its secret police to discredit emigre Croats, Macedonians and other dissidents.

Mr Nikola Stavrevski agreed to make his allegations on camera for the documentary film: "UDBa down under." Photo by Sasha Uzunov 2012.

Mr Stavrevski was invited by the Ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia to Australia, Mr Pero Stojanovski, to photograph the handover-takeover ceremony of the former Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra by the Macedonian government in July 2011. Serbian diplomatic officials handed over the keys.

After the collapse of Communist Federal Yugoslavia (SFRJ) in 1991, the various diplomatic missions were split up amongst the successor states, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia.

“Ambassador Stojanovski told me,” Mr Stavrevski said, “that I wasn't permitted to photograph a particular room inside the embassy. This room had been left closed up and unused for many years.”

“When we opened the door to have a look inside, I was shocked at what I saw,” Mr Stavrevski.

“The room was sound proofed, dark, and had a bathtub in the middle with a wooden rack used to to either tied down or secure something.”

He said that he immediately got the impression it had been a torture chamber used by the then Yugoslav Embassy and its secret police, UDBa.”

“Ambassador Stojanovski said to me that it was a delicate matter at the moment and that in due course the matter would be revealed in full detail.”

Mr Stavrevski further alleged in the filmed interview that he knew of Australian-Croats and Macedonians who had been “kidnapped” off the streets in Melbourne and Sydney and tortured by UDBa officers during the 1970s and 1980s.

Ambassador Stojanovski later became the centre of controversy over a legal dispute with his then girlfriend Lidija Dumbaloska over a failed relationship.

Link: Sydney Morning Herald article:

www.smh.com.au/national/exlover-menaced-diplomat-20110101-19cin.html

Film details

UDBa down under (45 minutes running time) – release date: late 2012 / early 2013.

An Australian a documentary film about the Yugoslav secret police (UDBa) in Australia, with a release date in early 2013. Directed and produced by Sasha Uzunov/Luke Leon Media. Interviewed on camera are Croatian and Macedonian community leaders, ex-Australian state police officers involved in counter-intelligence operations, and former spies both here in Australia and overseas.

The trailer/preview of UDBa down under - Yugoslav spying in Australia.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuMIDTPyGe0&feature=share

Sasha Uzunov's film making resume:

Director/Producer

Timor Tour of Duty (Documentary film) 2009

Brave Love (Short film) 2011 -

Kate's Screen test (Short film) 2012 -

UDBa down under (Documentary film) - 2012/13

Cameraman

Afghanistan: Outside the wire (Documentary film) – Canadian Cable TV News (CPAC) 2011.

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

Hamish McDonald

Respected Australian journalist Hamish McDonald's recent article titled, Framed: the untold story about the Croatian Six, in the Sydney Morning Herald, dated: 11 February 2012,

www.smh.com.au/national/framed-the-untold-story-about-the-croatian-six-20120210-1smum.html

McDonald in the longer e-book version (kindle) of his article writes:

“In a new video, the Macedonian-Australian documentary journalist Sasha Uzunov says he has evidence Sindicic set up the Croatian six conspiracy with the main UDBa official in Australia, Georgi Trajkovski, who operated under diplomatic cover as Yugoslav consul-general in Melbourne."

Who was the Croatian Six Mastermind? article by Sasha Uzunov.

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/croatian-six-mastermind.html”

CAN WE TRUST ASIO?

ON LINE opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13223

CAN WE TRUST ASIO?
by Sasha Uzunov
Thursday 9 February 2012

Mr David Irvine, the Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Australia's domestic spooks, has called for more spies from within the country's Islamic communities, but can ASIO be trusted to do an efficient job? History shows that our counter-intelligence service has a poor record in thwarting foreign spies. Should Australia's Islamic communities place their trust in such an organisation to do the right thing?

Terrorism-mania in Australia is nothing new; we experienced this back in the 1970s when émigré Croats were portrayed as the bad guy, a role now filled by Australia's Muslims. In fact ASIO remains a laughing stock within the émigré Croatian and Macedonian communities for its decades long ineptitude in dealing with the then Communist Yugoslav secret police, UDBa, and its dirty tricks campaign against those two communities on Australian soil at the height of the Cold War.

I have spent 20 years researching UDBa activities in Australia and will soon complete producing a documentary film about UDBa in Australia, with a release date in early 2013. I have interviewed Croatian and Macedonian community leaders, Australian state police officers involved in counter-intelligence operations, and former spies both here in Australia and overseas. They all agree that UDBa ran rings around ASIO.

In one infamous case, ASIO recruited a “double agent” within Melbourne's Macedonian community during the 1970s. This individual was also an agent of influence for UDBa. What benefit he gave to ASIO remains doubtful and only when the secret files are declassified will we know for sure.

But according to a Victorian Police counter-terrorism expert, the late Detective Senior Constable Geoff Gardiner, this “double agent” had an extensive list of criminal convictions ranging from illegal gaming, receiving stolen goods, selling liquor without a license to passing off a counterfeit cheque in 1978 in the name of Red Star Belgrade (Crvena Zvezda) Soccer club, then touring Australia from Yugoslavia.

This individual was employed as a public servant and never underwent a standard police check. According to Detective Gardiner, this individual was being protected at the very top.

Mr Aco Talevski, a former Macedonian Orthodox Church Community leader in Melbourne and a long standing human rights activist, revealed in a filmed interview for my documentary that Detective Gardiner had in the mid 1980s also tipped him off about the “double agent.”

We can only be grateful that such individual police officers with integrity existed in the state of Victoria and did not buy the ASIO or UDBa spin.

Across the border in New South Wales, corrupt Police with ASIO connivance arrested six innocent Croatians suspected of plotting to blow up Sydney's water supply in 1979. The six were imprisoned on the testimony of a known UDBa agent provocateur who ASIO allowed to return to Yugoslavia.

The Australian taxpayer cannot have a vote of confidence that ASIO has picked up its game in fighting terrorism if it remains secretive and refuses to come clean over the whole Yugoslav episode dating back to the Cold War. ASIO refuses to hand over any documents relating to the Croatian Six case on the grounds of national security but more likely to hide its incompetence and political interference from above.

During the Cold War, Communist multi-ethnic Yugoslavia under the rule of strongman Marshal Tito used its intelligence service UDBa to portray émigrés opposed to the regime as bloodthirsty terrorists. Agent provocateurs infiltrated Croat and Macedonian organisations abroad and urged violent action against the regime, namely planting bombs against Yugoslav diplomatic missions.

This clever technique used to silence opposition abroad was created by the Tsarist Russian police in the late 1890s and later perfected by the Bolsheviks when they seized power during the October Revolution in 1917. UDBa would use the exact same technique, known as the TRUST operations.

In the 1920s, the Soviet Secret service, which began as the Cheka and evolved along the way as OGPU/NKVD/KGB, began to “lure émigré agents into the arms of the OGPU, including the Trust, an imaginary counter-revolutionary union of monarchists and social revolutionaries.” In other words, Russian dissidents living in Paris were fooled into returning to fight the Soviet regime but were executed on their arrival.

In the early 1970s UDBa managed to lure Croat nationalists back to Yugoslavia in a similar manner. UDBa also infiltrated some Macedonian organisations in Western Europe, namely Belgium, and Australia. In 1977 a leading Macedonian dissident Dragan Bogdanovski, with a large following in Australia, was kidnapped from France, drugged and smuggled out in the boot of a Yugoslav diplomatic car and returned to Yugoslavia to face trial and later 11 years imprisonment. Amnesty International adopted him as a cause celebrity.

The only prominent academic to undertake a serious examination of UDBa remains the American Dr John Schindler. So far dribs and drabs of ASIO files have been released under the 30-year rule and can be accessed at the National Archive of Australia in Canberra.

Dr Schindler's discoveries reveal how Western governments turned a blind eye to UDBa because Yugoslavia, despite being communist during the Cold War was anti-Soviet. In other words political expediency trumped rule of law and justice. In this current war on terror what guarantees do we have that ASIO will adhere to the principles of justice when pursuing Islamic terrorists and not lock up innocent people?

If Mr Irvine wants to build trust within the country's Islamic communities he needs to set the record straight with the Croat and Macedonian communities over ASIO's past behavior. Otherwise will we be condemned to see innocent Muslim locked up on the word of agent provocateurs acting on their own agenda?

DID BULGARIA PROVOKE WAR IN MACEDONIA?

Map of The Republic of Macedonia during the 2001 Albanian Insurgency.
source: wikipedia

Part 1: Bulgarian Intelligence operations in Western Europe during the 1990s....

DID BULGARIA PROVOKE WAR IN MACEDONIA?

by Sasha Uzunov

The Republic of Macedonia celebrated its 20^th anniversary of independence on 8 September 2011. This year also marked a decade of the short-lived ethnic Albanian insurgency in that tiny Balkan state. Did neighbouring Bulgaria, for its own strategic ends, light the fuse to long standing tensions between ethnic Albanians and Macedonians?

Is Bulgaria's long term strategic goal in creating instability in Macedonia! That is making the new state non-viable and absorbed by a Greater Bulgaria, a century old aspiration of ultra Bulgarian nationalists?

The Balkans region of South-Eastern Europe has throughout history been a political powder keg. Not surprisingly, conspiracy theories have become the past time in many of the Balkan states. You will find crackpots blaming the CIA, Henry Kissinger, ex-KGB, the Vatican, Zionists, Islamic fundamentalists, the Freemasons for whatever misfortune occurs, including the current economic collapse in Greece and natural disasters such as earthquakes.

Macedonia managed to break away from the then crumbling Serb dominated Yugoslav federation in 1991 without bloodshed, unlike Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bulgaria, under its president Zhelyu Zhelev, was one of the first states to recognise Macedonia's independence but not its language or ethnicity. Intellectual circles in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, regard Macedonians as misguided “Western Bulgarians” who need to be coaxed gently back into the fold. Bulgaria tried unsuccessfully with brutal force during two world wars to achieve this objective.

In 2001 an ethnic Albanian insurgency erupted in the western part of Macedonia and, fortunately, it was short lived. But its legacy engendered mistrust on both sides.

Before the conflict, there had been an awkward but peaceful co-existence between the Macedonians, predominately Orthodox Christian and comprising 70 to 75% of the population, and the Albanians, largely Sunni Muslim, and about 20% of the population. But with simmering ethnic tensions just below the surface, ready to bubble over.

Macedonian nationalists were alarmed at the high birth rate of the Albanians and their alleged unwillingness to assimilate and their support for a Greater Albania. Moreover, as Macedonia had never been independent for over a millennium, there was a fear of losing territory.

The Albanians on the other hand complained of being marginalised in public service jobs and education, and their basic rights denied.

Since its independence in 1991, ethnic Albanian parties have been a coalition partner in successive Macedonian governments in order to allay these fears. Under Yugoslav rule, the communists were hard on Macedonian nationalists or those with mild patriotic aspirations as well. Yugoslav intelligence (UDBa) spent years silencing dissent abroad with assassinations or scare tactics.

Into this volatile mix came the 1999 Kosovo War. Macedonia permitted NATO to operate on its territory to launch attacks and push the Serbs out of the region. Consequently, tiny impoverished Macedonia was swamped by thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing the war.

Two years later, a group calling itself the National Liberation Army launched an uprising in Western Macedonia claiming to be fighting for Albanian human rights. Initially, the West labelled this group as a terrorist or organised crime element but realising that it may have been aligned to the Kosovo Liberation Army, and a de-facto ally of NATO, changed its tune, according to Canadian journalist and award winning war reporter Scott Taylor. In other words, the KLA warriors were accused of going from freedom fighters against the Serbs to territorial expansionists in Western Macedonia.

So if Macedonia had opened its door to NATO and Western media scrutiny in 1999, then how was it that war, purporting to be fought for Albanian human rights, was permitted to erupt in 2001? Were both Albanians and Macedonians manipulated into a conflict?

Up until 1998, a United Nations peacekeeping force (UNPREDEP), including US troops, was deployed on Macedonia's borders to stop aggression at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic in his quest for a Greater Serbia or weapons smuggling by Kosovo Albanian separatist.

UNPREDEP managed the job well. But for some crazy reason, Macedonia's Foreign Minister Vasil Tupurkovski recognised Taiwan and all hell broke loose in the UN Security Council. Security Council permanent member the People's Republic of China in an act of retaliation withdrew support for the UNPREDEP mission. Macedonia's border now became a sieve: with criminal gangs or terrorists able to come and go.

But why did the Macedonian government at the time, headed by Prime Minister Ljupco Georgievski of the nationalist party VMRO-DPMNE ignore the threat?

Edward Joseph in his in-depth study: MACEDONIA’S PUBLIC SECRET: HOW CORRUPTION, DRAGS THE COUNTRY DOWN, 14 August 2002, for the think tank, International Crisis Group, wrote:

“The see-no-evil posture of the Macedonian police allowed smuggling villages like Tanusevci (which lies on the border, 36 kilometers north of Skopje) to become, in effect, “free territories”. The village not only became the transit point for contraband, it also served as a recruiting and training base for Albanian radicals active in the nearby Presevo Valley of southern Serbia.”

However, Joseph dismisses the conspiracy theory, largely popular in Macedonia, that there was collusion between Georgievski's VMRO-DPMNE and its coalition partner Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) to start a war in order to divide territory.

“Despite the evidence to the contrary, the notion that there was a “deal” to divide Macedonia persists. Even many of those who concede that the conflict was not the result of a grand conspiracy believe that the ruling parties colluded at least to manipulate public opinion during its course.”

However, in the footnotes he cites:

The notion of a VMRO – Albanian deal to divide the country dates back to the interwar period, and as well, the Fascist Bulgarian and Albanian period during World War II.

The 2001 Albanian insurgency was brought to a quick end and a deal known as the Ohrid Framework Agreement was signed by the Georgievski's government, DPA and the Albanian insurgents under Ali Ahmeti's command.

In what appears to be a case of sour grapes at Macedonia not being partitioned and with racist overtones, Georgievski called for a Berlin-style wall. But it was criticised by a leading expert:

“...a wall [to] be built if necessary to divide ethnic Macedonian and ethnic Albanian populations accepts the possibility of considerable violence in realising the proposed territorial division. Even were such a division to occur without bloodshed, however, it would generate a new set of problems likely to further threaten the already tenuous stability of the region. On the one hand, cession to Albania of an artificially created ethnic Albanian enclave could upset the country’s (sub-)ethnic balance between Ghegs and Tosks.

"On the other hand, the loss of territory and population from the Republic of Macedonia would call into question the country’s existence not only for reasons of size, but also because such truncation could lead to clashes between serbophile and bulgarophile elements of the ethnic Macedonian population intent on union with neighbouring states already short on administrative capacity. Thus, while ethnic partition might promise to ethnic Albanian and ethnic Macedonian populations an escape from deadlock over the Framework Agreement, such an arrangement would pose a greater danger than does wrangling on implementation.”

(THE SPECTRE OF TERRITORIAL DIVISION AND THE OHRID AGREEMENT, by Eben Friedman, European Centre for Minority Issues, Brief # 9 July 2003).

Before we go any further or even dip back into history, we have to mention that Georgievski left VMRO- DPMNE, some say he was pushed out, to set up his own political party. He has taken to the Macedonian media with all sorts of controversial statements about Macedonian identity, allegations that his previous party was pro-Serbo-Yugoslav, the danger of Greater Albania, and calls for closer links to Bulgaria.

He told Milenko Nedelovski of Macedonian TV station Kanal 5 in 2009:

“In the Republic of Macedonia from 1945 and again from 1990, it's no secret that to be considered a Macedonian patriot you had to spit on Bulgaria...”

On the allegation of Georgievski holding dual Macedonian and Bulgarian citizenship, the former Prime Minister mentioned his cabinet colleague at the time, the bombastic Ljube Boskovski having Croatian citizenship.

Nedelovski's response: “the Croats don't deny the existence of our [Macedonian] name, language, nation, church [as the Bulgarians do].”

Georgievski's “Berlin War” solution is nothing new. However, the startling thing about it was back in the early 1990s, shadowy emigre groups in Western Europe with possible connections to Bulgarian intelligence were calling for the same solution !

In 1992 I had the good fortune of meeting Mr Goce Vidanovski, a long time Macedonian community leader and activist in Belgium. Vidanovski had spent decades trying to keep out Yugoslav and Bulgarian interference within his community. In doing so he lived with the possibility of being on the end of an assassin's bullet.

Belgium, because of its small size and lax policing, was a hub for UDBa operations in the 1970s and 80s against emigre political opponents living in Western Europe. Zeljko Raznjatovic-Arkan, the Serb warlord began his career as a petty criminal and bank robber in Belgium before graduating to UDBa hit man.

Likewise, Macedonian groups and individuals with pro-Bulgarian affiliations were active in Belgium as well. Vidanovski introduced me to them. One such individual strongly believed that Macedonia's salvation lay with the country being partitioned along the river Vardar, with the west going to Albania and the east linking up with “Mother Bulgaria.”

His reasoning was that Bulgaria needed a buffer zone against the Albanians. He also made the outrageous claim that the Bulgarian authorities had established camps for refugees fleeing from Macedonia into Bulgaria should war erupt. This individual was also free to travel to Bulgaria before and after the communist period in that country. A remarkable feat considering Bulgaria was one of the Soviet Union's staunchest allies during the Cold War (1946-90) and kept a close watch on who entered or left the country.

As I began to examine closely Bulgarian intelligence operations in Western Europe, I received a number of threatening phone calls during my stay in Belgium...

Coming soon: PART 2 – Bulgarian Intelligence's ferocious reputation.

THE CROATIAN SIX MASTERMIND?

Why did Australia's domestic spy catchers ASIO keep Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (1975-83) in the dark over a foreign diplomat's true identity?
PART 5 – THE FIGHT AGAINST YUGOSLAV INTELLIGENCE IN AUSTRALIA

Fifth part in a series on Yugoslav intelligence activities on Australian soil from the 1970s to the early 1990s.

A twenty year investigation…TEAM UZUNOV on the trail of a Yugoslav master spy…London, Brussels, Skopje, Belgrade, Zagreb, Melbourne...who managed to fool ASIO twice...

TEAM UZUNOV cracks open the Croatian Six Case…

WHO WAS THE CROATIAN SIX MASTER MIND?

By Sasha Uzunov

One of Australia’s worst miscarriages of justice, the Croatian Six terrorism case in 1979-80, may have been perpetrated by a Yugoslav master spy posing as a diplomat and who, would you believe it, not once but twice managed to outsmart Australia’s domestic spy catchers, ASIO, and even shook hands with an unsuspecting Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser.

Intelligence sources in Washington and in the Republic of Macedonia, one of the successor states of the former communist Federal Yugoslavia, have confirmed that Dr Georgi Trajkovski, the Yugoslav Consul General in Melbourne, Australia during 1978-79 was “hardcore UDBa (Yugoslav intelligence) and a key player in the Croatian Six set up.”

In 1988, Trajkovski with the same modus operandi, the use of agent provocateurs and exaggerated claims of anti-Yugoslav subversion, had a fellow Yugoslav diplomat removed from his post in Melbourne right under the nose of ASIO. This story, told for the very first time, will be detailed in part 6.

In 1991 legendary ABC TV investigative reporter Chris Masters dropped a bombshell on the Four Corners program about The Croatian Six case.

An agent provocateur set up members of Australia's Croatian community in 1979. Six Croats were imprisoned on false charges of wanting to plant bombs in Sydney.

Masters tracked down the agent provocateur, Vitomir Visimovic, who was an ethnic Serb living in Bosnia but had passed himself off as a Croat.

In fact, ASIO, the Australian Federal Police (successor of the Commonwealth Police) and the infamous and corrupt New South Wales Police Special Branch were all aware that Visimovic was an UDBa operative but suppressed the information during the trial of the Croatian Six. Moreover, the alarming thing was the Australian authorities let the man depart the country. This was during Malcolm Fraser’s tenure as Prime Minister (1975-83).

An UDBa hitman Vinko Sindicic was arrested in Scotland in 1988 after a failed assassination attempt on Croat dissident Nikola Stedul. At Sindicic's trial it was revealed he “had been in Australia in 1978, working with another Yugoslav agent on a plan to link Croatian political activists with terrorism.”

In all probability co-ordinating with Trajkovski the Croatian Six set up.

The irony is that two months after NSW Police arrested the Croatian suspects in early 1979, Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser paid a visit to the Yugoslav Consulate General in Melbourne to offer his condolences at the death of Yugoslav leader Edvard Kardelj, and shook hands with Trajkovski.

We know this because a book "Art Treasures of Yugoslavia" with a special annotation was offered on the web by the prestigious auction house Downies:

www.downies.com/aca/Auction303/Catalogue_031.html

“Inside the book is an inlaid letterhead dated 18th April 1979 addressed to the Honourable J.M.Fraser MP, Prime Minister of Australia with typewritten message "With this small token,we wish to express our thanks that you found the time to visit this Consul General (which represents the Yugoslav community) to express your condolences. Please accept this book in appreciation of your thoughtfulness" and hand signed by Consul General Dr Georgi Trajkovski.”

The question remains why did ASIO keep Fraser in the dark over Trajkovski's true identity?

Trajkovski, an ethnic Macedonian, was regarded as a fanatical Titoist and a specialist on foreign affairs. He authored Diplomatski Protokol, regarded as a text book on international relations in the then Yugoslavia.

Having pulled off the Croatian Six set up in 1979, Trajkovski repeated his shtick in 1988 with the removal of a fellow Yugoslav diplomat right under the nose of ASIO.

BACKGROUND -

Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic communist federation founded in 1945, modelled on the Soviet Union, and fell apart in 1991 into various independent nation states.

Yugoslav intelligence (UDBa) later known as SDB, together with Yugoslav military counter-intelligence (KOS) were largely pre-occupied with silencing dissident Croats, Macedonians, Serbs and Albanians living in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, who were agitating for independence from Yugoslavia.

UDBa was so ruthless and efficient it at one time rivalled the old Soviet KGB and Mossad in liquidating opponents. In Munich, West Germany, a whole section of a cemetery was set-aside for Croats assassinated by UDBa.

Communist strongman Marshal Josip Broz Tito ruled Yugoslavia until his death in 1980 and during the height of the Cold War managed a great balancing act between East and West. He was seen as an indirect ally of the West after his infamous split with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1949.

A number of Australian left-wing politicians, including Victorian State MP Joan Coxsedge, began to allege that ASIO was turning a blind eye to extremist Croatian elements, who were secretly training on Australian soil to undertake terrorist attacks on Yugoslav territory or upon Yugoslav diplomatic missions in Australia.

In this atmosphere of terrorism mania during the 1970s Australia’s Croat community were looked upon as the bad guy.

We now know that the alleged Croatian terrorism on Australian soil was the work of UDBa.

TOP JOURNALIST ON THE TRAIL - Hamish McDonald (pictured above)

One of Australia's most distinguished investigative reporters and authors, Hamish McDonald of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, has told TEAM UZUNOV in a filmed interview that he became interested in the Croatian Six case after following the Balibo Five story, the murder of five Australian based newsmen at the hands of the Indonesian military during its invasion of neighbouring East Timor in 1975.

According to McDonald, vital evidence in proving the innocence of the Croatian Six and Indonesian culpability in the murder of the Balibo Five was suppressed by the Australian federal government on the grounds of "national security."