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Yugoslavia – Human Rights Concerns Left Out of Draft Peace Plan KOSOVO After analysing the reported version of the emerging peace plan proposed to end the conflict in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Amnesty International expressed concern that human rights remain peripheral in the continuing international discussions. "We have not heard a single mention of human rights, humanitarian law or the duty to bring to justice those suspected of human rights violations," Amnesty International Secretary General Pierre SanÈ said today. "Nothing has been said about consultations with human rights groups and the local population about how any peace-keeping operation is implemented," Mr SanÈ stressed. "The human rights violations that have taken place in Kosovo during the past 10 years might have been prevented if effective steps had been taken," Mr SanÈ said. "To stop further violations there need to be solid guarantees of human rights for everyone concerned." Effective and...

NATO’s War of Aggression Against Yugoslavia: An Overview By Michel Chossudovsky Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and author of The Globalization of Poverty, Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, Third World Network, Penang and Zed Books, London, 1997. Member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Stop Canada’s Participation in the War in Yugoslavia. June 3, 1999 © Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, 1999. All rights reserved. LOW INTENSITY NUCLEAR WAR With NATO air-strikes entering their third month, a new stage of the War has unfolded. NATO’s "humanitarian bombings" have been stepped up leading to mounting civilian casualties and human suffering. Thirty percent of those killed in the bombings are children.1 In addition to the use of cluster bombs, the Alliance is waging a "low intensity nuclear war" using toxic radioactive shells and missiles containing depleted uranium. Amply documented, the radioactive fall-out causes cancer potentially affecting millions...

President Milosevic and Four Other Senior FRY Officials Indicted for Murder, Persecution and Deportation in Kosovo Press Release · Communiqué de presse (Exclusively for the use of the media. Not an official document) The Hague, 27 May 1999JL/PIU/403-E Today, Thursday 27 May 1999, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has announced the indictment of, and has issued warrants of arrests against: – Slobodan MILOSEVIC, the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), – Milan MILUTINOVIC, the President of Serbia, – Nikola SAINOVIC, Deputy Prime Minister of the FRY, – Dragoljub OJDANIC, Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav Army, – Vlajko STOJILJKOVIC, Minister of Internal Affairs of Serbia. This follows the confirmation by Judge David Hunt, on Monday 24 May 1999, of an indictment against the five accused submitted on 22 May 1999 by the Prosecutor, Justice Louise Arbour. Judge Hunt granted the Prosecutor’s request for delayed...

Have We Forgotten the Path to Peace? By Jimmy Carter 39th President of the United States Chairman of the nonprofit Carter Center, which seeks to advance peace and health around the world. From the New York Times, May 27, 1999 After the cold war, many expected that the world would enter an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Those who live in developed nations might think this is the case today, with the possible exception of the war in Kosovo. But at the Carter Center we monitor all serious conflicts in the world, and the reality is that the number of such wars has increased dramatically. One reason is that the United Nations was designed to deal with international conflicts, and almost all the current ones are civil wars in developing countries. This creates a peacemaking vacuum that is most often filled by powerful nations that concentrate their attention on...

"Impossible to Talk Peace With Bombs Falling" By Viktor Chernomyrdin Former prime minister of Russia, now the Russian President’s special envoy for Kosovo. Washington Post, Thursday, May 27, 1999; Page A39 I deem it necessary to express my opinion on the Kosovo situation as the warfare escalates and the danger grows of a shift to ground operations, which would be even bloodier and more destructive. I also want to comment on certain ideas put forward by President Clinton in his contribution of May 16 to the New York Times. In particular, I am anxious to express my opinion of his premise that "Russia is now helping to work out a way for Belgrade to meet our conditions," and that NATO’s strategy can "strengthen, not weaken, our fundamental interest in a long-term, positive relationship with Russia." In fact, Russia has taken upon itself to mediate between Belgrade and NATO not because...

The Guardian May 26 1999 Outside Natoland, the situation about the war is extremely serious. The Ukraine was the only country in the world to renounce nuclear weapons and unilaterally disarm. A few weeks ago its parliament voted unanimously to revert to its former nuclear status. The deputies claimed that they had foolishly believed the United States when it had promised a new norm-based and inclusive security system. Nato’s war on Yugoslavia had destroyed all their illusions. If Kiev is angry, Moscow is incandescent. The military-industrial complex is one of the best-preserved institutions in the country. Its leaders have been arguing with the politicians for nearly two years, pleading that they be allowed to upgrade Russia’s nuclear armoury. Until March 24 this year they had not made too much headway. On April 30, a meeting of the National Security Council in Moscow approved the modernisation of all strategic and tactical...

Relief Camps for Africans and Kosovars: Worlds Apart Friday, May 21, 1999 By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER, ANN M. SIMMONS, Times Staff Writers SKOPJE, Macedonia- When veteran refugee worker Lynne Miller arrived here from Africa earlier this month, she stepped into a different world. Miller had just spent three years monitoring food supplies at a remote refugee camp in Somalia, and one of her first crises in Macedonia was anurgent request from a medical team. A diabetic refugee had crossed the border. Could she provide a special diet? She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, much less that she was able to fulfill the request. "In Africa, we don’t have special food or diets. There are no diabetics in the camps," she said. "They just die." The outpouring of aid in recent weeks for ethnic Albanians ripped from their homes in Kosovo has stunned humanitarian groups, which continuously fight for dollars...

Acts of Murder By John Pilger Tuesday May 18, 1999 From Z Magazine http://www.zmag.org/murder.htm The room is filled with the bodies of children killed by Nato in Surdulica in Serbia. Several are recognisable only by their sneakers. A dead infant is cradled in the arms of his father. These pictures and many others have not been shown in Britain; it will be said they are too horrific. But minimising the culpability of the British state when it is engaged in criminal action is normal; censorship is by omission and misuse of language. The media impression of a series of Nato ‘blunders’ is false. Anyone scrutinising the unpublished list of targets hit by Nato is left in little doubt that a deliberate terror campaign is being waged against the civilian population of Yugoslavia. Eighteen hospitals and clinics and at least 200 nurseries, schools, colleges and students’ dormitories have been destroyed or...

Mr President ! President Bill Clinton gjorde i tisdags en blixtvisit i Kosovo. I ett tal manade han albanerna att sluta hämnas på den krympande serbiska minoriteten. Han besökte också de amerikanska soldaterna på den nya Bondsteelbasen. Det finns viktiga frågor som borde ha ställts still honom om Balkan och Kosovo och om USA:s ledande roll i bombningarna av Jugoslavien. Det borde vara en självklarhet att oberoende medier i demokratiska länder låter politiska ledare svara på viktiga frågor. Men ställdes verkligen de viktiga frågorna? Här är några frågor som jag skulle ha ställt ˆ om jag vore journalist och hade fått tillfälle att göra en intervju i tisdags. (1) Mr President! Amerikanska plan bombade i våras Jugoslavien och Kosovo med er som överbefälhavare. Aktionen rättfärdigades av uppgifter om ett folkmord planerat av Belgrad. Dessa uppgifter har nu visat sig vara grovt missvisande eller falska. Hur ställer Ni er till detta?...

A Letter to Albanian Friends From Nongovermental Organizations Belgrade, April 30, 1999 Dear friends,  We are writing to you in these difficult moments of our shared suffering. Convoys of Albanians and other citizens of Kosovo, among whom many of you, were forced to leave their homes. The killings and expulsions, homes destroyed and burnt, bridges, roads and industrial buildings demolished – paint a somber and painful picture of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, as in indicating that life together is no longer possible. We, however, believe that it is necessary and possible. The better future of citizens of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, of Serbs and Albanians, as citizens of one state or closest neighbors, will not arrive by itself, or over night. But it is something we can and must work on together, as we have many times in the past, not so long ago. We know that it will now...

Misreading the Enemy New York Times April 21, 1999 By ROBERT S. MCNAMARA WASHINGTON — Will the war in Kosovo become another Vietnam? After barely a month of bombing Yugoslavia, it is far too soon to make such analogies. Nevertheless, there is a widespread fear that the two sides will be caught in a cycle of escalation, as occurred in Vietnam. As awful as Kosovo is now, the odds of a long-term tragedy will be far greater if we don’t apply the lessons the Vietnam conflict taught us. In fact, my great concern is that we and our adversaries may have already made mistakes that might have been avoided had we learned from experience. Studying the lessons of Vietnam may allow us to end this war earlier; ignoring them may result in catastrophe. Over the past four years, a number of us from the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, and some...

Reflections Beneath the Bombs Journal of Commerce April 20, 1999 Guest Opinion: Reflections beneath the bombs BY SVETOZAR STOJANOVIC BELGRADE – Since the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union, an ideology has been dominating the West, primarily in the United States. It combines a triumphalist self-evaluation about the end of history with a vulgarized pragmatism toward the rest of the world. It is a pragmatism that is characterized by basically changing the approach from case to case. In cases that are virtually identical, different or even contrary principles are employed that are tacitly or even explicitly justified by the interests of the state or group of states using them. For example: Depending on whether the existence of a state suits dominant circles in the West or not, the West supports within that state either the civic principle of "one citizen, one vote" or the demand of ethnic groups for...