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The One Place NATO Could Turn for Help New York Times 20 April 1999 By Jack F. Matlock NATO intensifies its bombing of Serbia to the cheers of a fair portion of the Western political and intellectual elite. The bombing has rallied Serbs behind their dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, who is using the air strikes as a cover and pretext for mass expulsions, massacres and hostage taking. As NATO bombing continues, outrages against the Kosovars seem certain to continue. The weapons used against the Kosovars are not easily countered from the air. The air war is clearly making things worse on the ground – much worse, infact, so pressures build to use ground troops. If they had been available for intervention from the start of the bombing, they might well have served both as a deterrent to Mr. Milosevic and as real protection for the Kosovars if that deterrence failed. But...

The Frightening Target Shortage San Francisco Chronicle Friday, April 16, 1999 By ARTHUR HOPPE OUR ALL-OUT humanitarian bombing campaign to bring peace to Yugoslaviais in desperate straits: We’re running out of targets. After all, Serbia is a poor country, and it has only so many bridges, ministries, military headquarters, barracks and police stations tobomb. And once we’ve blown a target to bits that’s the end of it. Muchas the Kosovar refugees need our help, we certainly can’t be expectedto waste our humanitarian bombs on heaps of smoking rubble. Nor can we bomb churches, hospitals, schools and the like. We couldn’t bear to kill innocent civilians. Of course, we did boast the other day that our four weeks of bombing was creating food shortages in Serbia.With luck, this could lead to mass starvation. But we don’t want to kill innocent civilians with bombs – at least not intentionally. Some dewy-eyed optimists...

Let Civility Prevail As long time proponents of and activists for a democratic and anti-nationalist Serbia, who have chosen to remain in Yugoslavia during this moment of crisis and who want to see our country reintegrated into the community of world nations, we state the following:  1. We strongly condemn the NATO bombings which have hugely exacerbated violence in Kosovo and have caused the displacement of people outside and throughout Yugoslavia. We strongly condemn the ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population perpetrated by any Yugoslav forces. We strongly condemn the Kosovo Liberation Army’s (KLA) violence targeted against the Serbs, moderate Albanians and other ethnic communities in Kosovo. The humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo – death, grief and extreme suffering for hundreds of thousands of Albanians, Serbs and members of other ethnic communities – has to be ended now. All refugees from Yugoslavia must immediately and unconditionally be allowed to return to...

So What’s the Truth About NATO and Kosovo? 15 April 1999 By Mark Lynas Editor OneWorld Like many others involved in international news reporting, I’ve spent several hours each day over the last three weeks covering the crisis in Kosovo. And despite the relentless outpourings of the NATO PR machine, I’ve found the explanations reported in the mainstream media steadily less convincing. How is it, for example, that one of scores of simmering local disputes across the world has mushroomed into possibly the most dramatic crisisfacing Europe since World War II? And why is there such a broad consensus amongst both decision-makers and media commentators that bombing an apparently sovereign country is the only way forward? When I first set about compiling OneWorld’s Kosovo Special Report, I was broadly in agreement with the dominant viewpoint that Milosevic must bestopped. Cases of severe human rights abuse, committed with impunity and official...

Official Assessment of "YUGOSLAV DAILY SURVEY" 12 April 1999 Over 300 civilians, including many women, children and the elderly have lost their lives during over 1000 air strikes of the brutal and totally unprovoked NATO aggression on the FR of Yugoslavia which began on 24 March 1999. More than 3000 citizens suffered serious injuries, while several thousands of enterprises and tens of thousands of houses have been destroyed. In the area of Leskovac alone over 3 300 dwellings and industrial facilities have been damaged during the bombing thus far. According to the estimates coming from foreign sources, the material damage made in the FR of Yugoslavia has already exceeded 100 billion US dollars.  The NATO aggressors have made the most of its attacks in the area of the Municipality of Pristina (54), Belgrade (43), Novi Sad (27), Kraljevo (21), Cacak (18) and Nis (17). Their criminal and destructive invasion resulted...

UD bör offentliggöra Rambouillet-dokumenten När Jugoslavien och dess Kosovo-provins i dessa veckor bombas är det en unik och ödesmättat begivenhet i Europa och i internationell historia. Danmark, Norge och många andra är i krig. Det mänskliga lidandet och den skapade humanitära katastrofens omfattning motiverar extraordinära insatser. Vi upplever nu Balkan-dramats 8:e akt. Akt 1 – Konfliktens ekonomiska rötter. Vi börjar i 70- och 80-talets förändringar i den globala kapitalismen som medförde att industrigrenar som Jugoslavien byggde sin välfärd på – såsom elektronik, textilier, skeppsvarv, bilar och vapen – flyttades till låglöneländer i Asien. Det hände efter oljekrisen och stoppet för arbetskraftinvandring i Europa – viktigt i och med att 15% av landets BNP kom härifrån. Därpå bröt Jugoslaviens blandekonomi och självförvaltnings-system samman. Akt 2 – Inre social kris och yttre ekonomisk intervention. Nu följer social och ekonomisk nedgång, avskedanden och anpassning till Världsbankens och Valutafondets krav. Sistnämnda krävde att hänsyntagandet...

Proposals for Solving the Crisis In and Around Kosovo/a: The Transcend Perspective April 9, 1999 by Johan Galtung, Kinhide Mushakoji and Ramon Lopez-Reyes The present illegal NATO war on Serbia is not conducive to anylasting solution. The only road is through negotiation, not diktatand, pending that, an immediate cessation of the hostilities andatrocities, and agreement on a massive UN peacekeeping operation. For a political solution consider the points made by former UNSecretary General Perez de Cuellar in his correspondence withformer German Minister of Foreign Affairs Hans Dietrich Genscher inDecember 1991: do not favor any party, develop a plan for all ofex-Yugoslavia, make sure that plans are acceptable to minorities. In this spirit TRANSCEND suggests: [1] The United Nations, which has to learn from its previousfailures, should replace NATO and assume a peace-keeping role inFormer Yugoslavia, including Kosovo/a, with contingents from non-NATO countries. The United Nations will have to mobilize all...

War in the Balkans – Truth is Dying in the Ruins of Silent Capital The Independent London April 9, 1999 Robert Fisk in Pristina If there are lies, damned lies and statistics, the Kosovo war has now moved into damned lies. Just a week ago, we had the Serbs claiming that the Albanians – far from being “ethnically cleansed” – were setting fire to their own homes. Now we have Nato claiming that the Serbs of Pristina – far from being bombed by Nato – were blowing up their own homes. In the centre of this empty, silent city, you might be forgiven for thinking that the world had gone mad. The Serbs are spending much of their time insisting that the tens of thousands of Albanians who have palpably disappeared from the capital of Kosovo are merely hiding from Nato bombs. In which case, why is every house empty,...

Kosovo: Peace Movements Oppose Both Ethnic Cleansing and Bombing Geneva, April 8, 1999 International Peace Bureau – IPB The International Peace Bureau – representing 186 citizens’ peace organisations worldwide – is appalled and sickened by the recent events in Kosovo/a. We utterly condemn the Serbian policies of discrimination, ethnic “cleansing”, massacre and terror against the Kosovars. At the same time we believe NATO’s airstrikes have so far done nothing but accelerate the repression, unite the Serbian nation around Milosevic, and alienate the Russians and others in the region. Belgrade’s ceasefire offer, no matter how cynical, did present an opportunity to de-escalate the crisis.  NATO’s abrupt refusal slams shut the door to a early resolution. PREVENTION – LOST OPPORTUNITIES We are saddened that the West refused the challenge of creating a partnership with Russia at Rambouillet and turned its back on patient, non-violent strategies. This is in stark contrast to the...

International Criminal Tribunal to Investigate NATO Leaders Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of FR Yugoslavia

Official Assessment of "YUGOSLAV DAILY SURVEY" CIVILIAN CASUALTIES From the onset of NATO aggression against our country up to 6 April 1999, the North Atlantic Alliance made over 1,000 criminal attacks against the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 430 warplanes, of which 330 combat planes, were used; more than 800 cruise missiles were launched and over 3,000 tons of explosives were dropped. About 300 civilians were killed and more than 3,000 sustained serious injuries (e.g., in Kur Yumlija: 13 dead and 25 wounded; in Pancevo: 2 dead and 4 wounded; in Sacak: one dead and 7 wounded; in Vranje; two dead and 23 wounded; in Aleksinac: 12 dead and more than 40 wounded; in Nagavac village, Orahovac municipality: 11 dead and 5 wounded, in Pristina: 10 dead and 8 wounded). TRAFFIC  The road and railway networks, especially road and rail bridges, most of which were destroyed or damaged...

The Fatal Flaws Underlying NATO’S Intervention in Yugoslavia USI, New Delhi April 6, 1999 By Lt Gen Satish Nambiar (Retd.) My year long experience as the Force Commander and Head of Mission of the United Nations Forces deployed in the former Yugoslavia has given me an understanding of the fatal flaws of US/NATO policies in the troubled region. It was obvious to most people following events in the Balkans since the beginning of the decade, and particularly after the fighting that resulted in the emergence of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, that Kosovo was a ‘powder keg’ waiting to explode. The West appears to have learnt all the wrong lessons from the previous wars and applied it to Kosovo. (1) Portraying the Serbs as evil and everybody else as good was not only counterproductive but also dishonest. According to my experience all sides were guilty...