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LONDON – During the last U.S. presidential election campaign, the Republican candidate, Bob Dole, used to say in almost every speech he made, referring to the controversy over the use of American soldiers in UN operations: “I will be in charge of making that decision not Boooutros Booooutros Ghali” The school boy effort to ridicule the UN Secretary-General always raised a laugh and helped charge President Bill Clinton’s campaign to have the able Egyptian diplomat stand down. Xenophobia was regarded by both contestants as an electoral asset. Set against the campaign of four years ago, the tenor of the current one seems to be on another plane. The cheap shot at the UN is out. In its place, if not enthusiasm, there is at least a passive recognition of its value. It would, perhaps, be going too far to surmise the candidates realize that for all America’s almighty economic strength and...

With Steve Marks (now the François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health) professor Burns Weston has recently published: “The Future of International Human Rights” (Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, Inc., 1999). The book can be purchased directly from our publisher, Transnational Publishers, Inc., in Ardsley, New York either by phone (1-800-914-8186) or via their Web site (http://www.transnationalpubs.com) at the list price of $115. The book was conceived as a way to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the UDHR and seeks to envisage the future of international human rights through both an analysis of existing human rights norms, institutions, and procedures, and the projection of preferred future trends in these realms. It consists of 13 provocative essays plus a foreword by UNHCHR Mary Robinson and a poem by award-winning Iowa poet Marvin Bell (“The Dead Have Nothing to Lose by Telling the Truth”). The authors and...

LONDON- Couldn’t the contestants in the U.S. presidential primaries toss us in the rest of the world just one crumb? For example, in this foreign policy starved contest, a serious discussion about whether they are planning, if elected, to make a unilateral abrogation of one of most important international treaties in existence, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. It was negotiated and signed on behalf of the U.S. and the Soviet Union by presidents Nixon and Brezhnev and described ever since by presidents on both sides as “the cornerstone of the strategic relationship”. One would perhaps think that the electors of the world’s single superpower might press the candidates on this point, not just because a good part of the rest of the world is hanging on an answer, but because it will profoundly affect their own country’s relationship not just with Russia but with China and Europe. Indeed, one could add...

NATO’s two main justifications for bombing Yugoslavia on humanitarian grounds have been refuted by the Western alliance’s own official figures and documentary evidence. These justifications rest on two central premises:1) the alleged indiscriminate mass killings of Albanian civilians (premise number one);2) the implementation of a deliberate policy of mass deportations or “ethnic cleansing” (premise number two). “Premise number one” has been invalidated by the FBI and European forensic teams working under the auspices of the Hague Tribunal (ICTY). The forensic and police investigators have uncovered several hundred bodies in grave sites in Kosovo as opposed to the 10,000 to 100,000 civilian massacres claimed by NATO and Western governments as a pretext for waging the War. British Prime Minister Tony Blair had announced that President Milosevic was “set on a Hitler style genocide equivalent to the extermination of the Jews during World war II”.1 “We’ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged men...

LONDON- Any advantage acting Russian president Vladamir Putin might have gained from being seen as the successful strongman is being whittled away by the day, as the war in Chechnya moves from its heroic phase of revenging the bombing of innocent civilians in Moscow and becomes one more drawn out, slog-in-the-mud, war of attrition, with not much prospect of quick victory. Once again, as before the last election, Chechnya is in danger of becoming an election albatross. Putin either has to have an immense stroke of luck in Chechnya or he has to announce that Russia has got what it wanted with the capture of Grozny and given the terrorists a smack on the nose they’ll never forget. So he is withdrawing his troops and switching off the spotlight. Who knows, he may even ask Alexander Lebed to fix it for him. The election issue is not going to be the...

LUND- It’s only a mom and pop shop, and it lives precariously on the edge of financial oblivion, but it is one of the very rare organisations of its kind. Like King Canute, from whose ancient capital it works, it attempts with one hand to hold back the waves of violence, conflict and war, and, with the other, the creditors. The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, (TFF), based in the ancient ecclesiastical and university town of Lund in the south of Sweden, combines research into the origins of human conflict and practical application as mediators in some of the high profile dramas of our age, first and foremost in ex-Yugoslavia, but also in Georgia and, most recently, in Burundi. The creation of an ex-academic political scientist, Professor Jan Oberg and his sociologist wife, Christina Spannar, it runs on a modest budget of $50,000 a year, but with a group...

LONDON- The United Nations mandate for policing the truce in the Congo expired this week, without the 500 military observers requested by the Secretary-General ever being sent into the field. It remains to be seen whether the Security Council’s recent decision to send a 6,000 strong force to police the very tentative truce in Sierra Leone will be acted on. At the moment it seems more than doubtful. The outside world appears to be almost frozen in its tracks when it comes to dealing with African civil wars. In Somalia the UN pulled out, after the grisly death of 18 American soldiers. In Angola, the UN pulled its peacekeepers out last year after years of apparently fruitless wear and tear. And in Rwanda, the scene of the worst genocide since the killing fields of Cambodia, the UN is accused of turning a blind eye in its moment of need. The horror...

LONDON- On Sunday the Chilean electorate although going to the polls to elect a new president is also voting to put the past behind it – and the past in Chile is General Augusto Pinochet, the author of the coup that overthrew an elected Socialist president, Salvador Allende in 1973 and instigated 17 years of repression, killings, torture and disappearances. Only four or five months ago I’d have written that the Socialist candidate Ricardo Lagos had to win if Chile was going to have the leader that would enable the Chilean people to close the door on Pinochet. Now I believe Chile has in effect already done this and not even the election of a right wing candidate Joaquin Lavin will undo the rapid progress that has been made nor, for that matter, will Pinochet’s probable release from arrest in England. Chile in a matter of less than half a year...

A TWELVE STEP PROGRAM TO END NUCLEAR WEAPONS ADDICTION The following steps should be taken by the nuclear weapons states prior to the end of the year 2000 to assure that we enter the 21st century with a full commitment to ending the nuclear weapons threat that now hangs over the heads of all humanity and clouds our future: 1. Publicly acknowledge the weaknesses and fallibilities of deterrence: that deterrence is only a theory and is clearly ineffective against an enemy who is irrational, unlocatable, or suicidal, and cannot assure against accidents, misperceptions, miscalculations, or terrorists. 2. Publicly acknowledge the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons under international law as stated by the International Court of Justice in its 1996 opinion, and further acknowledge the obligation under international law for good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament in all its aspects. 3. Publicly acknowledge the immorality of threatening...

INTRODUCTION Traditional peacekeeping operations have become less common in the current international climate. United Nations records show that the number of peacekeeping troops decreased from 75,000 in mid-1994 to 25,000 in mid-1997. The pattern of conflict has changed from inter-state to intra-state, where political and humanitarian complexities prevail. Between 1948 and 1987, the United Nations initiated 13 peacekeeping operations but only five of them were still in existence in 1988, of which four were related to inter-state conflicts and only one to an intra-state dispute. Out of 28 operations established between 1988 and 1996, only eight may be referred to as conflicts of inter-state character and the rest considered as intra-state. As a result, the international community is more concerned with the major causes of systemic and intractable violent conflict such as ethnic, religious and socio-enconomic factors, with less emphasis on preventing or containing conflicts between nations. Experience indicates that...

America has experienced a horrific tragedy, thousands of innocent civilians have met a terrible death. The terrorist acts in New York and Washington have further extended the boundaries of destruction, setting in motion a new spiral of violence. The world is once again moving in a dangerous direction. 1. Terrorism – lethal disease Terrorism undoubtedly is one of the most dangerous enemies of democratic order, of decent life itself. It successfully combines pre-modern fanaticism and the destructive power of post-modern technology. By killing innocent civilians it simultaneously destroys the “soul of society”, creating and recreating a state of permanent fear, provoking and legitimising authoritarian answers. Spectacular terrorist actions will strongly stimulate alienated and frustrated individuals to undertake their personal “wars” in order to settle their grievances. 2. Inappropriate therapy Responses to this cancerous disease have, by and large, been inappropriate for at least three reasons. Firstly, terrorism invariably appears as...