[Il dispotismo "democratico", che ha a propria disposizione mezzi di persuasione e di oppressione giganteschi, quali mai il mondo ne vide, ha cercato di offrire un'interpretazione unilaterale della vicenda guerra alla Serbia, cercando di trasformare un atto di aggressione, e di ostentazione di potenza, in una guerra "giusta" - e quanto fosse tale, e un buon metodo per risolvere certi problemi, lo cominciano forse a capire oggi tutti, anche coloro che sono stati a lungo "drogati" dalla propaganda televisiva.

I documenti che seguono vengono inseriti allora PER NON DIMENTICARE, perche' attraverso la testimonianza di tanti uomini di "buona volonta'" - rimasti (ingenuamente) allibiti per l'inopinato ritorno del fenomeno guerra sugli scenari europei - sia possibile scorgere il vero volto del "buonismo internazionalista", che sempre piu' rivela i tratti di un totalitarismo di cui non si e' mai avuta prima esperienza nella storia.]

COMUNICATO DEL COLLETTIVO "NO ALLA GUERRA" (31.3.1999)

Bisogna arrendersi all'evidenza: il bombardamento della Jugoslavia da parte della Nato è un fallimento. Fallimento militare, perché una larga parte delle forze serbe rimane intatta e gli alleati rifiutano l'eventualità di un attacco terrestre. Fallimento psicologico, perché i serbi si schierano in massa con Milosevic e le opinioni pubbliche cominciano a dubitare della fondatezza dell'aggressione della Nato. Fallimento umanitario, perché gli attacchi aerei colpiscono la popolazione civile serba (un migliaio di morti, secondo le fonti russe) e provocano in reazione uno scatenamento della violenza collettiva di cui ad essere vittime sono i kossovari. Fallimento politico e diplomatico, perché l'Europa si trova tagliata in due - situazione che ovviamente serve esclusivamente gli interessi americani.

Collettivo NO ALLA GUERRA

Gli europei vogliono la pace!

Il mercoledì 24 marzo 1999 segnerà una data sinistra della nostra storia: per la prima volta dal 1945, uno Stato sovrano dell'Europa si è visto bombardare da un'alleanza militare posta sotto il comando americano con totale dispregio delle regole del diritto internazionale e in flagrante violazione della carta dell'Onu.

L'aggressione della Nato contro la Serbia è inaccettabile e non farà altro che inasprire i conflitti che pretende di risolvere. Le prime vittime dei bombardamenti sono i popoli serbo e kossovaro che gli apprendisti stregoni della Nato affermano di voler aiutare. Questa motivazione umanitaria è un paravento che non inganna nessuno: i palestinesi, i curdi o i tibetani, in lotta contro l'oppressione e per il proprio riconoscimento internazionale, non hanno mai goduto del benché minimo sostegno militare. La Nato, che in origine era un'alleanza difensiva, si sta trasformando di fatto sotto i nostri occhi in docile strumento delle aggressioni americano-occidentali nel mondo.

Il ristabilimento della pace nei Balcani passa attraverso la cessazione immediata degli attacchi aerei, un netto rifiuto opposto alle strategie americane di divisione dell'Europa, l'apertura di veri negoziati politici e diplomatici miranti a conciliare le parti attorno a un piano di pace duratura, cioè rispettosa del diritto di tutti i popoli a disporre del proprio destino.

I firmatari di questo testo condannano la decisione dei governi degli Stati europei che si sono associati a questa guerra senza neppure consultare preventivamente i propri parlamenti. Essi chiamano gli europei a manifestare con tutti i mezzi il loro rifiuto della guerra americana in Europa e la loro solidarietà con le popolazioni civili bombardate.

Collettivo "Non à la guerre", BP 9, F-95240 Cormeilles

Informazioni 24 ore su 24: 00331 / 46.40.07.98

Telefono: 00335 / 62.87.65.61

Tra i primi duecento firmatari figurano:

Jean-François KAHN (scrittore, direttore del settimanale Marianne), Max GALLO (storico), Vladimir VOLKOFF (scrittore, Premio internazionale della Pace 1989), Didier MOTCHANE (già deputato europeo dei Verdi), abbé Pierre, Jean DUTOURD (accademico di Francia), Marcel BIGEARD (generale, ex ministro), Gisèle HALIMI (avvocato e scrittore), Philippe COHEN (economista, della Fondazione Marc Bloch), Gérard BLAIN e Dominique CABRERA (registi cinematografici), William GOLDNADEL (presidente di Avocats sans frontières), Georges MATHIEU (pittore), Roger HUTIN (Centre européen pour la paix et le développement), Lionnel LUCA (deputato), Aline PALLIER (deputato europeo), Alain LECOEUR, Monique PELISSIER e Ginette SKANDRANI (les Verts), Bruno ETIENNE (ricercatore), Marja HÄRMÄNMAA (storica, Università di Helsinki), gli scrittori Peter HANDKE, Jean-Claude BARREAU, Patrick BESSON, Alain de BENOIST, Alphonse BOUDARD, André COYNÉ, Patrick GOFMAN, Dominique JAMET, Gabriel MATZNEFF, Gilles PERRAULT, Philippe de SAINT ROBERT, Michel TODA, i giornalisti Charles CHAMPETIER, Louis DALMAS, Elisabeth LÉVY.

La lista completa dei firmatari è disponibile su richiesta.

Per inviare la vostra adesione, precisando nome, cognome e qualifica,

inviate un fax a uno dei seguenti numeri:

00331 / 34.50.20.36, 43.55.44.29, 40.51.71.02, 48.86.73.04 oppure

00334/42.39.77.99

Per contatti e adesioni in Italia, i recapiti provvisori sono:

fax: 055/23.40.714, e-mail: tarchi@unifi.it

Lista dei primi firmatari italiani

Franco CARDINI (Università di Firenze), Danilo ZOLO (Università di Firenze), Marco TARCHI (Università di Firenze), Paola PISI (Università di Roma), Alessandro CAMPI (Università di Perugia), Antonello GIUGLIANO (Università di Napoli), Eduardo ZARELLI (editore), Umberto CROPPI (editore), Mimmo MAZZA (Comitato di redazione "La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno", Taranto), Gianfranco DELL'ISOLA (funzionario Inail), Christian ABBONDANZA (Sinistra dei Cittadini, Bassa Val Bisagno), Riccardo CAVALLO (Verdi), Michele GIAMMARIO (Verdi), Giacomo MANZONI (compositore), Guido CAMPANINI (consigliere nazionale Movimento Ecclesiale di Impegno Culturale), Guido VITALONE (medico), Manuela ALESSIO (dottore di ricerca, Università di Pisa), Carlo GAMBESCIA (sociologo), Alberto CENCI (dottore di ricerca, Università della Tuscia), Luca PESENTI (dottorando di ricerca, Università di Brescia), Alessandro BEDINI (insegnante), Walter CATALANO (insegnante), Roberto BARBON (ingegnere)

Lista dei firmatari di altri paesi

ARGENTINA:

Abel POSSE (ambasciatore in Perù, scrittore), Horacio CAGNI (politologo, Conicet), Alfredo MASON (Università di Buenos Aires), Eduardo ANCHORENA (antiquario), Carlos CANCELLI (analista politico), Miguel LIMBER (dirigente del Partido justicialista), Alberto GUERBEROF (dirigente della Izquierda nacional), Horacio GUHILIN (segretario generale del Sindacato docenti), Jorge DALL'AGLIO (medico), Alberto BUELA (saggista, docente universitario).

* * * * *

Considerando un dovere precipuo della funzione intellettuale continuare a stimolare coscienze che sembrano in qualche caso "assopite", vi giro un documento elaborato da alcuni nostri studenti, sperando che questa espressione del loro pensiero (a parer mio, comunque, molto più profonda e articolata di quella di certi colleghi con cui ho avuto la ventura di interagire recentemente) possa almeno interessare sotto il profilo storico-sociologico...

(Saluti dal vostro solito UB)

Allegato:

Le immagini trasmesse in continuazione dai mass media dall’inizio degli attacchi aerei contro quel che rimane della Jugoslavia hanno messo in evidenza solo un aspetto, seppur gravissimo, di questa guerra: L’ESODO FORZATO DI UNA POPOLAZIONE, quella dei Kossovari, che si va ad aggiungere alle tante vittime di odi e fanatismi, ora religiosi, ora etnici, che insanguinano ogni angolo del pianeta.

Il tanto proclamato ed auspicato NUOVO ORDINE MONDIALE, che dovrebbe assicurare pace e prosperità, non sembra capace di garantire altro che bombe sganciate più o meno a "casaccio" contro il "cattivissimo" nemico di turno ovviamente colpevole di inenarrabili ingiustizie e atrocità.

L’ULTIMO CASO GIUNTO DRAMMATICAMENTE ALLE CRONACHE E’ QUELLO DELLA POPOLAZIONE KURDA, prima utilizzata come pretesto per bombardare l’Iraq poi a sua volta aggredita con armi fornite dagli stessi paesi aderenti alla N.A.T.O., Italia in primis, al governo Turco. Ci sembra d’obbligo ricordare l’atto criminale dell’Europa e dell’Italia che consegnando il leader del P.K.K. Ochalan nelle mani del governo Turco ha di fatto condannato al massacro ed alla deportazione 35 milioni di Kurdi.

Troppi altri casi potrebbero essere citati dal Messico alla Colombia al Perù alla Somalia ed in ognuno, direttamente o indirettamente, l’Occidente giustifica la sua politica aggressiva, imperialista e neocoloniale con falsi motivi umanitari costruendo ad arte pretesti, inventandosi nemici, fomentando nazionalismi e guerre di religione.

LA VERITA’ a senso unico che ci viene proposta èsolo una scusa ad uso e consumo del banditismo internazionale con cui Europa ed U.S.A. per mezzo della N.A.T.O. continuano ad aggredire paesi sovrani.

ORA E’ IL TURNO DELLA JUGOSLAVIA. Anche in questo caso il cliché è lo stesso, migliaia di dollari investiti e disintegrati in bombe "intelligenti" per difendere profughi che vengono sfrattati anche dai campi allestiti in Albania e Macedonia per far posto alle truppe di terra. Il ricco Occidente non è stato a guardare il processo di disintegrazione della Jugoslavia multietnica ed ha soffiato sul fuoco del nazionalismo: prima riconoscendo tempestivamente la Slovenia e la Croazia poi addestrando ed armando i buoni di turno: il gruppo separatista dell’U.C.K.

Gli Stati Uniti hanno messo a punto una precisa strategia per insediare il proprio controllo nell’area geopolitica dei Balcani e, violando il diritto internazionale, hanno scatenato la guerra che sancisce la vittoria del neoliberismo in Europa.

Il nostro governo e le opposizioni di destra sostengono il conflitto armato allo scopo di ritagliare per l’Italia uno spazio di azione e di legittimità nello scenario dell’imperialismo mondiale.

COLLETTIVO ANTAGONISTA

29.4.99 - Via Innamorati, N. 4

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Subject: Nato and International Law

Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 19:04:51 +0200

From: "George C. Thomas" <gcthomas@ameritech.net>

Raju G. C. Thomas [Raju Thomas is Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. He is the author of 8 books, over 50 journal articles and book chapters, and over 70 OP-ED newspaper articles. His recent books were Democracy, Security and Development in India (1996), and The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime (1998). He was educated at Bombay University, the London School of Economics, and the University of California at Los Angeles from where he obtained his Ph.D. He has been a visiting Fellow at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London.]

Does NATO's attack on Serbia violate International Law? Does Humanitarian Law override the territorial integrity of states?

I. NATO and International Law

The US and NATO is violating a number of international laws in attacking Serbia over Kosovo which is part of a sovereign independent state.

(1) It is a violation of Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter that prohibits the use of force against a sovereign state where it has not committed aggression on other states. Serbia did not attack any neighboring states outside its sovereign borders. The Security Council did not sanction the use of force here. Efforts to justify these actions through earlier resolutions or Chapter 7 of the Charter are acts of distortion and convenience.

(2) It is a violation of NATO's own charter which claims it is a defensive organizations and is only committed to force if one of its members is attacked. No member of NATO was attacked.

(3) The so-called Rambouillet "Agreement" (there was no "agreement" by Serbia ) is a violation of Articles 51 and 52 of the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties which forbids coercion and force to compel any state to sign a treaty or agreement. Serbia is being asked to sign this "Agreement" through NATO bombs and missiles, anything but persuasion.

(4) It is a violation of the Helsinki Accords Final Act of 1975 which guarantees the territorial frontiers of the states of Europe. What this so-called peace plan offers is (a) the severance of Kosovo through NATO bombing with immediate effect; or (b) the severance of Kosovo through NATO occupation three years later. The Serbs chose Option A.

(5) If the sequel to the bombing is recogntion of Kosovo as an independent state, this will violate international law that prohibits recognition of provinces that unilaterally declare independence against the wishes of the federal authorities.

(6) If the bombing of Yugoslavia results in the destruction of Serbian religious and historical sites, this will be in violation of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

(7) The Geneva Conventions Act 1957 (amended 1995) of the United Kingdom specifically states that "civilians shall not be the object of attack" (Schedule 5, Article 52.1) and that "civilians shall enjoy protection unless they take a direct part in hostilities" (Schedule 6, Article 13.3). Targeting the Serbian TV station at night when it was inhabited by civilians only constituted an intentional and premeditated attack on civilians.

(8) Beyond the above, there may be several other international regulations about the environment that is being violated by the attacks on chemical plants, fuel storage, and refineries. They include the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985, UNEP), the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987, UNEP), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992).

II. Humanitarian Law and the Territorial Integrity of States

United States and Great Britain have argued that the attack on Serbia was justified under the 1948 Genocide Convention and/or other general humanitarian principles. Claims have also been made that Article 2(4) of the UN Charter which upholds the territorial integrity of states against external military attacks, is countered by Articles 1(2) and 55 of the Charter, which speak of self-determination of peoples. However, these articles, including Articles 73 to 91 which deal with "Non-Self Governing Territories" and the "Trusteeship System," pertain to decolonization and not the right to secede from existing sovereign independent states. Article 1 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights passed in 1976 referred to the rights of minorities to self-determination but did not inlcude the right to secede. It implied the right of peoples in all states "to free, fair and open participation in the democratic process of governance freely chosen by each state." A 1990 meeting of the then Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Copenhagen went far in affirming democratic rights and human rights of peoples but did not go as far as to endorse the right to secede. In any case, the internal Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia declared their independence before any human rights violations or violence had occurred and were recognized. Those unilateral declarations of independence produced the subsequent violence. Before the NATO attack, the deaths of 2000 on all sides and the internal displacement of 300,000 people in Kosovo did not constitute genocide. In Kosovo, a province no different from Krajina of Croatia from where all Serbs were driven out, NATO bombing led to the human catastrophe not just for Albanians but for Serbs, Hungarians and Sandjak Muslims. Much has been made about "Serbian genocide" in Bosnia which has become the pretext for the current NATO attack. Like the Kosovo "genocide," this was more propaganda than fact. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute determined that between 35,000 and 50,000 people died in Bosnia on all sides. In comparison, an average of 20,000 people are victims of homicide in the US every year. The investigators for the Hague Tribunal have interviewed only 223 women claiming to be raped, and have collected 575 affidavits from women claiming to be raped. Compare this with an average of 100,000 women who file rape complaints with the police every year, and an estimated 400,000 unreported rapes annually. NATO unqualified and unrestrained bombing campaign that includes the ifrasturcture is more likely to kill millions of Yugosalv citizens in the long run, through lack of proper medical facilities, polluted water supply, atmospheric poisoning, ozone depletion, and climatic change. NATO is committing ecocide and therefore also genocide in the long run. If NATO had the right to intervene in Kosovo, does it now have the right to intervene in Palestine, Kashmir, Tibet and "Kurdistan where human rights violations are also taking place? Can any state now bypass the UN Security Council and attack another state by invoking humanitarian considerations?

(1) NATO cannot unilaterally invoke the 1948 Genocide Convention , the 1948 Universial Declaration of Human Rights, and other humanitarian laws, and proceed to attack independent states. Only the Security Council can do so which was deliberately bypassed by NATO because it knew that Russia and China would veto such an attack.

(2) There was no humanitarian intervention by the US and the West when the Nigerian authorities crushed the Biafra separatist movement between 1967 and 1970 causing the deaths of one million Ibos, when Pakistani forces killed one million and drove out 10 million Bengalis during the East Pakistani secessionist struggle in 1971, when the Pol Pot regime killed one million Cambodians, to name just a few cases. In the latter two cases, the US condemned India and Vietnam for their military interventions and threatened military action against them. However, both India and Vietnam intervened after the human catastrophes had taken place. NATO's rush to bomb caused the human catastrophe in Kosovo, as did Western interventions earlier in Croatia and Bosnia by promoting and rushing to recognize Croatia and Bosnia as independent states against the wishes of the Serbian populations.

(3) Ethnic cleansing is not genocide. If it were, the Allied powers were guilty of genocide for the expulsion of some 12 million Germans from Poland, Czechoslavkia and elsewhere at the end of the Second World War, and surely European Jews committed genocide when it drove out nearly a million Palestinians to carve out the state of Israel in 1948.

(4) There is now an ethnically pure Greater Croatia. There are almost 900,000 Serbian refugees ethnically cleansed from Croatia and the federation, 300,000 in Republika Srpska and 600,000 in Serbia. This is more than any other ethnic group. Croatia conducted the largest single ethnic cleansing of the war with American military support.

III. Conclusion

Russia, China and India, representing half the human race, got it right about the Kosovo crisis. NATO, the only alliance left after the Cold War, committed aggression on Serbia. This is all about saving NATO's face at a very heavy price for the Serbs. If NATO is above international law, then so is every other state and organization. It has set a terrible precedent. A Times of India editorial of April 29th, 1999, concluded rightly that "just as the US cannot afford to lose, the rest of the world cannot afford to let it win. If NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia is allowed to prevail, the alliance will eventually turn its destructive attention to other 'out of area' operations."

Raju G. C. Thomas

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

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Subject: Lt Gen Satish Nambiar's Article on Kosovo

Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 19:05:43 +0200

From: "George C. Thomas" <gcthomas@ameritech.net>

THE FATAL FLAWS UNDERLYING NATO'S INTERVENTION IN YUGOSLAVIA

By Lt Gen Satish Nambiar (Retd.)

(First Force Commander and Head of Mission of the United Nations Forces deployed in the former Yugoslavia 03 Mar92 to 02 Mar 93. Former Deputy Chief of Staff, Indian Army. Currently, Director of the United Services Insitution of India.)

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 but only the Serbs would admit that they were no angels while the others would insist that they were. With 28, 000 forces under me and with constant contacts with UNHCR and the International Red Cross officials, we did not witness any genocide beyond killings and massacres on all sides that are typical of such conflict conditions. I believe none of my successors and their forces saw anything on the scale claimed by the media.

(2) It was obvious to me that if Slovenians, Croatians and Bosniaks had the right to secede from Yugoslavia, then the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia had an equal right to secede. The experience of partitions in Ireland and India has not been pleasant but in the Yugoslavia case, the state had already been taken apart anyway. It made little sense to me that if multiethnic Yugoslavia was not tenable that multiethnic Bosnia could be made tenable. The former internal boundaries of Yugoslavia which had no validity under international law should have been redrawn when it was taken apart by the West, just as it was in the case of Ireland in 1921 and Punjab and Bengal in India in 1947. Failure to acknowledge this has led to the problem of Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia.

(3) It is ironic that the Dayton Agreement on Bosnia was not fundamentally different from the Lisbon Plan drawn up by Portuguese Foreign Minister Cuteliero and British representative Lord Carrington to which all three sides had agreed before any killings had taken place, or even the Vance-Owen Plan which Karadzic was willing to sign. One of the main problems was that there was an unwillingness on the part of the American administration to concede that Serbs had legitimate grievances and rights. I recall State Department official George Kenny turning up like all other American officials, spewing condemnations of the Serbs for aggression and genocide. I offered to give him an escort and to go see for himself that none of what he proclaimed was true. He accepted my offer and thereafter he made a radical turnaround.. Other Americans continued to see and hear what they wanted to see and hear from one side, while ignoring the other side. Such behaviour does not produce peace but more conflict.

(4) I felt that Yugoslavia was a media-generated tragedy. The Western media sees international crises in black and white, sensationalizing incidents for public consumption. From what I can see now, all Serbs have been driven out of Croatia and the Muslim-Croat Federation, I believe almost 850,000 of them . And yet the focus is on 500,000 Albanians (at last count) who have been driven out of Kosovo. Western policies have led to an ethnically pure Greater Croatia, and an ethnically pure Muslim statelet in Bosnia. Therefore, why not an ethnically pure Serbia? Failure to address these double standards has led to the current one.

As I watched the ugly tragedy unfold in the case of Kosovo while visiting the US in early to mid March 1999, I could see the same pattern emerging. In my experience with similar situations in India in such places as Kashmir, Punjab, Assam, Nagaland, and elsewhere, it is the essential strategy of those ethnic groups who wish to secede to provoke the state authorities. Killings of policemen is usually a standard operating procedure by terrorists since that usually invites overwhelming state retaliation, just as I am sure it does in the United States.

I do not believe the Belgrade government had prior intention of driving out all Albanians from Kosovo. It may have decided to implement Washington's own "Krajina Plan" only if NATO bombed, or these expulsions could be spontaneous acts of revenge and retaliation by Serb forces in the field because of the bombing. The OSCE Monitors were not doing too badly, and the Yugoslav Government had, after all, indicated its willings to abide by nearly all the provisions of the Rambouillet "Agreement" on aspects like cease-fire, greater autonomy to the Albanians, and so on. But they insisted that the status of Kosovo as part of Serbia was not negotiable, and they would not agree to stationing NATO forces on the soil of Yugoslavia. This is precisely what India would have done under the same circumstances. It was the West that proceeded to escalate the situation into the current senseless bombing campaign that smacks more of hurt egos, and revenge and retaliation. NATO's massive bombing intended to terrorize Serbia into submission appears no differrent from the morality of actions of Serb forces in Kosovo.

Ultimatums were issued to Yugoslavia that unless the terms of an agreement drawn up at Rambouillet were signed, NATO would undertake bombing. Ultimatums do not constitute diplomacy. They are acts of war. The Albanians of Kosovo who want independence, were coaxed and cajoled into putting their signatures to a document motivated with the hope of NATO bombing of Serbs and independence later. With this signature, NATO assumed all the legal and moral authority to undertake military operations against a country that had, at worst, been harsh on its own people. On 24th March 1999, NATO launched attacks with cruise missiles and bombs, on Yugoslavia, a sovereign state, a founding member of the United Nations and the Non Aligned Movement; and against a people who were at the forefront of the fight against Nazi Germany and other fascist forces during World War Two. I consider these current actions unbecoming of great powers.

It is appropriate to touch on the humanitarian dimension for it is the innocent who are being subjected to displacement, pain and misery. Unfortunately, this is the tragic and inevitable outcome of all such situations of civil war, insurgencies, rebel movements, and terrorist activity. History is replete with examples of such suffering; whether it be the American Civil War, Northern Ireland, the Basque movement in Spain, Chechnya, Angola, Cambodia, and so many other cases; the indiscriminate bombing of civilian centres during World War Two; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Vietnam. The list is endless. I feel that this tragedy could have been prevented if NATO's ego and credibility had not been given the highest priority instead of the genuine grievances of Serbs in addition to Albanians.

Notwithstanding all that one hears and sees on CNN and BBC, and other Western agencies, and in the daily briefings of the NATO authorities, the blame for the humanitarian crisis that has arisen cannot be placed at the door of the Yugoslav authorities alone. The responsibility rests mainly at NATO’s doors. In fact, if I am to go by my own experience as the First Force Commander and Head of Mission of the United Nations forces in the former Yugoslavia, from March 1992 to March 1993, handling operations in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia, I would say that reports put out in the electronic media are largely responsible for provoking this tragedy.

Where does all this leave the international community which for the record does not comprise of the US, the West and its newfound Muslim allies? The portents for the future, at least in the short term, are bleak indeed. The United Nations has been made totally redundant, ineffective, and impotent. The Western world, led by the USA, will lay down the moral values that the rest of the world must adhere to; it does not matter that they themselves do not adhere to the same values when it does not suit them. National sovereignty and territorial integrity have no sanctity. And finally, secessionist movements, which often start with terrorist activity, will get greater encouragement. One can only hope that good sense will prevail, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Lt General Satish Nambiar

Director, United Services Institution of India

Vasant Vihar, New Delhi

6 April 1999

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