Re: Kosovars on NATO
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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1999 13:23:33 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: Re: Kosovars on NATO
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Cecil Ballantine <[email protected]>
Re: Kosovars on NATO
With refererence to the discussion on MINELRES about Serb and Kosovar
responses to the NATO bombing and the press response in the West, the
following letters appeared on
April 3rd, 1999 in the British daily newspaper The Independent. The
Independent has provided some of the best reporting and most informed
comment about the Kosovo
situation for a considerable time and its current reports, editorial
and commentaries are some of the best of the British press.
Nato aim unclear
Sir: The air strikes against Yugoslavia have jeopardised the lives of
10.5 million people and unleashed an attack on the fledgling forces of
democracy in Kosovo and
Serbia.
The protection of a population under threat is a noble duty, but it
requires a clear strategy and a coherent end game. As the situation
unfolds it is becoming apparent
that there is no such strategy.
Analysts are already asking whether the air strikes are still really
about saving Kosovo Albanians. Just how far are Nato members prepared
to go? What comes next after
the "military" targets? What happens if the war spreads?
These questions crowded my mind as I sat in a Belgrade prison on the
first day of the Nato attack. In the cell I shared with a murder
suspect I asked myself what the
West's aim was for the morning after. I've seen no indication that
there is a clear plan to follow up the Western military resolve.
My friends in the West keep asking why there is no rebellion. People
feel betrayed by the countries which were their models. With the bombs
falling nobody can persuade
them that this is only an attack on their government and not their
country.
The West has washed its hands of the people, Albanians, Serbs and
others, living in the region. Thus the sins of the government have
been visited on the people. Is this
just?
Nato's bombs have blasted the germinating seeds of democracy out of
the soil of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro and ensured that they will
not sprout again for a very long
time.
Veran Matic, Editor in Chief, Radio B92, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
---------------------------------------------------
Sir: Adrian Hastings (letter, 1 April) suggests that the Nato attack
on Yugoslavia can be legally justified through references to the
Genocide convention of 1948. But
this convention was not ratified by the US Senate, on the grounds that
it is poorly drafted, and could allow other governments to intervene
in the United States' affairs.
It is true that the Americans gave their support to a resolution
upholding the principles embodied in the convention. But it would be
eccentric for the United States to
claim legal justification on a basis which it had itself refused to
ratify.
The burden of the convention concerns not the suppression, but the
punishment, of genocide, which leaves open the whole question of how
the genocide is to be suppressed.
All that the convention can offer us is article 8, which says that
"any contracting party may call upon the competent organs of the
United Nations to take such action
under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate".
Article 9 does give contracting parties the right to refer disputes to
the International Court of Justice. But contracting parties are
states, so this offers no protection to groups complaining about
states. And the United States refuses to recognise the competence of
that court.
KEN COATES MEP, (Independent Labour, Nottinghamshire North and
Chesterfield), Mansfield, Nottinghamshire
-------------------------------------------------
Sir: Which Geneva Convention is Alex Bellamy referring to (letter, 27
March) when he writes of the Geneva Convention? The Geneva Conventions
of 1949 are four in number. Presumably he means number IV ("Relative
to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War").
We are reading and hearing a number of pronouncements on international
law these days. It is getting a bit like quoting the Bible. Choose the
parts that support your beliefs, but don't worry too much about being
selective.
International law on armed conflict and on human rights is complex and
is not easily reduced to a couple of simple propositions. The right
not to be murdered, raped, driven out, dispossessed, massacred or
maimed is clear, but the law on intervention is not.
FREDERICK STARKEY, Mold, Clwyd
------------------------------------------------------
Sir: Mr Agani, and thousand of his fellow Kosovars, have not been
executed by the Serbian forces ("Kosovo's men of ideas are dragged
from homes and shot", 30 March). They have been murdered.
"Execute" implies legitimacy - the carrying out of a judicial
sentence. Execution, however morally wrong, is a legal action; murder
never is.
LORNA ARNOLD, Oxford
------------------------------------------------------
Cecil Ballantine
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