Helsinki Committees Call for International Force in Kosovo
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Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 18:06:19 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: Helsinki Committees Call for International Force in Kosovo
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Greek Helsinki Monitor <[email protected]>
Helsinki Committees Call for International Force in Kosovo
FOR A PEACEFUL, POLITICAL SOLUTION:
IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL OF SERBIAN FORCES FROM KOSOVO AND
REPLACEMENT BY AN INTERNATIONAL PREVENTIVE FORCE
Statement by the Helsinki Committees in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro,
and the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF)
Prishtine, Belgrade, Podgorica, Vienna, 10 June 1998. The situation in
Kosova has assumed the proportions of an undeclared but an open war in
about one-third of the territory.
This dire reality of open warfare on the brink of wider armed conflict
is reflected in the killing of at least 267 Albanians, the wounding of
hundreds of others, while over 200 are listed as missing, and an
estimated 50,000 displaced, 15,000 of whom have fled to Albania, while
others have sought refuge in Macedonia, Montenegro, and elsewhere in
Kosovo.
Faced with this grave reality, which was signaled earlier in reports by
the IHF and the Helsinki Committees in FRY, we call upon the Contact
Group urgently to reconfirm its earlier demand for full and immediate
withdrawal of Serbian armed forces from Kosovo and for an immediate
cessation of violence and repression against the Albanian civilian
population.
In order to pre-empt the repetition of military and paramilitary
campaigns inflicting casualties upon the civilian Albanian population of
Kosovo and the outbreak of further violence and war in Kosovo, the IHF
and the Helsinki Committees call upon the Contact Group and the United
Nations Security Council to demand the immediate installation of
international monitoring, preventive and peacekeeping forces there
according to Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The installation of such
peacekeeping forces in Kosovo, whether of the UN or NATO, should be
followed by authorization to undertake all necessary measures to prevent
an outbreak of war that could easily spill over to neighbouring
countries and destabilize the entire region. Such a crisis would likely
be accompanied by massive ethnic cleansing along the pattern already
seen Bosnia and other large scale human rights and humanitarian law
violations.
The IHF and the Helsinki Committees in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro
insist that withdrawal of the Serbian military and police units and
installation of international peacekeeping forces would create the
appropriate premises for restarting the Yugoslav-Albanian negotiation
process (dominated by President Milosevic on the FRY side), which was
broken off in the context of unjustifiable and illegal violence by
Serbian forces.
The eventual restarting of the Yugoslav-Albanian negotiating process in
search of a just, peaceful and political solution for Kosovo should
include direct international mediation; the indirect mediation present
until now has proven insufficient to prevent even the escalation of the
spiral of violence in Kosovo. International mediation should include a
strong arbitraging component. Such international mediation could be well
conceived and implemented within the framework of a "Dayton II"
conference for Kosovo, and it could help stabilize the entire volatile
region. As such it would help create the foundation for a transition to
democracy and economic prosperity and compliance with international
human rights norms and standards in the region.
The negotiating process should be restarted only after being reconceived
and expanded, thus to include confidence-building measures to bring
Kosovars and Serbs together on behalf of shared goals. Such
confidence-building measures should include joint efforts toward the
normalization of vital segments of life such as education, health care,
media, restoration of abolished Kosovar institutions and the
establishment of new democratic ones. Such an approach is necessary and
indispensable for securing justice and peace in and around Kosovo.
For more information:
Gazmend Pula, Kosova Helsinki Committee +381-38-26 153
Sonja Biserko, Helsinki Committee in Serbia +381-11-639 481
Slobodan Franovic, Montenegrin Helsinki Committee +381-86 53 191
Aaron Rhodes, IHF +43-1-402 73 87
_______________________________________
Greek Helsinki Monitor &
Minority Rights Group - Greece
P.O. Box 51393
GR-14510 Kifisia
Greece
Tel. +30-1-620.01.20
Fax +30-1-807.57.67
e-mail: [email protected]
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr
________________________________________
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