HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------1. Ukraine to modernise Macedonian tank forces (Reuters)
2. Balkans offer lessons for Afghan reconstruction (Reuters)
["After the wars of the 1990s, (the Balkans have) been something of a testing ground for aid projects large and small, 'a vast political laboratory on top of a mass grave' as one U.N.-commissioned report commented....But international officials (in Kosovo) do have the advantage of a local population overwhelmingly from one ethnic group." - Reuters]
3. Yugoslav villagers sue Germany over Kosovo war (Reuters)
["The civilian deaths in Varvarin came near the end of the Kosovo war. Of the 10 people dead in (this) bombing, several were killed by a second strike when they rushed from the nearby market to help the victims of the first. One of these was the priest from the freshly whitewashed church above the bridge, whose head was never found. Milenkovic's daughter died as she was being rushed to a hospital." - Reuters]
Ukraine to modernise Macedonian tank forces
KIEV, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Ukraine plans to set up a plant in Macedonia to service and modernise Macedonia's armoured vehicle and tank forces, the Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.
It said the two countries had reached a preliminary agreement during a visit to Kiev by Metodi Stamboliski, chief of the general staff of Macedonia's armed forces.
Ukraine has supplied Macedonia with 31 T-72 tanks, eight Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters and four Su-25 ground-attack jets.
Kiev halted arms shipments under pressure from the West during last year's guerrilla conflict in Macedonia. Following the peace accord with minority Albanian guerrillas, talks resumed on weapons supplies.
07:46 01-15-02
Balkans offer lessons for Afghan reconstruction
By Andrew Gray
SARAJEVO, Jan 17 (Reuters) - If aid pledged at a donors' conference for Afghanistan next week is better spent than in previous big reconstruction efforts, the devastated country will owe at least a small debt of thanks to the Balkans.
After the wars of the 1990s, that part of southeastern Europe has been something of a testing ground for aid projects large and small, "a vast political laboratory on top of a mass grave" as one U.N.-commissioned report commented.
Lessons have been learned. And while not all of them apply to the very different setting of Afghanistan, aid experts say some may at least offer pointers on making the most of the billions of dollars promised in Tokyo next Monday and Tuesday.
Keep the bureaucracy low but the coordination between donors high and get local people involved -- those are the messages from veterans of reconstruction in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia.
They have learned the hard way. After the Bosnian war finished at the end of 1995, a multitude of donors descended on the country, sometimes ill-prepared and poorly coordinated.
"There were terrible cases at the beginning. The procedures were bad," recalled Rory O'Sullivan, the World Bank country manager for Yugoslavia who was the bank's Resident Representative in Bosnia in the immediate postwar period.
"I think that donors now work much better together than they did in 1996," he said.
Aid project managers in the Balkans have had to battle both local politicians who simply want to rebuild everything as it was before -- even if it was badly outdated then -- and foreign governments keen to score public relations points.
PUMP MONEY
Donors continued to pump money and equipment into Sarajevo's run-down public water supply system even after the World Bank had decided its best hope was privatisation, according to Bosnia's first peace implementation tsar Carl Bildt.
"...in the end, we could do little but watch as funds flowed into a system that leaked money as much as it leaked water with hardly any prospects of improvement in either respect," the former Swedish premier laments in his book "Peace Journey."
O'Sullivan says one improvement in recent years is the increase of projects in which the World Bank draws up an overall plan and different donors finance different parts.
He cites a new project worth around $200 million to renovate Bosnia's power sector involving seven different donors. "Each one has bought into different aspects," O'Sullivan said.
Aid agency veterans recognise Afghanistan presents a far tougher task than ex-Yugoslavia, which was poor by Western standards but well-off compared to other communist countries.
Creating a basic infrastructure rather than rebuilding or enhancing an old one may be the main task in Afghanistan.
"The Balkans, basically, has roads, telecommunications, power, utilities," said Susan Manuel, spokeswoman for the United Nations administration in Kosovo who worked on humanitarian projects in Afghanistan in 1998.
"In Afghanistan...the needs are just so much greater," Manuel said. "I think we'll have to be much more modest."
LESSONS OF BOSNIA
Kosovo, the ethnic Albanian-dominated Yugoslav province which has been an international protectorate since war ended in June 1999, has already benefited from the lessons of Bosnia.
Criticised for being too slow and bureaucratic, the European Union set up a specialised agency with the aim of implementing reconstruction projects more quickly in Kosovo.
The European Agency for Reconstruction is now also responsible for projects in Serbia and Montenegro. It has more staff closer to the field to allow approvals to be given and decisions to be made without referring back to Brussels.
Agency director Hugues Mingarelli says it will be vital in Afghanistan to build not just the physical infrastructure but also institutions to maintain it once the aid workers have gone.
"If they rebuild the roads, they should at the same time provide them (Afghans) with technical assistance to set up a roads directorate in the Transport Ministry," he said.
Not everything has gone right in Kosovo. Despite around 300 million euros ($264.5 million) of EU funds spent in the utilities sector, power cuts are still frequent and lengthy.
But international officials there do have the advantage of a local population overwhelmingly from one ethnic group.
Bosnia has three -- with leaders who have argued over matters even as mundane as the size of lettering on passports -- and serves as a sobering example to reconstruction workers in Afghanistan, which has no shortage of rival tribes and groups.
06:21 01-17-02
Yugoslav villagers sue Germany over Kosovo war
By Adam Tanner
BERLIN, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Yugoslav villagers who lost relatives in the 1999 NATO air war against Kosovo announced a lawsuit on Thursday against the German government.
With tears welling in her eyes, Vesna Milenkovic, 37, told a news conference how she lost her 15-year-old daughter in May 1999 when NATO bombs aimed at a bridge caused what Western military officials called "collateral damage."
"I lost my whole life in five minutes," she said. "Who would have thought that such a thing could happen in Europe in 1999 and no one would be responsible for it."
German attorney Ulrich Dost said he filed the lawsuit on December 24 on behalf of relatives of 10 people killed and 17 badly wounded in the southern Serbian town of Varvarin. The suit seeks about $3.8 million in compensation and damages.
A spokesman for the German Defence Ministry declined to comment in detail, saying it involved NATO not just Germany.
"It was a decision of NATO which consists of 19 sovereign states," he said. "Germany was only a part of that."
NATO fought the 78-day war over Kosovo in response to what it called crimes against humanity by Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. He now awaits trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague.
NATO officials said at the time that the bridge was a legitimate target. "That bridge is, was, a legitimate, designated military target," NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said in 1999. "This bridge was hit accurately. We're not talking about a missile that went astray."
Dost said victims had a basis to sue because of a 1977 amendment to the Geneva Convention which calls on signatories to "direct their operations only against military objectives."
He also cited the 2000 Greek Supreme Court ruling ordering Germany to pay nearly $25 million to the survivors of the June 1944 massacre in the central Greek village of Distomo, where SS forces killed 218 men, women and children.
The German government and industry are also still in the process of compensating Nazi-era wartime slave labourers who won a settlement after recent threats of lawsuits.
POTENTIAL FLOOD OF CLAIMS
With civilian casualties an inevitable part of every war, including the latest conflict in Afghanistan, many say individual lawsuits are not the most efficient way of easing the pain of war.
"At first glance I would say it would not work," Gerhardt Baum, a prominent attorney and former German interior minister, told Reuters. "No one who loses a leg or is taken prisoner of war gets compensation.... Such claims would be endless."
Baum added that throughout history states had, however, paid compensation to other countries after wars.
The civilian deaths in Varvarin came near the end of the Kosovo war. Of the 10 people dead in the bombing, several were killed by a second strike when they rushed from the nearby market to help the victims of the first.
One of these was the priest from the freshly whitewashed church above the bridge, whose head was never found. Milenkovic's daughter died as she was being rushed to a hospital.
07:59 01-17-02
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