-Caveat Lector- From {{<Begin>}} REPORT ON THE 25 OCTOBER 1999 PARIS CONFERENCE ON " J U S T I C E A N D W A R " A dozen speakers from seven countries presented a devastating case against NATO's illegal war against Yugoslavia at the international conference on "Justice and War" held in Paris on Monday, October 25. The speakers included jurists, experts and activists who have closely studied the background of the Yugoslav conflict and NATO intervention. Alternatives to War Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Future and Peace Research based in Lund, Sweden, attacked "the one biggest myth of the war": that there was "nothing else to do" about the Kosovo problem. Oberg, who before the NATO bombing had carried out some three dozen peace missions to Kosovo and acted as advisor to the Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, presented a long list of sensible, practical things that could have been done to help solve the Kosovo problem in a peaceful way. None had been tried by the Western powers. Instead, the United States chose war and backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) chieftain Hashim Thaqi, "the Albanian equivalent of Arkan" (the notorious Serb gangster), said Oberg. Oberg stressed that none of the Western officials dealing with the Yugoslav problems had any understanding of peaceful reconciliation methods. The first thing to do to help solve a conflict, he stressed, is to listen to both sides, to understand their needs and their fears. This was never done. American journalist Diana Johnstone, who co-chaired the conference, accused the Clinton administration of aggravating and exploiting the Kosovo problem in order to inaugurate NATO's new mission of "humanitarian intervention". The "humanitarian" pretense is the public relations cover for NATO expansion eastwards for economic and strategic reasons. Professor Raju George Thomas of Marquette University in Wisconsin (USA) warned of the extremely negative impact on international relations of NATO's illegal attack on a sovereign nation that had not committed any act of aggression. Other powers will be encouraged to emulate NATO's aggressive behavior in defense of their own national interests, while fear of NATO's unpredictable expansion is certain to trigger a new worldwide arms race. An American citizen of Indian origin, Professor Thomas stressed that India, like most of the world (with the exception of NATO countries), did not believe the "humanitarian" pretext for the NATO bombing and sympathized with Yugoslavia as the victim. International Law and NATO Aggression Roland Weyl, speaking on behalf of the International Association of Democratic Jurists, denounced NATO's "open contempt" for the United Nations and the post- World War II system of international law aimed at banning war. The bombing had no legal basis and would be unjustifiable even if the United States succeeded in turning the United Nations Security Council into a pliant rubber stamp to approve NATO military operations. Two contrasting views of the ambiguous concept of "self-determination", in relation to Kosovo, were presented by Catherine Samary of the University of Paris and Barbara Delcourt, who teaches international law at the Free University of Brussels. While Samary tended to favor self-determination for Kosovo Albanians, Delcourt pointed out that under existing international law, self-determination did not imply secession except in regard to decolonization. If the right of self-determination is to be broadened, this should be done systematically by international convention, rather than ad hoc, Delcourt argued. Today we are no longer in the period of decolonization, but in a recolonization period where the "right to self-determination" mainly favors nationalists and great power manipulations. On the subject of a hypothetical "law of humanitarian intervention", Olivier Corten, professor of international law at the Free University of Brussels, noted that any such law is open to differing interpretations as to when it is applicable. The purpose of a legal system is to provide procedures to mediate between differing evaluations. There is no law without procedure, he stressed. We are in danger of reverting to the 19th century practice of Great Powers which regularly invoked "natural rights" to justify use of military force. Toronto lawyer Christopher Black explained that the ad hoc "International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY)" in The Hague is not a step toward a real international criminal tribunal (a project that has encountered U.S. opposition), but something quite contrary: a political tribunal instigated by the United States for political purposes. The ICTY receives funding and personnel from the United States government and private corporations, its chief justice describes U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as "the mother of the tribunal", it ignored a brief presented by an international group of lawyers calling for indictment of NATO leaders for war crimes, based on more solid evidence than the subsequent indictment of Yugoslav leaders. Its procedures are contrary to all the guarantees of the defense written into democratic legal systems, Black said. Other speakers were Roman judge Domenico Gallo, who concluded that the circumstances did not justify NATO intervention; Zeljan Schuster, of the University of New Haven, who described various scenarios of economic and political effects on Yugoslavia of NATO bombing; and University of Paris historian Annie Lacroix-Riz, who drew from her vast knowledge of diplomatic archives to describe the extraordinary degree of continuity between present and past Great Power intervention in Yugoslavia. Tentative Conclusions Brian Becker of the International Action Center in New York represented an activist approach to the war strikingly absent in today's France. Becker's description of the IAC plans to hold hearings in various cities on the indictment against NATO leaders drafted by Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, aroused considerable enthusiasm among the people attending the conference, who were eager to offer support. Becker explained that the campaign will culminate in a people's tribunal in New York on next March 24, anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing. Ramsey Clark sent a message of greeting to the conference. Participants in the conference intend to get together to plan further action. In addition to support to the Ramsey Clark initiative, the conference strongly condemned economic sanctions as an unjustifiable continuation of war against the people of Yugoslavia. It was generally agreed that: · Economic sanctions are a warlike, not a peaceful measure: a means of continuing the bombing destruction by other means, in a "bomb now, die later" strategy already employed against the people of Iraq; S uch methods as economic sanctions, "selective sanctions" and other encouragements to further secession and civil war in Yugoslavia are totally inappropriate means to produce "democratic change"; Such deliberately divisive measures seem designed to preclude peaceful democratic change and instead provide NATO with a pretext for further armed intervention; A truly neutral tribunal should determine legal responsibilities for the 1999 war and assess damages and liability for reparations; Governments should provide humanitarian and reconstruction aid to all parts of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, without ethnic or political discrimination. The conference also adopted by acclamation a proposal from the floor to protest against the exclusion by the humanitarian organization "Doctors Without Frontiers", on the day after it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, of its Greek chapter for having treated Serbian victims of the NATO bombing. A message of personal testimony from Cedomir Prlincevic, former archivist and head of the Jewish community in Pristina, was read to the conference. Prlincevic, who was driven from his home by Albanian gangsters, accused N ATO and KFOR of allowing KLA thugs to threaten, kill and drive out members of non-Albanian ethnic groups and steal their property. With NATO/KFOR support, the KLA had installed a reign of terror, he said. The conference on "Justice and War" was held in the Town Hall of Paris' 9th arrondissement and financed by individual contributions. Each invited guest in the international audience of 140 contributed at least 150 francs ($25) to cover costs. The papers and proceedings will be published by the Paris-based review "Dialogue". If you wish to obtain copies, or distribute copies, of the special "Justice and War" conference issue of "Dialogue", please contact (by e-mail): dialogos@club- internet.fr. {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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