KOSOVO must not be forgotten: BRUSSELS APPEAL In the spring of 1999 Brussels, as the headquarters of NATO, was the centre of decision and execution of the bombing of Yugoslavia by the 19 member nations of that organisation in the name of human rights. We, active in or retired from the teaching of law, believe that the first anniversary of such a serious event must not go unnoticed, but on the contrary should induce every citizen to think seriously about the enormous stakes. The war was prepared, decided and prosecuted against the most fundamental principles of international law. NATO decided to take action after the Rambouillet talks broke down. And yet these talks had made serious progress of the political issues before last minute conditions, which were totally unacceptable to the Serbs, led to an impasse. In other words, to war. The outbreak of the war was a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter, which authorises the use of force only in exceptional cases of legitimate self-defence or with the authorisation of the Security Council. There were no such premises, in this case. Finally, the way in which the bombing was carried out violates the rules of international law which govern the conduct of hostilities. In general, the systematic destruction of the economic infrastructure and the means of communication, deliberately intended to discourage the population and provoke an uprising, are incompatible with the humanitarian principles invoked to justify them. That said, our wishing to express our unequivocal and unreserved condemnation of the action taken by NATO in no way implies any support of or complacency towards the Belgrade authorities and in particular their management of the ethnic question. Similarly, our sustained reprobation of the continuation, without any legal grounds, of the bombing of Iraq and the embargo imposed on this country, must not be interpreted as any allegiance to the Baghdad regime. The war strategy that devastated Yugoslavia and made Kosovo non-liveable produced more refugees and victims than would have been caused by any other combination of force and diplomacy. So it must be contested, both from the political and the moral point of view. It was accompanied by a media campaign to systematically legitimise the operations under way. The arrangements made at the end of the bombing are intended to make international aid contingent to the results of elections in Yugoslavia and make aid contingent on the political options adopted by its beneficiaries, which is not a very honourable means of political interventions in the internal affairs of a third country. For its part, under the UN administration created in Kosovo following the NATO aggression, this region has become a virtually mono-ethnical one, where non-Albanian minorities, be they Serbs, Gypsies, Slavs, Muslims, Jews, Turks or Croats, had to flee from attacks or take refuge in ghettos. We should also like to underscore the fact that the consequences of the war waged in Yugoslavia extend far beyond the borders of this country. More specifically, NATO's intervention in Kosovo, under the leadership of the United States, is in line with a series of choices made by the sole remaining superpower. Its gargantuan military budget; keeping NATO in place, in spite of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the USSR, and even to enlarge it by including Eastern Europe; projecting armed force on the world arena by treating international institutions with disdain; refusing to ratify the nuclear test ban treat; developing anti-missile systems and, as recently discovered, a world-wide system for eavesdropping on private and official calls are the most salient aspects of a new model for exercising power charted in Washington, based solely on the possession and use of ever more sophisticated instruments of coercion. That is why we call on all those who share these concerns and no longer wish to see bombs as the alternative to international law, negotiations, and democratic dialogue, to sign this appeal and turn it, everywhere in the world, into an instrument of moral resistance against the new world "order" that is emerging. First signatories, Olivier Corten, Professor at the Centre for International Law, Free University of Brussels (ULB); Eric David, Professor at the ULB; Barbara Delcourt, member of the Institute of European Studies, Professor at the ULB; François Houtart, Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL); Pierre Klein, Professor at the ULB; Paulette Pierson-Mathy, Professor at the ULB; Yves Rogister, Researcher at the CADOP, University of Liège; François Rigaux, Professor Emeritus at the UCL, former Dean of the Faculty of Law; Jean Salmon, Professor Emeritus at the ULB ; Eric Suy, Professor Emeritus at the KUL ; former assistant general secretary of the United Nations." If you want to adhere to the Appeal, please send your name to: CETRI 5, Av. 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