October 1998

Following the dramatic nosedive of the Russian ruble, financial markets around the World had plummeted to abysmally low levels. The Dow Jones plunged by 554 points on August 31st, its second largest decline in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. In the uncertain wake of “black September 1998”, G7 ministers of finance had gathered hastily in Washington. On their political agenda: a multibillion dollar plan to avert the risks of a Worldwide financial meltdown. In the words of its political architects US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown: “we must do more to . . . limit the swings of booms and busts that destroy hope and diminish wealth.”(1). Announced by President Bill Clinton in late October, the G7 proposal to install a 90 billion-dollar fund “to help protect vulnerable but essentially healthy nations” from currency and stock market speculation will go...

Inga bomber fälldes över Balkan dessa oroliga oktoberdagar. Vi som tror att bomber sällan fungerar som konstruktiv problemlösning kan andas ut. Men vad var det som hände? Och hur kunde de dramatiska förhandlingarna mellan kontaktgruppens medlare Richard Holbrooke och Jugoslaviens president Slobodan Milosevic i så många sammanhang skildras som en ödesmättad strid mellan det goda och det onda. Nu var det Holbrooke som fixade freden. Hade det blivit krig hade Milosevic varit den skyldige. Så kunde det verka. Hur kunde vi överlåta åt dessa två prestigefyllda medelålders maktuppfyllda herrar att avgöra Kosovos öde? Varför insisterade åtminstone inte vi i det fortfarande alliansfria Sverige på att frågan skulle behandlas i FN:s säkerhetsråd? Visst, Ryssland och Kina hade inlagt veto mot bombningar. Men kanske kunde ett sådant veto trots allt ha bäddat för överläggningar utifrån andra förutsättningar, inte bara som ett Dayton två, utan som verkliga förhandlingar med representanter för de olika...

MADRID–Nearly two weeks of communist government in the heart of western Europe and hardly a whisper of complaint. The media has barely remarked on it. It makes one long for some old Cold War warriors to step out, gird their faithful chargers, shoulder their lances and create some mayhem. Where are the hard questions and the hard knocks? Indeed, where’s the blood on the floor? After all, not very long ago, (a short 20 years), Aldo Moro, the former prime minister of Italy and, at the time, the country’s most influential politician, was savagely murdered by a group of communist fringe militants (the Red Brigades) in what in all likelihood was an attempt (it badly backfired) to propel the communist party into power, as part of the so-called “historic compromise”. Antonio Gramsci, the great founder of Italian communism, wrote in 1920: “Italy is truly prey to demoniacal spirits, impossible to...

Statement by Professor Vojin Dimitrijevic, Director of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, at the press conference at the Media Centre in Belgrade on 24 October 1998, following the trial and sentencing of the publishers and editors of the magazine “Evropljanin”  After the temporary ban and the sealing of premises of three Belgrade independent dailies (Danas, Nasa borba and Dnevni telegraf) and several radio stations, followed by the scandalous trial of the publishers and editors of the weekly magazine “Evropljanin”, all speakers at this Conference have with great justification expressed their concern about the alarming situation of the freedom of expression in Serbia following the hasty adoption, on 21 October 1998, of the new Public Information Act. Recent developments have a deeper and more ominous significance. Besides limiting the freedom of opinion and expression, the new Act, as well as the Government Decree which preceded it, represents an immediate danger...

“We are proud to be invited to this year’s State ofthe World Forum. It’s one of the most influential anddiverse gatherings of world leaders, convened for the firsttime by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1995. This year around 800networking leaders and activists in business, science,academia, politics, religion and the arts come together inSan Francisco from October 27 to November 1,” says Jan Obergwho has been asked to contribute to the Forum’s Coexistenceand Community-Building Initiative. The Forum’s mission is ‘to establish a global network ofleaders and change agents who come together for bothdiscussions and action. It does this in the conviction thatit is networks of committed individuals and institutionswhich are emerging as principal sources of innovation andeffectiveness, thereby reframing and invigorating civilsociety.’ Jan Oberg: “The incredible diversity of the State of theWorld Forum is its major strength. You find grassrootsinteracting with the gatekeepers of capital and power. Ihave understood that the Forum is...

LONDON–We would like to know what kind of stuff these German Greens are made of. The Kosovo to bomb or not to bomb decision arrived on their platter as soon as the election results were counted. Richard Holbrooke may now have got them off the hook as much as he did Slobodan Milosevic, but the issue on the use of the deployment of NATO force, and its ancillary decision, to use it without an explicit UN mandate, is very likely to return during their term of office. Supposedly pacifist inclined by early conviction, definitely pro United Nations and wary of enforcement or peacekeeping actions done in its name without a Security Council vote, the Greens are bound to be difficult bedfellows for western governments, who have a tendency to bend the rules on military intervention. The Kosovo decision had all the makings of an early clash between principle and realpolitik....

LONDON–Watch out Slobodan Milosevic, watch out Saddam Hussein and Hun Sen. As Martin Luther King said, “The arm of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” One day you too may be old and ill and want to use your ill-gotten gains to go to the best medical treatment money can buy–in London, New York orGeneva–and they will get you. Just as the British police have now pounced on Chile’s 82 year old ex-dictator lying in a London hospital. They’ll pull you out of bed a few days after your operation, and slam you behind bars, just when youthought you’d go and recuperate under the warm sun in an exclusive hotel in the Seychelles. Whether the arrest made in London on the request of a Spanish magistrate willstand up in court remains to be seen. If only the World Criminal Court, created in Rome in July (but...

“This is a modest proposal for institutionalisation ofpeace-related teaching in regions of conflict. It’s aCitizens Forum for Human Rights and Peace Education,HR&PE. It mentions Croatia but is equally relevant for,let’s say, Kosovo or Macedonia, or any other trouble spot.You may think that this is relevant only after war, but Istrongly believe that forums like this should be createdwherever the situation threatens to erupt into violence. Ifthe trigger-happy international “community” had invested insuch projects – both in their own ministries of foreignaffairs, in international organisations and in trouble spotssuch as Kosovo – 5 or 10 years ago, people on all sideswould begin to realise the utter futility of using weaponsto achieve their goals,” says TFF director JanOberg. “You see, there are no limits to what can be done to helppeople coexist in postwar communities. The internationalcommunity has no specialised competence or organisations inthis field. Post-war reconciliation is the most importantmeasure to...

WASHINGTON DC–Brazil’s general election has produced the goods–continuation of sober government, fiscally conservative with a social conscience. With a bit of luck Brazil’s present role as the lynchpin that could make or break the world economy will, before too long, be regarded as an historical anomaly. Assuming–and a lot of hard work remains to be done–they can get their act together, the West’s Group of Seven and the International Monetary Fund will soon extend the large loan necessary to get Brazil over the hump of the stream of dollars hemorrhaging from the country. (A total of $50 billion is the quite mammoth loan talked about.) To let Brazil go on sliding down the financial chute would be to give another shove to the cannon-balls rolling and ricocheting round the deck of the good ship “World Economy”, with the likelihood they’ll puncture first the deck and then the hull. Fernando Henrique...

October 1998 Introduction According to the Secretariat of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), there are 88 individual, regional trade agreements currently in force.1 Not less than 77 new preferential trade agreements on the regional level have been registered from 1992 to 1996.2 Virtually all 132 members of the WTO now participate in at least one agreement to advance regional trade liberalisation in goods and services.3 Twenty-five per cent of global output is being exported.4 World trade growth doubled from 4 per cent per annum between 1980 and 1993 to 8 per cent in 1994-1996, outpacing world output growth by a widening margin.5 “Recent trends in intra-regional and extra-regional trade allow for some tentative conclusions,” according to ‘Intereconomies’, “on whether regional trade rather than global networking was the dominant feature in the world economy during the 1980s and early 1990s.” 6 The phenomenon of regionalisation needs to be analysed not only...

“What on earth would be the POLITICAL AIM of bombingSerbia now? Violence has been used by both parties foralmost a year. Some 250.000 people may already be displaced,homes and towns torched and destroyed. KLA is defeated andSerbia’s government has declared that the war is over,provided KLA’s military struggle does not resume. Before theUN Security Council, NATO or other actors in theinternational ‘community’ decides to carry out air strikesthroughout Serbia, it would be wise to ponder a fewquestions, problems and risks and come up with some answers.I offer some of both in what follows,” says Jan Oberg who,with his TFF colleagues, has conducted analyses and servedas a citizen diplomat in the region since 1992. • IF WE BELIEVE NATO MILITARY INTERVENTIONS WOULDSTOP THE KILLING, ETHNIC CLEANSING AND MASSACRES, WHY HAS ITNOT HAPPENED LONG AGO?POSSIBLE ANSWERS: 1) The international “community” isnot a community when it comes to managing conflicts. Thereare too many solid...