June 1999

LONDON- A nuclear war creeps up on the world by an unmarked path. As India and Pakistan confront each other daily over “the line of control” that marks the temporary division over their rival claims for the state of Kashmir the chance of their conflict spiralling out of control can no longer be dismissed. And if that happens the nuclear weapons that both sides exhibited to the world for the first time last year are within a hairtrigger of being used. “The first false alert could be last”, said one seasoned observer not very long ago. We should think of Kashmir as a permanent Cuban missile crisis, when in nose to nose nuclear brinkmanship the risk of inadvertent nuclear war is unacceptably high. With only 4 or 5 minutes warning time before a nuclear weapon fired from one country would detonate in the other there is no time for second thoughts...

By Phillip Knightley who places the Kosovo atrocity stories in their historical context The Indepedent June 27, 1999 If history is any guide, then many of the atrocity stories from Kosovo that have dominated the media since the end of the war will turn out to be false. Written and filmed by some of the self-styled “mass-grave correspondents”, they may at the moment appear to have the chilling ring of truth: after all, mass graves have unquestionably been found. Some of the stories may indeed be genuine, but many will vanish under investigation, or the scrutiny of time. When passions have cooled – as one hopes that they will even in the hate-strewn Balkans – we may even hear the confessions of those who invented them. Invented? In the case of Kosovo the inventions will have been the work not of British journalists but of those feeding them with information. In...

Similar Crises Get Divergent Treatment in the New York Times From Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. Media analysis, critiques and news reports New York, June 25, 1999 An article in the June 24 New York Times reported on the trial in Turkey of captured Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan. The Times provided background on the war between Kurdish separatist guerrillas and Turkish security forces:“The war that Ocalan has waged has cost more than 30,000 lives and made him the object of intense hatred. It has also made him a heroic figure to many Kurds who live in Turkey’s southeast.”Contrast this description with the way the New York Times presents the background of another, very similar, separatist war (3/27/99):“The Serbian campaign against the ethnic Albanians has seen more than 2,000 killed in the last year, with hundreds of thousands of Kosovars driven from their homes, according to the United Nations.” The...

A Proposal on an International Non-Military Force for Peace ByMel Duncanand David Hartsough From: Civilian Peace Service http://www.superaje.com/~marsin/cps.htm 24 June 1999 INTRODUCTION Tanks rumble into Kosovo. NATO proclaims victory from 15,000 feet above after eleven weeks of pounding bombs without a single Alliance casualty. The Serb army retreats from the province to the cadence of their butcher leader also proclaiming victory. The KLA marches in. Over a million Kosovar Albanians resentfully return to the rubble of home as Kosovar Serbs are cleansed northwards out of their homes. The irradiated landscape soaked in blood, strewn with land mines and pocked with mass graves flows with hate. Thousands of well armed multinational troops will attempt to keep the hatred at bay while relief organizations beg for millions to help rebuild from the carnage. While the technology has dramatically advanced, we end this century, the bloodiest century of humankind, the way we began...

By Simon Jenkins The Times, London So how do you feel, asks an unkindly correspondent, now that you see the torture chambers and killing fields of Kosovo? How now this Hitler of the Balkans? How now the “appeasers”? Was Tony Blair not right to bomb the bastard to pieces? The answer is that I feel exactly as I did at the start. It takes a warped brain not to be sickened by war, especially “civil” war. But it takes a dangerous one to refuse to think. The present horror will run its course. The media are still revelling in atrocity pornography. Next will come the memoirs, the novels and the movies. Then the worm will turn. We shall hear of the horrors of the Albanian revenge. Then we shall remark that vendetta is the culture of the Balkans, and wander away from this landscape of violence. How do I feel?...

LONDON- If the war with Slobodan Milosevic is now in abeyance it is, perhaps, to remind us that only temporarily were we allowed to forget that the one with Saddam Hussein continues. The bombing never stopped; neither do the sanctions. The one important thing always to recall when discussing what next to do about Saddam Hussein is what President Bill Clinton has said more than once: that the UN arms inspectors found and destroyed more Iraqi weapons of mass destruction than were destroyed during all the days of intensive bombardment during the days of the Gulf War. Briefly put, most of the work of disarming Iraq has now been done. The UN inspectorate may not have been a perfect fool-proof system but it was pretty good. Nothing that existed before, in the annals of warfare, short of total military occupation, had such a record of success in disarming a nation. If...

Reuters BEIJING (Reuters) – China compared the United States to Nazi Germany Tuesday and said NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia reflected Washington’s ambition to become “Lord of the Earth.” “If you ask which country wants to become ‘the Lord of the Earth’ as the then Nazi Germany had tried to, there is only one answer,” said a commentary in the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party. “It is the hegemonism-pursuing United States.” In likening the United States to Nazi Germany, the newspaper cited its massive defense budget, the bombing of Yugoslavia without U.N. sanction and the killing of civilians during the air campaign in Yugoslavia. NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia “has let more and more people see more clearly the ferocious appearance of the U.S. hegemonism and its ambition to dominate the world,” it said. China’s embassy was bombed by NATO planes during the U.S.-led alliance’s air campaign against...

This is the full text of the accord on the demilitarisation of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, known in Kosovo by its initials UCK) signed by KLA chief Hashim Thaqi and KFOR commander Lieutenant-General Mike Jackson in Pristina on June 21, 1999: 1. This Undertaking provides for a ceasefire by the UCK, their disengagement from the zones of conflict, subsequent demilitarisation and reintegration into civil society, in accordance with the terms of UNSCR 1244 and taking account of the obligations agreed to at Rambouillet and the public commitments made by the Kosovar Albanian Rambouillet delegation. 2. The UCK undertake to renounce the use of force, to comply with the directions of the Commander of the international security force in Kosovo (COMKFOR), and where applicable the head of the interim civil administration for Kosovo, and to resolve peacefully any questions relating to the implementation of this undertaking. 3. The UCK agree...

Da je neka UN-ova operacija od samog svog pocetka ovoliko zastranila, da je do te mere prekrsila svoj mandat, politicari, diplomate i mediji sirom sveta vec bi povikali Neuspeh! Propast! Medjutim, posto je ovo NATO-ova operacija pod vodjstvom Amerike, nezavisne ocene i kritike su (zanimljivo) izostale i u vodecim medijima i u politickim razgovorima. Poistovecivanje javnog mnenja sa NATO-ovom propagandom u svim zemljama zapadne demokratije naprosto obeshrabruje, kaze direktor TFF-a, Jan Oberg.   1. NATO-ov PAS CE MAHATI UN-ovim REPOM Dok su NATO trupe u Makedonij provele cak 8 poslednjih meseci, Generalni sekretar UN-a, Kofi Anan je tek 14. juna podneo plan o UN-ovoj civilnoj upravi za Kosovo. Njime se obnova prepusta EZ-u a osnovna odgovornost za uspostavljanje demokratskih institucija, organizaciju izbora i nadzor nad ostvarivanjem ljudskih prava preuzima OEBS. UNHCR-u je preputeno staranje o povratku izbeglica i raseljenih lica. Prelazna misija UN-a Uprava za Kosovo (INMIK) ce nadzirati policiju,...

  “If a UN operation had gone this wrong from the beginning, if the mandate had been violated to this extent, politicians, diplomats and media worldwide would have cried ‘Failure!’ But since it is a US-lead NATO operation, independent-minded evaluations and criticism is conspicuously absent from mainstream media and the political discourse. The homogenisation of public opinion with NATO propaganda throughout the Western democracies is disheartening,” says TFF director, Dr Jan Oberg.   1. THE NATO DOG WILL WAG THE UN TAIL While NATO troops have been in Macedonia the last 8 months, only on June 14 could the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan present a plan for a civil UN administration for Kosova. It puts the EU in charge of reconstruction and gives the OSCE primary responsibility for establishing democratic institutions, organising elections, and monitoring human rights. The UNHCR will take charge of the resettlement of refugees and displaced persons. The...

  Jeste li procitali Rezoluciju 1244 Saveta bezbednosti UN-a o miru na Kosovu? Pa, ne moze se bas reci da je koherentna. Kad bi uputstvo za rukovanje vaseg kompjutera imalo tako brojne nejasnoce i protivrecnosti, pa jos kad bi mu i nekoliko desetaka stranica bilo istrgnuto, izvesno je da bi vam se operativni sitem neprestano rusio i zapinjao a mislim da je upravo to ono sto ce se dogoditi NATO-u na Kosovu. Medjutim, ova Rezolucija je IPAK dovoljno jasna u svojim osnovnim crtama pa ce nam dozvoliti da se posle evo, prve nedelje NATO-ovog kosovskog mirotvorstva zapitamo sta se to uopste tamo dogadja? kaze direktor TFF-a, Jan Oberg. U ovoj i u sledecoj informaciji (Pres Info # 72) mozete pratiti analizu nekih od vec uocenih ociglednih problema.   1. REZOLUCIJA 1244 JE NEUSAGLASENA I NEDORECENA Rezolucijom se osudjuje svako nasilje lokalnih strana umesanih u sukob dok ona istovremeno ne sadrzi...

  “Did you read UN Security Council Resolution 1244 about peace in Kosovo? Well, it is not exactly coherent. If your computer manual was this much of a mishmash and contradictions and if dozens of pages were missing, you would probably have operative system failures and bombs – and I think this is what will happen with NATO in Kosovo. But the resolution IS clear enough on essentials for us to ask after one week of NATO ‘peace’-keeping in Kosovo what on earth is going on,” says TFF director Jan Oberg. Here and in PressInfo 72 follow some of the already manifest problems.   1. RESOLUTION 1244 IS CONTRADICTORY AND INSUFFICIENT It condemns all acts of violence by the local parties, but has not even a mild statement about the uniquely brutal NATO-caused killings and devastation of a country of 12 million people. It expresses a determination to resolve the humanitarian crisis –...