October 1999

“Read the farewell interview with Macedonian President Kirov Gligorov and the analysis by TFF’s Macedonian adviser Dr. Biljana Vankovska on our site and you will understand how fragile Macedonia’s stability and peace is. Why not try a citizens’ ‘early warning’? We invite you to send us your ideas on how we can help Macedonia avoid violence and move towards peace in spite of all the obstacles,” says director Jan Oberg. “After the Kosovo war, all citizens of Macedonia go through very difficult times; presidential elections take on October 31. If there is one lesson from Kosovo, it is this: the earlier we deal with the problems, the more options there are, and the easier it is to solve conflicts without resorting to violence. It is a safe prediction that, unless various types of violence-preventive measures are taken and taken in time, Macedonia is likely to slide into chaos. If citizens...

“Read the farewell interview with Macedonian President Kirov Gligorov and the analysis by TFF’s Macedonian adviser Dr. Biljana Vankovska on our site and you will understand how fragile Macedonia’s stability and peace is. Why not try a citizens’ ‘early warning’? We invite you to send us your ideas on how we can help Macedonia avoid violence and move towards peace in spite of all the obstacles,” says director Jan Oberg. “After the Kosovo war, all citizens of Macedonia go through very difficult times; presidential elections take on October 31. If there is one lesson from Kosovo, it is this: the earlier we deal with the problems, the more options there are, and the easier it is to solve conflicts without resorting to violence. It is a safe prediction that, unless various types of violence-preventive measures are taken and taken in time, Macedonia is likely to slide into chaos. If citizens...

Links to Facts & Views There are many great initiatives – also in the field of norm-setting – to further a truly global democracy. Here is one of them:• A Charter for Global DemocracyOur call for international accountability, justice, sustainable development and democracy. In September 2000 the United Nations will hold a special Millennium Assembly and Summit on the future of the world. This Charter will be published as an open letter on worldwide and other presented to UN Representatives. Please join us. NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia was also an experiment in information or cyber warfare…• The Cyber Bomb in YugoslaviaFor specialists in this burgeoning field of information warfare, Yugoslavia merely stands as another demonstration that computer network attack will eventually become an integral part of the way warfare is waged, writes Bill Arkin in Washington Post. Bit by bit, the truth about the consequences of NATO’s irresponsible bombing comes out:•Environmental effects of...

Yahoo! News World HeadlinesThursday October 28, 1999http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/19991028/wl/macedonia_elections_1.htmlAP Photo By Jovana GecAssociated Press Writer SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) – As presidential elections approach, Macedonia’s outgoing president fears nationalism and ethnic intolerance sweeping the Balkans may endanger the future of the nation he led peacefully to independence eight years ago. Voters in this landlocked nation of 2 million people will choose a new president Sunday to succeed Kiro Gligorov, 83, who led Macedonia to independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. In doing so, this ethnically mixed country of Slavs, Albanians, Gypsies and others became the only former Yugoslav republic to leave the Belgrade-led federation without bloodshed. Macedonia’s long-term future, however, is far from assured. Many Macedonians fear that the recent bloodshed in Kosovo and the continuing political turmoil in Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic, may engulf their country once Gligorov has left office. In an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, Gligorov said he had...

San Francisco, October 27-November 1 TFF is proud to have been invited to this year’s FORUM as the only institution from Scandinavia. It is tasked with making a special contribution to the Coexistence and Community Building Initiative chaired by Dr. Kumar Rupesinghe. Read more here! Join some of the world’s most thoughtful and innovative business, scientific, political, cultural and religious leaders to explore and shape the trends of the coming century. This year’s Forum is convened by the following co-chairs: Askar AkaevOscar AriasJean-Bertrand AristideJames A. Baker, IIITansu ÇillerMarian Wright EdelmanSonia GandhiJane GoodallMikhail GorbachevRuud LubbersFederico MayorThabo MbekiYasuhiro NakasoneLea RabinJose Ramos-HortaJehan SadatTed TurnerDesmond TutuElie WieselMuhammad Yunus The State of the World Forum is designed to inspire your life. You will interact with other leaders from around the world and a multiplicity of disciplines. You will be part of broad-ranging discussions covering the spectrum of human interests from spirituality to global security, science...

LONDON- The new war in Chechnya is becoming as pointless, self-defeating and counterproductive as the one before. Now that the peace agreement that was stitched together in time for the last presidential election is undone no one, not even General Alexander Lebed, President Boris Yeltsin’s last saviour, will be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Yet even if this war does rumble eternally on; even if, as reported, the Moslem fanatics from Afghanistan, the Taliban, are sending their young fighters to the anti-Russian cause, the threat it poses to Russia as a whole is minimal. The real danger to the integrity of Russia lies not in this super- obstreperous, but quite tiny region, but in its own massive size, that bridges eight time zones. Any system less centralised than that of the tsars or the communist dicatatorship poses enormous, complicated and unresolved problems of governance. As Martin Nicholson, a former...

Links to Facts & Views Are we ever told the truth about what is done in the name of security? This is what the United States did not tell us about its own proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world – since 1951! • Read “Where the Nukes Were” in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists“Soon complete weapon systems found their way to all sorts of places &emdash; Okinawa, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines in the Pacific for example, and Morocco, France, and then most of the NATO countries in the West. Sometimes U.S. allies knew they were hosting nuclear weapons; sometimes they didn’t. Then, too, the United States was occasionally a little too eager to share control with its NATO buddies…” This is the full listof where these nuclear weapons were.  – and here follow the news reports about this shocking report: • The United States scattered nuclear weapons around the...

Christian HårlemanFd överstelöjtnant, f.d chef utbildningsavd för fredsbevarande operationer i FN,rådgivare till Institute of World Affairs, Washington D.Ce-mail: ch.harleman@crido.pp.se Jan Øberg, fil.dr.Direktör, Transnationella Stiftelsen för Freds- och framtidsforskning, TFF, i Lunde-mail: TFF@transnational.org Sverige håller på att installera ungefär 850 soldater i Kosovo som ska delta i KFOR, den militära styrka om 45.000 soldater med tung utrustning, som kom på plats i kölvattnet på NATO:s krig mot Jugoslavien under våren.Kostnaden uppges vara 900 miljoner kronor.Detta är den största enskilda satsning vår regering gör för att bidra till en lösning av de svåra problemen i och kring Kosovo. I jämförelse har Sverige avsatt 84 miljoner kronor år 1999 och år 2000 för civila insatser inom FN:s UNMIK-mission i Kosovo och 170 miljoner till humanitära insatser.Ett genomgående inslag i Sveriges och det såkallade internationella samfundets (fel)hantering av Balkans konflikter sedan 1980-talet har varit att fokusera på ett enda område åt gången och strunta...

LONDON- The legal pursuit of the Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet has reached a defining moment. His legal options have been whittled away, although theoretically he could still on appeal win the reversal of the London magistrate’s decision on October 8th. to allow his extradition to Spain for trial. It now seems clear that his legal team are advising him to change tactics and depend more on clemency than legal manoeuvres. Earlier this week, Chile appealed formally to Jack Straw, Home Secretary in the government of Tony Blair, to release him on the grounds of his deteriorating health. Yesterday the Spanish government, never happy with the action of magistrate Balthasar Garzon, who initiated the action against Pinochet, added its voice to Chile’s, saying it would have no objection if he were now released. It must not happen. The rulings so far- by Britain’s highest court, the House of Lords, and by the...

The US is planning a massive intervention in Colombia under the pretext of fighting the ‘narco-guerrillas’ By John Pilger Following its attack on the Balkans, the United States is planning a massive intervention in Colombia. The Clinton administration has decided to seek congressional approval for $1bn in military aid to the government of Andres Pastrana in Bogota. This is for a low-level air war, American-planned and “advised”, with Blackhawk helicopters, satellite surveillance and cluster bombs. “It is the same policy,” says Amnesty International, “that backed, death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s.” It is the policy that started the war in Vietnam. Colombia receives more US arms and equipment than any country in the world, apart from Israel and Egypt. Last May, the Washington Post disclosed that 200 American military personnel were playing key parts in the war against the guerrillas of Colombia’s popular resistance, who occupy an area...

Links to Facts & Views You want to find interesting analyses, reports, articles and papers on peace and conflict issues from around the world? Now we do the job for you. This page provides links to a selection of the best critical and constructive materials – the essential stuff we learn from ourselves and want to share. Just click below at what you are interested in read, download or send on to a friend. •  What is Operation Matrix? A strategy to undermine MilosevicThe program originated with a December 1998 White House meeting at which Robert S. Gelbard, the president and secretary of state’s special adviser for Kosovo, was put in charge of an umbrella strategy. That’s what CIA got money to do and – perhaps – it explains why NATO didn’t destroy Yugoslavia’s mobile phone net? Read William Arkin’s Washington Post column of October 11, 1999. • What Makes Europe Look Increasingly...

Links to Facts & Views You want to find interesting analyses, reports, articles and papers on peace and conflict issues from around the world? Now we do the job for you. This page provides links to a selection of the best critical and constructive materials – the essential stuff we learn from ourselves and want to share. Just click below at what you are interested in read, download or send on to a friend. •  What is Operation Matrix? A strategy to undermine MilosevicThe program originated with a December 1998 White House meeting at which Robert S. Gelbard, the president and secretary of state’s special adviser for Kosovo, was put in charge of an umbrella strategy. That’s what CIA got money to do and – perhaps – it explains why NATO didn’t destroy Yugoslavia’s mobile phone net? Read William Arkin’s Washington Post column of October 11, 1999. • What Makes Europe Look Increasingly...