March 2000

LONDON- Nuclear proliferation could be a lot worse than it is. That is part of the pitch the American delegation will make at the forthcoming review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), opening on April 24th. No doubt somebody will quote John Kennedy who foresaw 20-30 nuclear powers by the end of the last century, and make the point that in fact the number is a mere 8. Countries which were about to enter this exclusive deadly club- South Africa, Brazil and Argentina stepped back at the last moment. AND, as President Bill Clinton boasted recently to the Indian parliament, the U.S. and Russia have cut their nuclear arsenals by 13,000 bombs. Nevertheless, as almost every expert will admit, Western, and in particular American, non-proliferation policy is in disarray. This conference is meant to mark 30 years of what the U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright recently called “the landmark”...

PRESS RELEASE 2000-03-23 One year after the bombing of Yugoslavia started, an appeal calling for an end to the sanctions against Yugoslavia was published in Sweden, signed by 70 prominent people, among them sportsmen, ex-ministers, bishops including the archbishop of Sweden, trade union presidents, members of parliament, scholars, representatives of the business community and from the cultural sector. In their appeal they point out the fact that those who suffer the most in Yugoslavia are old people and children but because reconstruction after the devastation is hampered, everybody in the population is suffering. They request the Swedish government to work for an end to the sanctions against Yugoslavia.. The appeal and the names follow. Opinions and information: <erikgoethe@post.utfors.se> “END SANCTIONS AGAINST YUGOSLAVIA! The sanctions against Yugoslavia have been going on for nearly ten years, inflicting tremendous supply problems and suffering upon the Yugoslav people, particularily after last year’s bombing raids....

LONDON- How straightforward it used to be. For twenty two years the U.S. did not recognize communist China. Taiwan occupied the Chinese seat at the United Nations and that was that. Then from the right, quite unexpectedly, came Richard Nixon and turned everything on its head. China was not only recognized and Taiwan ejected from its seat, the American business and journalistic communities were encouraged to fall in love with all things Chinese. As the Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner bitingly wrote at the time, “The Americans found that the Chinese were courteous, industrious, family-orientated, modest to the point of being shy. They had the most wonderful and ancient cultural tradition; they were wizards at ping pong; they loved giant pandas. In less than a year public opinion completely turned around. Everyone loved the so-recently hated and feared China.” Thus it continued, more or less, until Tiananmen Square when America’s great strategic...

Report of an IOM/TFF Mission to Kosovo, March 7 to 10, 2000  More pictures from Pristina Kerstin Schultz’ report Purpose I was invited with Kerstin Schultz to contribute to training in conflict management skills of middle level leaders of the Kosovo Protection Corps, KPC. This followed the earlier involvement of Jan Oberg of TFF with a similar training exercise with the top leadership of the KPC. The three of us are members of TFF’s Balkans mitigation team based in Lund, Sweden, which has made many missions since 1991 to Kosovo and other regions of the Balkans. Background IOM are responsible for a comprehensive training programme for the KPC leadership that includes briefings for example from KFOR, the ICRC, UNMIK, and NGO’s working in the region concerned with rehabilitation and safety. TFF was invited to contribute some training seminars on conflict management skills. Kerstin Schultz and I were invited to give...

LONDON- She came to the world’s attention three years ago with her prize-wining novel, “The God of Small Things”. Now the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy dares to lecture the government of her country on nuclear weapons, a rather lonely voice in a sub-continent consumed with an almost fatal overdose of self-destroying hatred. “It is such supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if used. The fact that they exist at all, their very presence in our lives, will wreck more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behaviour. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep into the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.” We have already seen her forebodings come true. In Pakistan, the...

A demilitarized zone, DMZ, usually a buffer zone between two entities that have been at war, is an important conventional measure to protect a ceasefire by keeping the belligerents apart, at least geographically. As such it is a symbol of war rather than of peace, or at best of a cold peace, a peace in the narrow sense of abstaining from violence; negative peace in other words. The two borders of this presumable no man’s land would be heavily guarded, ideally by some third party, a condition not really satisfied in the Korean DMZ case. A zone of peace, ZoP, is something quite different since it is supposed to be an enactment of positive peace. The idea is not to keep parties apart and have them abstain from something, but to bring them together and have them cooperate on something. The smallest ZoP is a person who has come to...

“What do you think the following, very different, organisations have in common: the Kosovo Protection force, NATO/KFOR in Kosovo, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Institute of International Politics and Economics in Belgrade, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in New York, the Ministry of Education in Burundi and the Peace and Development Centre in Geneva? Right! They want TFF to help them with analyses and training in conflict understanding, reconciliation and forgiveness,” says TFF director Jan Oberg.”Everywhere, it is Time For Forgiveness.” “It’s 15 years since we jumped out of the university world, set ourselves up as a new type of multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural and globally networking peace research centre. It’s 10 years since we began experimenting with a new concept of conflict-mitigation in all parts of former Yugoslavia, in Georgia and – last year – in Burundi. These missions combine solid conflict analysis, mediation and peace education. It’s...

A report of a 10 day visit in early March 2000 by Roswitha Jarman working on behalf of the Agency of Rehabilitation and Development, ARD, an NGO and charity of Dutch Interchurch Aid, DIA, that started to work in Chechnya in 1996. ARD has now a staff of over 30 local people, most of whom are now in Ingushetia but some still in Chechnya. The general situation in Ingushetia I travelled to Ingushetia without problems. I was on my own this time but I did not feel in any danger. On arrival in Ingushetia and before even leaving the secure part of the airport a security officer came up to me and asked me to accompany him to his office. He asked for my details and asked for what reason I had come to Ingushetia. He was very friendly and offered me a security guard for my time in Ingushetia,...

LONDON – Three months after the failure of the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle the dust is finally settling. The press behaved as if it hadn’t had a good demo to report since the Vietnam war and the diplomats and politicians became uncharacteristically skittish after a march or two and the unerring capacity of the American police to over do it. Look no further than the statements produced by the UN Trade and Development (Unctad) meeting in Bangkok two weeks ago. This body which now exists as a sort of Third World counterweight to the mighty World Trade Organisation (WTO) enables developing countries both to chew the cud and gain a modicum of diplomatic and media attention for their own concerns without being drowned out by the agenda of the industrialised countries. Nevertheless, they used their only-once-in-four years opportunity not to denounce the WTO and all its works but to...