May 2000

at Moscow Summit LONDON – If President Bill Clinton had all his wits about him he would challenge the toughest hard-liners on the Republican right to posit a plausible scenario for modern day Russia wanting to go to war with the West. Can anyone really make a case that if the U.S. dropped its guard- and its nuclear allies Britain and France did too – that Russia would move into western Europe and bomb America’s industrial heart-lands? It is simply intellectually outrageous, which is why no one spells it out. Even Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Condoleezza Rice choose to speak in more general, vague, even elliptical terms, the content of which is more insinuation and prejudice than rational argument. As for General Colin Powell, the former chief of staff of the U.S. armed forces, the black man who could have been president instead of Clinton almost for the asking, and...

We are really moved by all the support letters we have received in response to PressInfo 94. To those who worry: we will not close down. TFF means too much to too many, we know that. The transition period will be tough. We will find ways to fly in the future… Most ask what they can do to help us now the Ministry of Foreign has withdrawn its support. We think the best you can do to help TFF is to: 1. MAKE A DONATION We serve people who want to practise non-violent conflict-resolution. We help people in conflicts and war. Our dream has always been to be as people-financed as possible. You can help us by making a donation. If 350 people each donate 100 US$ – or 1500 donate 25 US$ – you have replaced the ministry’s grant! Tell others! Go straight to: http://www.transnational.org/tff/friendfm.html or click the cash register on:...

Under nio år har TFF av UD tilldelats ett årligt organisationsstöd. I år fråntogs stiftelsen detta stöd med omedelbar verkan och utan förvarning eller motivering. Syftet tycks vara att tysta en oberoende, kritisk stämma inom internationell konflikthantering. TFF, Transnationella Stiftelsen för Freds- och Framtidsforskning i Lund, är Sveriges enda icke-statliga center för freds- och säkerhetsforskning. Stiftelsen är den enda inom sektorn forskning och upplysning, som helt berövats bidrag. Sedan 1991 har TFF byggt upp en internationellt ledande kompetens särskilt vad angår Balkans konflikter. I en tid när Sveriges engagemang på Balkan är större än någonsin, med en svensk bataljon i Kosovo/a och stora biståndsinsatser till främst Kosovo/a och Bosnien, borde ett oberoende forskningscenter som TFF snarare ges ökat grundstöd för att bidra till en fördjupad syn på möjligheter och problem då det gäller freds- och försoningsarbete. Organisationsbidrag ges för att skapa kontinuitet och bred debatt om internationella frågor. TFF:s är...

For the past nine years, TFF has received an annual organisational grant from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This year, however, the Ministry has withdrawn this support with immediate effect and without prior consultation or explanation. The aim seems to be to silence an independent, critical voice in the field of international conflict management. TFF is the only non-governmental centre of peace and security research in Sweden. It is also the only one in the field of research and information whose funding has been cut to zero. Since 1991 TFF has built an internationally respected competence, with particular regard to the Balkans. In a period when Sweden’s engagement in the Balkans is larger than ever, with a Swedish battalion in Kosovo/a and considerable aid programs to that province as well as to Bosnia and the Stability Pact, one would believe that an organisation such as TFF would have its grant...

LONDON- When Kofi Annan, the UN’s Ghanaian Secretary-General, visited Rwanda in May, 1998 he ended up being pilloried in an aggressive press conference for presiding over the UN’s “hands off” policy during the genocide, of the Tutsis by the Hutus four years previously. Journalists were quoting from Philip Gourevitch’s shocking then just-published, book, “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families”. In it he charged that the UN had ignored a cable from its local commander warning of the impending genocide. As William Shawcross tells it in his important new book on the UN, “Deliver Us From Evil”, “His voice almost cracking, Annan ended by saying that ‘too much was made of one cable and that if INFORMATION was indeed the only problem then peacekeeping would be much easier. We would not be having problems in Kosovo because everybody KNOWS. We would not have had...

MADRID- Two elections will shortly take place in Latin America that could, it is being said, make a trend or break a trend. This, of course, depends on what you think the trend is. If you believe that the trend is towards a firming of democracy then a truly open contest in the election scheduled in Mexico for July 2nd, which would be an historic first, together with the defeat of the autocratic quasi democrat, Alberto Fujimori, in Peru on May 28th would confirm your opinion. But if you believe that the trend has been on the ebb for some time with the attempted coups in Bolivia and Paraguay and the rise of elected autocrats in Venezuela and Peru, then a re-elected Fujimori and the victory of the governing party in Mexico will confirm your pessimistic leanings. The truth perhaps is somewhere in between. The post-Caudillo democratic movement, which started life...

The moral cost of the Nato war on Yugoslavia is only beginning to become plain. The material costs were far from negligible, and have revealed considerable weaknesses in the military preparedness of most Alliance members. More than one thousand aircraft flew more than 38,000 sorties, and cost dozens of billions of dollars. Twenty-eight countries have subsequently deployed 38,000 peace keepers, many of who will be needed to stay in place indefinitely in conditions which are highly insecure. Endemic ethnic violence rages through Kosovo, and even the most robust optimism blenches in the face of such ungovernable turbulence. Murders are commonplace. Former guerrillas, once subject at least to token disarmament, are now commonly armed again. Nato forces suffer continual attacks, sometimes from minority Serbs and at other times by majority Albanians. The real Government of Kosovo is frequently said to be in the hands of the Kosovo Liberation Army, but its...

Photos © TFF 2000 Read PressInfo 90 “Lift the Sanctions and Bring More Aid to Yugoslavia” See Pictures of the Humanitarian Situation in Serbia © TFF 2000 Please reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this item, but please retain the source.

Photos © TFF 2000 Read PressInfo 91 “Prevent Violence in Montenegro” © TFF 2000 Please reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this item, but please retain the source.

At a meeting in the European Parliament on 11/12 May 2000 to consider the proposal for a European Conference on Peace and Human Rights, the following appeal was agreed. After the war in Yugoslavia, and the sidelining of the United Nations, there has been a marked deterioration in international relations. This adverse development has not been offset by gains in human rights, either in the Balkans or further afield. To the contrary, ethnic divisions have been intensified, crime and lawless behaviour have increased, and people have fewer rights, and less control over the course of their lives, than ever before. At the same time, new threats have widened. In particular, the threat to peace is now fearfully increased by nuclear doctrines of first use. This long-held and dangerous commitment in the USA and Nato has been matched by the Putin Doctrine in Russia, ratified on 21st April 2000. Henceforward, the...

6 LONG-TERM GOALS – to abolish war as an accepted social institution, precisely as we have done with slavery, cannibalism, child labour, rape, genocide,etc.; – to provide survival, security and protection without causing an arms race and threatening other societies; – to deal with conflicts and create peace by peaceful means, in accordance with the UN norm; – to permanently secure the existence of the Earth and humankind, never put it at risk; – to enable present and future generations to live in a world where the norms of the UN Charter are implemented; – to preserve pluralism in all aspects of life, unity in diversity, respect for life, and – to live in partnership with Nature. Lesson 1 to implement:In the militarised world system and the nuclear age, we can not afford to wait until war breaks out and then react with military force. We need an active peace...

LONDON – The private schools of Britain, the Etons, Harrows, Winchesters et al produce the Tutsis of my land. I grew up as a rank and file Hutu, part of the majority, graduating from the city high school of Liverpool- along with my classmate, Paul McCartney- and then on to the red brick university of Manchester. The Tutus in large numbers colonized Oxford and Cambridge- and still do despite a generation of educational reforms- taking a good half of the places. All my journalistic life I’ve struggled against the Tutsi. They take most of the top jobs in the BBC and the classier papers. If it hadn’t been for the American paper in Europe, the International Herald Tribune, I might never have made it. Yet not for one moment did I consider rallying my putative majority to fight the Tutsis. Years of conditioning bred me to accept the virtues of a...