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ATHENS, May 3, 1999
LAWYERS CHARGE NATO LEADERS BEFORE WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALPRESS RELEASE MAY 7, 1999 A group lawyers from several countries has laid a formal complaint with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia against all of the individual leaders of the NATO countries and officials of NATO itself. The group, lead by professors from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto -- where Tribunal prosecutor Louise Arbour was also a professor before becoming a judge -- have charged Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Javier Solana, Jamie Shea, Jean Chretien, Art Eggleton, Lloyd Axworthy and 60 other heads of state and government, foreign ministers, defence ministers and NATO officials, with war crimes committed in NATO's six-week old bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. The list of crimes includes "wilful killing, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly, employment of poisonous weapons or other weapons to cause unnecessary suffering, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity, attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science." The complaint also alleges "open violation" of the United Nations Charter, the NATO treaty itself, the Geneva Conventions and the Principles of International Law Recognized by the Nüremberg Tribunal (the latter of which makes "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances" a crime). Under the Statute "a person who planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a crime shall be individually responsible for the crime" and "the official position of any accused person, whether as Head of State or Government or as a responsible Government official, shall not relieve such person of criminal responsibility or mitigate punishment." The complaint points to the bombing of civilian targets and alleges that NATO leaders "have admitted publicly to having agreed upon and ordered these actions, being fully aware of their nature and effects" and that "there is ample evidence in the public statements of NATO leaders that these attacks on civilian targets are part of a deliberate attempt to terrorize the population to turn it against its leadership;" The complaint cites a recent statement of the President of the Tribunal, Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, urging that: "All States and organisations in possession of information pertaining to the alleged commission of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal should make such information available without delay to the Prosecutor." The complaint also cites a statement of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson in which she says that "large numbers of civilians have incontestably been killed, civilian installations targeted on the grounds that they are or could be of military application and NATO remains sole judge of what is or is not acceptable to bomb?In this situation, the principle of proportionality must be adhered to by those carrying out the bombing campaign. It surely must be right to ask those carrying out the bombing campaign to weigh the consequences of their campaign for civilians in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." Under the Statue, the Prosecutor is bound to "initiate investigations ex-officio or on the basis of information obtained from any source, particularly from Governments, United Nations organs, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations" and to "assess the information received or obtained and decide whether there is sufficient basis to proceed. Upon a determination that a case exists, the Prosecutor is bound to "prepare an indictment containing a concise statement of the facts and the crime or crimes with which the accused is charged under the Statute and transmit it to a judge of the Trial Chamber." The complaint asks Judge Arbour to "immediately investigate and indict for serious crimes against international humanitarian law" the 67 named leaders and whoever else shall be determined by the Prosecutor's investigations to have committed crimes in the NATO attack on Yugoslavia commencing March 24, 1999." Copies of the charges have been sent to the accused. Participating in the action are 15 lawyers and law professors as well as the American Association Jurists, a pan American organization of lawyer's, judges, law professors and students, with membership in all countries of the American Continent from Tierra del Fuego to Canada, an NGO with consultative status before the Social and Economic Council of the United Nations. Professor Michael Mandel, spokesman for the group of complainants, said in Toronto today: "The bombing of civilians is not only immoral, it is criminal and punishable under the laws governing the Tribunal. You cannot kill a woman and child in Belgrade on the theoretical possibility that it might save a woman and child in Pristina. Even in a legal war you cannot kill civilians and destroy an entire country as a military strategy. But this is an illegal war and the NATO leaders are acting like outlaws. So far they have risked nothing by sending others to do their killing and destroying. We believe that if they are held individually responsible, as the law requires, they won't feel so free to spill other peoples' blood." For further information, please contact - in Toronto: Professor Michael Mandel (telephone 416-736-5039; e-mail mmandel@yorku.ca) or David Jacobs (telephone 416-539-; email david@ShellJacobs.com) - in Geneva: Alejandro Teitelbaum, (telephone -------; e-mail Assamjur@aol.com )
US/NATO VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAWIs U.S. Committing War Crimes (By Bill Ramsey)St. LOUIS, May 3 - "Is U.S. Committing War Crimes from on High?" asks Bill Ramsey in a column published by the St. Louis-Post Dispatch on May 3. "If one knows that dropping bombs on targets that have both civilian and military functions will inevitably take or harm civilian lives, can one claim that one does not intend to kill and therefore is not responsible for those who die in the attack?" the author asks. Here is an excerpt from Mr. Ramsey's column: "The 1949 Geneva Conventions and their 1977 Protocols define crimes against humanity as attacks on civilian populations or civilian objects. Civilian objects are defined as those indispensable to the survival of a population; and drinking water installations are designated as a civilian objects. Those water pipes in Belgrade are not legitimate targets under international standards. The Geneva Conventions and Protocols prohibit indiscriminate attacks. An attack is "indiscriminate" when its effect cannot be limited and thus harms military and civilian targets without distinction. Indiscriminate attacks include those that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life or injury to civilians. Where there is doubt, a potential target must presumed to be civilian. Does Clinton's decision to use an air-war strategy that he knows will kill civilians amount to a violation of the Geneva Conventions? Is our government committing war crimes in a futile attempt to halt Milosevic's horrendous war crimes? The 1945 the Nuremberg Charter declares that the "wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity" is punishable as a war crime. NATO said its target in Surdulica was an army barracks. Surdulica is near Serbia border with Bulgaria, not Kosovo. Can NATO identify a "military necessity" that warranted the risk of destroying homes and killing civilians in Surdulica? If not, did it commit a war crime? Are "war-related factories" now to include "word factories" like that Serbian television station struck on April 23, killing 15 civilian journalists? Amnesty International reminded NATO that international humanitarian law not only prohibits attacks on civilians and civilian sites. It also requires stringent safeguards when carrying out attacks against "military objectives," including giving effective advance warning of attacks that may affect the civilian population. International law also sets conditions on decisions to wage war. If they are not met, then another category of war crime called a crime against peace is committed. Under the U.N. Charter, collective military action by member states to prevent crimes against humanity requires Security Council approval. By what authority is NATO making war? All diplomatic options must be exhausted and negotiations cannot proceed under the threat of force. Does "Sign or we bomb" meet to these conditions? [...] How many mornings will we have to hear "regrettable but inevitable" from places like Serbia, Iraq, Sudan and Panama before we realize that modern air war is a blunt and deadly instrument that cannot confine itself within even the minimum humanitarian standards that arose from the ashes of WW II?"
NATO'S ILLEGAL WARTHE TORONTO STAR, Thursday, April 29, 1999 OPINION p. A23 By David Jacobs The NATO military actions against Yugoslavia violate international law. This presages ill for the rule of law on a planetary scale as we enter the next millenium. This attack also involves many NATO member nations in breaches of their domestic laws. Canada is acting in breach of the National Defence Act, which incorporates international law in the form of the Charter of the United Nations and the United States is in breach of its Constitution. Those who wish to justify NATO.s actions tend to either ignore the law or argue one or both of the following points: first, that the breach of law is a mere "technical" breach; and second, that a new law of "humanitarian intervention" is being developed by NATO. Neither argument can stand up even to superficial scrutiny. The key advance in law in this century is the outlawing of war and the prohibition against the use of force for the adjustment or settlement of "international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of peace" in the words of the U.N. Charter. Articles 3 and 4 of the U.N. Charter make this explicit: Article 3. All Members shall settle their disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered. Article 4. All Member shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. Such prohibitions are not absolute. There are exceptions made in the case of self-defence, and, importantly, in the case of unanimous agreement of all the members of the U.N. Security Council. The Security Council may sanction the use of force after determining that measures not including the use of armed force are inadequate to deal with the situation. The U.N. Charter specifically states that even decisions of the U.N. cannot be enforced by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council. NATO is a "regional agency." The Canadian position, and indeed the NATO position, seems to be that since Russia and China appeared likely to exercise their lawful powers of veto, a Security Council mandate for the commencement of the war would not be sought. This is a position contrary to law and morality. We have solemnly signed a formal international treaty, the U.N. Charter, under which we promised not to commence war without unanimous approval of the Security Council. Do we now say that if we cannot get such approval, and we really, really want to go to war, we can ignore our obligations and break our word? Can anyone trust our signature on an international agreement? The NATO Treaty itself outlaws NATO.s actions. In Article 1 the members of NATO pledge "to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purpose of the United Nations." The NATO treaty further obliges its signatories "as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered." The Treaty acknowledges "the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security." Furthermore, the requirement of Security Council approval for the use of armed force is critically important, and not a mere bureaucratic or technical obstacle to war. It arises as a result of the will of the international community to prevent the recurrence of the conditions that sparked two world wars in this century. In the wake of World War II, the world determined that big, powerful nations could not make war on other nations on whatever pretext, except in self defence, and that any pretext advanced would be evaluated by the world community through the U.N., to test if such pretext was valid. On most occasions, when nations commence war against each other, "humanitarian" reasons are claimed. This is far from new. Recall Hitler.s claim to be attacking Czechoslovakia to end the ethnic tensions and violence and restore the rights of Sudeten Germans. Recall the claims of the European powers to be carrying the "white man.s burden" into the colonies in the course of their "civilising missions." No nation goes to war without claiming that it is right, and its victim wrong, or even terribly wrong. The problem arises as to what body exists to evaluate such unilateral claims as to the "wrongness" of the victim nation. The second problem arises as to what action flows from any determination as to such "wrongness." The U.N. Security Council was and is suppose to perform these two functions of evaluation and action. These internationally agreed-on processes have not occurred and we are simply told by NATO nations that terrible things are happening in Yugoslavia and that NATO had determined the action to take as a consequence. Is the world to merely accept such claims and grant to NATO the absolute right to be judge, jury and executioner in its own cause? NATO is usurping and undermining the role of the U.N., which was formed precisely to end the scouge of war. The future of the U.N. has been put in doubt. NATO is not deserving of the support of those who believe in the rule of law. The claim that the current law is insufficient to meet NATO.s demands, so that NATO may act in violation of such laws with impunity, is to sanction the rule of the lynch mob, the rule of the vigilante. This is no precedent for the beginning of the next millenium. David Jacobs, of Shell Jacobs Lawyers, is a member of the Ad Hoc Committee To Stop Canada.s Participation In The War On Yugoslavia.
Jeff Tuomala, a former Regent University law professor, isn.t the only expert who says that President Clinton.s war in Yugoslavia lacks a clear legal basis. Jim Hirsen, a law professor at Trinity Law College in California, says bluntly that "it is clearly in violation of international law." He explains, "There is nothing in writing in any diplomatic charter, any international treaty that would authorize this kind of military intervention." The administration has claimed that various U.N. Security Council Resolutions authorize this war. But Hirsen points out, "In each and every one of those resolutions, there is a provision affirming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia." Those resolutions also require a peaceful resolution of the crisis. Hirsen adds that Article 2 of the U.N. Charter prohibits the use of force against a sovereign state unless it has committed aggression on another state. Yugoslavia, he points out, did not commit such aggression. When force is used, he adds, the Charter requires that the Security Council be consulted in advance. That was not done in this case. For Jim Hirsen, this should not be that surprising. He says, "It.s quite interesting that this administration, which at the international level always brings up the rule of law, has now had the same approach to the rule of law at the international level as they.ve had at the domestic level. That is, it.s de facto law. It.s not real law." In other words, a president who can.t be trusted to obey our domestic laws cannot be expected to comply with international laws and treaties. The difference is that Clinton has been a big booster of the U.N. and its charter in the past. Regarding the use of NATO to lead the intervention, Hirsen also finds the administration.s legal case to be seriously deficient. On its face, he points out, the NATO Charter sets up a defensive organization. In the preamble to the treaty, the members are "resolved to unite their efforts for collective self-defense." The use of force is authorized only when a member of NATO is attacked. "So, being a self-defense charter," Hirsen says, "the NATO treaty is violated" in the Yugoslavia case. To make matters worse, Hirsen says "there are treaties that specifically prohibit this kind of action." He says that the 1980 Vienna convention on the law of treaties prohibits any kind of coercion to compel a nation to sign a treaty. Yet the United States exerted that kind of pressure on Yugoslavia to sign the so-called Ramboulliet agreement on Kosovo, which could have led to independence for that province of the country. When Yugoslavia refused to sign it, the U.S. and NATO went to war. So why did the Administration go to war? Hirsen believes it was politics, noting that many of the administration.s recent military actions have corresponded with a significant news story that embarrasses President Clinton. In this case, the Juanita Broaddrick rape story was still causing problems for the president and the Chinese espionage scandal was gathering momentum. "In each case," he says, "[military decisions are] made with haste and not the proper planning." That has certainly been proven in this case.
FROM WASHINGTON THIS IS MEDIA MONITOR WITH REED IRVINE AND CLIFF KINCAID The Clinton Administration has been searching for a legal basis for its war in Yugoslavia. In a recent column in the Wall Street Journal, former assistant secretary of state John Bolton seemed to find one. This was significant because Bolton is a conservative who served in the Bush Administration and is now senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institute. The editors of the editorial page of the Journal, who are gung-ho for the war in Yugoslavia, would not have run Bolton.s column if they didn.t think it supported the legal case for continuing and expanding the war. On the matter of the U.N. Charter, Bolton noted that parts of it rule out the use of force by member states. But he claimed to find a loophole - Article 51, which recognizes the right of self-defense for all members. Bolton acknowledged that while Article 51 applies specifically to a member facing armed attack, he said this right is actually "far broader" and that most Americans would interpret this provision to mean that the U.S. can use military force in our own "national interest." We ran that claim by Jeff Tuomala, former Regent University Law professor who spent eight years on active duty in the Marine Corps specializing in the law of war. He said Bolton fails to make a critical distinction between the offensive and defensive use of force. The Charter rules out the offensive use of force. Article 51 refers to a nation under attack and its use of defensive force. "There is no attack by Serbia on any one of the NATO states," including the United States, Tuomala points out. Referring to the "national interest" standard advanced by Bolton, Tuomala said, "It may be in the national interest for Toyota to make lousier cars. But that doesn.t give [us] a right to attack them." He said the "national interest standard" amounts to "total lawlessness." He said that if there were an attack on the United States or its citizens, the U.S. would be justified in responding, but only after Congress issues a declaration of war. But can the NATO treaty justify the attack? While acknowledging that the treaty itself is defensive in character and refers to NATO responding to an attack on one of its members, Bolton maintains that the treaty "contains no legal barriers" to the offensive use of force. But Tuomala says NATO.s offensive use of force still violates the U.N. Charter because Yugoslavia hasn.t attacked any other country. Tuomala raises another point - the claim by the administration that the captured American soldiers should be treated as prisoners of war under international law. If this is war, he says, "Where is the authorization [of war] from Congress?" He finds it ironic that the administration has violated international law in so many respects but in this case is insisting on it being followed. He also finds it ironic that the administration claimed at one point that the Americans ought to be immediately released. Tuomala commented, "You.re bombing a country and then they can.t even defend themselves by capturing a few of your soldiers? This is crazy."
FROM WASHINGTON THIS IS MEDIA MONITOR WITH REED IRVINE AND CLIFF KINCAID Attorney Jeff Tuomala, one of the experts we consulted about the legality of the Yugoslavia war, told us that he had seen relatively little in the press about this important aspect of the controversy. One of the commentaries, ironically, came from conservative columnist George Will, who didn.t seem to want to hold Clinton accountable. Regarding the arguments that the Yugoslavia bombing is illegal, George Will wrote that it is "unseemly" for those who advocate "maximum latitude for the United States to exercise its sovereignty, to suddenly make a fetish of international law." But the "fetish" was on the part of an administration that seemed to worship the U.N. in the past. Conservatives who point to violations of international law in the war on Yugoslavia are exposing the globalists in the Clinton Administration as complete and utter hypocrites. The issue is not that complicated. The U.N. Charter flatly prohibits the kind of war the U.S. and NATO are waging in Yugoslavia. Assuming there was a genuine threat to international peace and stability, Article 43 of the charter states that before such action is taken, members of the U.N. have to make a "special agreement or agreements" with the Security Council to provide "armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining peace and security." No such agreement has ever been signed between the U.S. and the U.N. Chapter 8 of the U.N. Charter covers "regional arrangements," such as NATO. However, it states that "...no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council..." No such authorization was obtained by the U.S. or NATO before the bombing of Yugoslavia. Former Vanderbilt Political Science Professor Alex Dragnich, author of the book, The Disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Search for Truth, has commented that the bombing of Yugoslavia is "contrary to international law, contrary to the United Nations charter, and contrary to the NATO treaty itself." In making these comments, he said he was paraphrasing Tony Benn, a well-known member of the British Parliament, who said last October in a letter to his foreign secretary, Robin Cook: QUOTE "Air strikes against Serbia would constitute a total breach of international law, of the Charter of the United Nations and of Article 1 of the NATO Treaty, which commits NATO to upholding the U.N." UNQUOTE Article 1 of the NATO treaty does commit NATO to upholding the U.N. It says the parties shall not conduct their operations "in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations." Efforts to point out these violations of the U.N. Charter and the NATO treaty do not mean that conservatives are buying into the concept of international law. They only serve to expose the lawlessness of this administration in foreign affairs. President Clinton could argue that his policy was justified by appealing to the national interest and going before Congress for a declaration of war. Perhaps Clinton will do this eventually, if American involvement and casualties start escalating. But his early failure to do so demonstrates the weakness of his case.
FROM WASHINGTON, THIS IS MEDIA MONITOR WITH REED IRVINE AND CLIFF KINCAID Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking at the Brookings Institution on April 5, intensified her efforts to portray Slobodan Milosevic as a modern Hitler. She denied that the mass flight of refugees from Kosovo was precipitated by NATO.s bombing and missile attacks. She said that the bombing attacks were ordered to halt the terrible atrocities that Milosevic was inflicting on the Albanians in Kosovo, but the only specific example that she cited was the alleged massacre of 45 Albanians in the village of Racak in mid-January. Albright accused the Serbs of breaking the cease-fire agreement that was reached last October. We have not been able to get any verification of that claim from the State Department, but the Institute for Balkan Affairs says that the cease-fire was broken by the Kosovo Liberation Army, which kidnaped and killed two Serbian policemen. The Institute says the KLA has been killing police and officials in the Serbian province of Kosovo for over a year. The Serbs have retaliated, and it has been reported that between one and two thousand people died in the fighting in 1998. The State Department says this figure includes soldiers, police, guerrilla fighters and civilians on both sides. The Institute for Balkan Affairs says that the American media have virtually ignored the reports of KLA killings of Serbian police and civilians, including an attack on a refugee camp holding some of the 300,000 Serbs forced out of Croatia. In an earlier commentary we reported that an administration official said last year that the one thing that might trigger armed intervention in Kosovo would be an intolerable level of atrocities. When it was reported that 45 ethnic Albanian villagers had been slaughtered by Serbian police in Racak in mid-January, that became the intolerable level. This is the only alleged massacre that Albright could cite in her Brookings speech. The State Department now says that the killing of 24 KLA guerrillas in Kosovo at the end of January was combat-related. We said in that commentary that the French press had cast doubt on the claim that this was a massacre perpetrated by Serbian security forces. They reported that there was a battle between Serb police and the KLA and that there was reason to believe that 22 bodies laid out in a ravine may have been KLA guerrillas killed in the firefight. They said that journalists saw little blood and only a few cartridges around the site of the alleged massacre. They speculate that the KLA gathered some of the bodies killed in the fighting and tried to make it look like a massacre. In that commentary, we erred in saying that Clinton said he was ordering the bombing to "halt this rolling genocide." It was a senator who said that. In the 12 weeks leading up to the bombing there were nearly 200 newspaper stories that associated Kosovo and genocide. In the week after the bombing began there were over 900 stories, many of them reporting Clinton.s use of the term. The numbers of those killed in the year ending March 24 do not support the genocide charge.
US/NATO VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAWJust for Record: The US is violating a number of international laws in attacking Serbia over Kosovo which is part of a sovereign independent state. (1) It is a violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter that prohibits the use of force against a sovereign state where it has not committed aggression on other states. Serbia did not attack any neighboring states outside its sovereign borders. The Security Council did not sanction the use of force here. If the issue had been submitted to the Security Council, it would certainly have been vetoed by Russia and China. NATO knows it and therefore bypassed it. (2) It is a violation of NATO's own charter which claims it is a defensive organizations and is only committed to force if one of its members is attacked. No member of NATO was attacked. (3) The so-called Rambouillet "Agreement" (there was no "agreement" by Serbia ) is a violation of the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties which forbids coercion and force to compel any state to sign a treaty or agreement. Serbia is being asked to sign this "Agreement" through NATO bombs and missiles. (4) It is a violation of the Helsinki Accords Final Act of 1975 which guarantees the territorial frontiers of the states of Europe. What this so-called peace plan offers is (a) the severance of Kosovo through NATO bombing with immediate effect; or (b) the severance of Kosovo through NATO occupation three years later. (5) If the sequel to the bombing is recogntion of Kosovo as an independent state, this will violate international law that prohibits recognition of provinces that unilaterally declare independence against the wishes of the federal authorities. These unlawful actions will set precedents that will undermine stability elsewhere in the world.
Raju G. C. Thomas FWD FROM PROFESSOR GEORGE C. (RAJU) THOMAS: More on the Violations of International Law Contradicting my claim that NATO had violated at least five accepted norms of international law, several respondents argued that the NATO attack on Serbia was justified under the 1948 Genocide Convention and/or other general humanitarian principles. First, the Genocide Convention does not authorize such attacks. Only the Security Council can do so which was deliberately bypassed by NATO because it knew that Russia and China would veto such an attack. Second, there was no genocide going on in Kosovo. Cries of Serbian agression and genocide within its own province were being made in the US Congress in April 1998 when only 80 people had died and less than 100,000 internally displaced. At the time of the attack, 2,000 had died on all sides and 250,000 Albanians had been displaced. It was the threat of NATO attack and the subsequent terror bombing that parallels the fire bombing of Tokyo and Yokohama during the Second World War that triggered the Serbian retaliation and humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo. Third, there was no humanitarian intervention by the US and the West when the Nigerian authorities crushed the Biafra separatist movement between 1967 and 1970 causing the deaths of one million Ibos, when Pakistani forces killed one million and drove out 10 million Bengalis during the East Pakistani secessionist struggle in 1971, when the Pol Pot regime killed one million Cambodians, to name just a few cases. In the latter two cases, the US condemned India and Vietnam for their interventions and threatened military action against them. Fourth, ethnic cleansing is not genocide. If it were, the Allied powers were guilty of genocide for the expulsion of some 12 million Germans from Poland, Czechoslavkia and elsewhere at the end of the Second World War, and surely European Jews committed genocide when it drove out nearly a million Palestinians to carve out the state of Israel in 1948. There is now an ethnically pure Greater Croatia. There are almost 900,000 Serbian refugees ethnically cleansed from Croatia and the federation, 300,000 in Republika Srpska and 600,000 in Serbia. This is more than any other ethnic group. Croatia conducted the largest single ethnic cleansing of the war with American military support. For the record, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute determined that about 35-50,000 people died on all sides during the Bosnian civil war, not 250,000. The investigative team for the Hague Tribunal interviewed only 223 Bosnian women claming to be raped, and collected another 575 affidavits. Allegations of 20-60,000 rapes are guesses. The emaciated figure of Fikret Alic in a Serbian "concentration camp" at Tronpolje has now been proved to be a fraud. There are good reasons why all the others look reasonably healthy and are laughing including Alic. The broken down barbed wire surrounds an adjacent building compound, not Alic and the others who were in a refugee camp free to go anytime. The ITN cameraman, Jeremy Irvin zoomed his lense from inside the barbed wire compound making it appear that it surrounded the men who were in a refugee camp waiting to be moved. There are good reasons for showing only a five second clip (shown a zillion times) and not the full film. Now that it has been proven to be a fraud, it is never shown again, but there has been no retraction either. Regarding genocide, General Satish Nambiar, the first UNPROFOR commander from 1992 to 1994 told me that he, his deputy General Lewis McKenzie and 28,000 men under their command witnessed no genocide. They checked with the UNHCR and the International Red Cross, and they did not witness any genocide either. So how did Roy Guttman and others manage to witness genocide? Russia, China and India, representing half the human race, got it right about the Kosovo crisis. NATO, the only alliance left in this galaxy, committed aggression on Serbia. This is all about saving NATO's face at a very heavy price for the Serbs. If NATO is above international law, so is every other state and organization. It has set a terrible precedent.
Professor Raju G. C. Thomas
Marquette University
Milwaukee, USA
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