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REPORT ON THE 25 OCTOBER 1999
PARIS CONFERENCE ON
" J U S T I C E A N D W A R "
A dozen speakers from seven countries presented a devastating case against
NATO's illegal war against Yugoslavia at the international conference on
"Justice and War" held in Paris on Monday, October 25. The speakers included
jurists, experts and activists who have closely studied the background of the
Yugoslav conflict and NATO intervention.
Alternatives to War
Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Future and Peace
Research based in Lund, Sweden, attacked "the one biggest myth of the war":
that there was "nothing else to do" about the Kosovo problem. Oberg, who before
the NATO bombing had carried out some three dozen peace missions to Kosovo and
acted as advisor to the Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, presented a long
list of sensible, practical things that could have been done to help solve the
Kosovo problem in a peaceful way. None had been tried by the Western powers.
Instead, the United States chose war and backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
chieftain Hashim Thaqi, "the Albanian equivalent of Arkan" (the notorious Serb
gangster), said Oberg.
Oberg stressed that none of the Western officials dealing with the Yugoslav
problems had any understanding of peaceful reconciliation methods. The first
thing to do to help solve a conflict, he stressed, is to listen to both sides,
to understand their needs and their fears. This was never done. American
journalist Diana Johnstone, who co-chaired the conference, accused the Clinton
administration of aggravating and exploiting the Kosovo problem in order to
inaugurate NATO's new mission of "humanitarian intervention". The
"humanitarian" pretense is the public relations cover for NATO expansion
eastwards for economic and strategic reasons.
Professor Raju George Thomas of Marquette University in Wisconsin (USA) warned
of the extremely negative impact on international relations of NATO's illegal
attack on a sovereign nation that had not committed any act of aggression.
Other powers will be encouraged to emulate NATO's aggressive behavior in
defense of their own national interests, while fear of NATO's unpredictable
expansion is certain to trigger a new worldwide arms race. An American citizen
of Indian origin, Professor Thomas stressed that India, like most of the world
(with the exception of NATO countries), did not believe the "humanitarian"
pretext for the NATO bombing and sympathized with Yugoslavia as the victim.
International Law and NATO Aggression
Roland Weyl, speaking on behalf of the International Association of Democratic
Jurists, denounced NATO's "open contempt" for the United Nations and the post-
World War II system of international law aimed at banning war. The bombing had
no legal basis and would be unjustifiable even if the United States succeeded
in turning the United Nations Security Council into a pliant rubber stamp to
approve NATO military operations.
Two contrasting views of the ambiguous concept of "self-determination", in
relation to Kosovo, were presented by Catherine Samary of the University of
Paris and Barbara Delcourt, who teaches international law at the Free
University of Brussels. While Samary tended to favor self-determination for
Kosovo Albanians, Delcourt pointed out that under existing international law,
self-determination did not imply secession except in regard to decolonization.
If the right of self-determination is to be broadened, this should be done
systematically by international convention, rather than ad hoc, Delcourt
argued. Today we are no longer in the period of decolonization, but in a
recolonization period where the "right to self-determination" mainly favors
nationalists and great power manipulations.
On the subject of a hypothetical "law of humanitarian intervention", Olivier
Corten, professor of international law at the Free University of Brussels,
noted that any such law is open to differing interpretations as to when it is
applicable. The purpose of a legal system is to provide procedures to mediate
between differing evaluations. There is no law without procedure, he stressed.
We are in danger of reverting to the 19th century practice of Great Powers
which regularly invoked "natural rights" to justify use of military force.
Toronto lawyer Christopher Black explained that the ad hoc "International
Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY)" in The Hague is not a step
toward a real international criminal tribunal (a project that has encountered
U.S. opposition), but something quite contrary: a political tribunal instigated
by the United States for political purposes. The ICTY receives funding and
personnel from the United States government and private corporations, its chief
justice describes U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as "the mother of
the tribunal", it ignored a brief presented by an international group of
lawyers calling for indictment of NATO leaders for war crimes, based on more
solid evidence than the subsequent indictment of Yugoslav leaders. Its
procedures are contrary to all the guarantees of the defense written into
democratic legal systems, Black said.
Other speakers were Roman judge Domenico Gallo, who concluded that the
circumstances did not justify NATO intervention; Zeljan Schuster, of the
University of New Haven, who described various scenarios of economic and
political effects on Yugoslavia of NATO bombing; and University of Paris
historian Annie Lacroix-Riz, who drew from her vast knowledge of diplomatic
archives to describe the extraordinary degree of continuity between present and
past Great Power intervention in Yugoslavia.
Tentative Conclusions
Brian Becker of the International Action Center in New York represented an
activist approach to the war strikingly absent in today's France. Becker's
description of the IAC plans to hold hearings in various cities on the
indictment against NATO leaders drafted by Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney
General, aroused considerable enthusiasm among the people attending the
conference, who were eager to offer support. Becker explained that the campaign
will culminate in a people's tribunal in New York on next March 24, anniversary
of the start of the NATO bombing. Ramsey Clark sent a message of greeting to
the conference.
Participants in the conference intend to get together to plan further action.
In addition to support to the Ramsey Clark initiative, the conference strongly
condemned economic sanctions as an unjustifiable continuation of war against
the people of Yugoslavia.
It was generally agreed that:
· Economic sanctions are a warlike, not a peaceful measure: a means of
continuing the bombing destruction by other means, in a "bomb now, die later"
strategy already employed against the people of Iraq;
S uch methods as economic sanctions, "selective sanctions" and other
encouragements to further secession and civil war in Yugoslavia are totally
inappropriate means to produce "democratic change";
Such deliberately divisive measures seem designed to preclude peaceful
democratic change and instead provide NATO with a pretext for further armed
intervention;
A truly neutral tribunal should determine legal responsibilities for the 1999 war and
assess damages and liability for reparations;
Governments should provide humanitarian and reconstruction aid to all parts of the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, without ethnic or political discrimination.
The conference also adopted by acclamation a proposal from the floor to protest
against the exclusion by the humanitarian organization "Doctors Without Frontiers", on
the day after it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, of
its Greek chapter for having treated Serbian victims of the NATO bombing.
A message of personal testimony from Cedomir Prlincevic, former archivist and head of
the Jewish community in Pristina, was read to the conference. Prlincevic, who was
driven from his home by Albanian gangsters, accused N
ATO and KFOR of allowing KLA thugs to threaten, kill and drive out members of
non-Albanian ethnic groups and steal their property. With NATO/KFOR support,
the KLA had installed a reign of terror, he said.
The conference on "Justice and War" was held in the Town Hall of Paris' 9th
arrondissement and financed by individual contributions. Each invited guest in
the international audience of 140 contributed at least 150 francs ($25) to
cover costs. The papers and proceedings will be published by the Paris-based
review "Dialogue".
If you wish to obtain copies, or distribute copies, of the special "Justice and
War" conference issue of "Dialogue", please contact (by e-mail): dialogos@club-
internet.fr.
{{<End>}}
A<>E<>R
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