Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---------------------------------------------
Nicholas Camerota spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should
see it.
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to
http://www.guardian.co.uk
Hague is not the place to try Milosevic
The tribunal is effectively the legal arm of Nato in the Balkans
Seumas Milne
Wednesday August 01 2001
The Guardian
For those yearning for a credible and impartial international justice system,
unsullied by big power manipulation, the process by which Slobodan Milosevic was
brought to trial at the Hague must surely have been cause for misgivings.
The man long-reviled as the Butcher of Belgrade - or even a quasi-Nazi dictator,
despite his regular election victories - has already been convicted in the court of
western public opinion, not only for the war crimes charges he now faces, but for a
decade of slaughter in the Balkans.
Shamelessly bought with $1.3bn of aid for a country ravaged by sanctions and Nato
bombing, Milosevic's extradition had to be forced through by decree, in defiance of
Yugoslavia's constitutional court, by a government which knew it stood no chance of
getting the decision through parliament.
That is presumably why - as the new Belgrade administration dug up corpses to order -
the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, described the cash as a "dividend of
democracy".
But, supporters of the Hague tribunal argue, even if the former Yugoslav president was
effectively kidnapped on behalf of those western states which like to describe
themselves as the international community, that was a necessary price to pay for
justice to be done. What they seem unable to grasp is that justice will never be seen
to have been done, because the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia cannot seriously be
regarded as a genuinely independent court.
Although nominally UN-sponsored, it was the baby of the then US secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright, and has continued to dance to the tune of US foreign policy - or,
as the tribunal's former president, Antonio Cassese, put it, to "take into account the
exigencies and tempo of the international community". It works intimately with the FBI
and Nato - rather than the UN - while relying heavily on US government, foundation and
corporate funding, in contradiction of its own charter.
Given that the current charges against Milosevic relate to the 1999 Kosovo war, waged
between Yugoslavia and Nato, the compromising nature of these relationships could
hardly be clearer. Milosevic was first indicted, with brazenly political timing, at
the height of the bombing.
This is a court which itself lays the charges it judges, accepts hearsay evidence and
is heavily staffed by political appointees of the very states which led the onslaught
against Milosevic's Yugoslavia - attacks which were not supported by the UN, are
widely regarded as having been illegal and are themselves the subject of war crimes
allegations.
Instead of investigating Nato leaders for their assaults on civil targets, covert
backing for KLA terror and reckless disregard for civilian lives, the last tribunal
prosecutor, Louise Arbour, accepted a job from one of them: the Canadian prime
minister, Jean Chretien.
To hope, as supporters do, that the tribunal will rise above politics in the Milosevic
case, is wilfully to disregard experience. It cannot do so because it is a creature of
politics - to all intents and purposes, the legal arm of Nato in the Balkans.
Nor will it do to cite the Nuremberg precedent. The allied trial of leading Nazis was
certainly a case of victors' justice, but one which reflected a consensus across the
international political spectrum, as well as a determination to settle accounts with
the most aggressive and genocidal regime in human history. Parallels with the ghastly
dismemberment of Yugoslavia are non-existent. No such global consensus exists on
responsibility for the Yugoslav wars - which all took place within the borders of
Tito's republic - or on the western role in them.
The impact of that intervention began to be felt in the 1980s, with the corrosive
effects of IMF and World Bank "restructuring" on Yugoslavia's social fabric,
intensified with German encouragement of Croatian separatism and reached a nadir with
logistical US backing for the massacres and ethnic cleansing in the Krajina region of
Croatia in 1995.
War crimes indictments in the latter case are, needless to say, not expected. Six
years on, the former Yugoslavia is a network of undemocratic Nato protectorates,
western-fuelled Albanian irredentism has set Macedonia alight and the underlying
causes of 10 years of inter-ethnic war have not been resolved because there has been
no internal settlement.
Milosevic clearly shares political responsibility for the country's immolation, with
his opportunist pandering to rapacious nationalism. And if evidence is produced
directly linking him to killings and deportations, that responsibility would also be
criminal. But far better for the future of Yugoslavia if such evidence had been tested
in a Belgrade court. His trial at the Hague will be seen both in Serbia and beyond for
what it is - a demonstration of power more than of justice.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
-------------------------------------------------
This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been
shut down
==^================================================================
EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://Topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA
Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This email was sent to: [email protected]
T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail!
http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register
==^================================================================
