>From: "Mrs. Jela Jovanovic, Secretary General" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >=========================== >The Committee for National Solidarity >Tolstojeva 34, 11000 Belgrade, YU >January 26, 2000 >Kosovo, close to being a Mafia state, is littered with unexploded bombs. >That`s the result of ethical Blairism >New Statesman >John Pilger >24th January 2000 >The Blair government`s resumption of arms sales to Indonesia ends an >unreported hoax. The four- month "ban" supposedly in re-sponse to the >renewed repression in East Timor, was hardly a ban at all. Licences were >merely extended, so that no future business would be lost, and >parliament and the public were not told. Now, with 170,000 East Timorese >held hostage by the Indonesian military in camps in West Timor and >British-supplied Saladin armoured cars used in attacks on civilians >elsewhere in Indonesia, the military dictatorship that still runs the >country (regardless of its democratic trappings) will be encouraged in >its campaign against the popular resistance. >At the same time, the ethical Blairites are eager to resume arms sales >to the Pakistani military dictatorship, which three months ago crushed >an elected government. >Pakistan`s appalling human-right record makes a grim joke of the >European code of conduct on arms sales, adopted when Britain held the EU >presidency. This is unsurprising; British arms exports have long gone to >regimes with appalling human-rights records. >The ethical Blairites, however, add another dimension. Consider the >legacy of their "new moral crusade" in Kosovo last spring. Clare Short, >an avid crusader, said then "Nato is not killing civilians. The very >carefulness of our operations is to ensure that there is minimum damage >to civilians". This was manifestly false. Several thousand civilians >were killed and thousand more maimed many by cluster bombs which are, in >effect, air-dropped time-activated landmines. Those that did not explode >immediately now lie in wait for unsuspecting civilians, often children, >who pick them up; on detonation, they release dozens of "bomblets" that >cause horrific injuries. >I saw something of the human carnage they caused in Indochina following >the American bombing; 30 years later, they are still killing and >injuring. Not long ago, in tiny Laos, the British Mines Advisory Group >found 700 unexploded bomblets in one school playground. According to the >Asia correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, cluster bombs have given >Laos "an annual nationwide casualty rate of 20.000 more than half of >them deaths". >For Laos, now read Kosovo. Last April, Paul Watson of the Los Angeles >Times, who distiguished himself by remaining in Kosovo during the NATO >bombing, reported that cluster bombs had turned "parts of the province >into no-man`s land" which was "littered" with unexploded bomblets. At >Pristina Hospital, he witnessed the "horrific wounds" of Albanian >children, caused by delayed-action clusters. (It was Watson who >memorably wrote: Even in Kosovo, I couldn`t escape the sound of (Nato >spokesman Jamie) Shea`s voice it haunted me at the strangest times, >denying things that I knew to be true, insisting on others that I had >seen were false"). >With Robert Fisk`s reporting, Watson`s witness to the carnage caused by >Nato was rare. This was not so much a reporters` war as one dominated by >drum-beating lifestyle columnists who never acknowledged that British >pilots were using terror weapons against civilians, sowing Kosovo with >harvest of death and suffering that was in explicit violation of the >Ottowa Convention, which prohibits the production and use of >anti-personnel mines. Subsequent scrutiny of ministry of Defence >statistics reveals that, contrary to Clare Short`s fiction of >"carefulness" more than 75 per cent of bombs dropped by the RAF were >free-fall, including the 78,057 cluster bomblets released. >"It would be wrong to assume" said Blair last April, "that bombs and >missiles that miss their target necessarily cause collateral damage." >Read again that statement and you get a sense of the craven sophistry >with which respectable regimes cover their crimes. Blair is afraid of >the truth getting out and his ministers blocked disclosure of the >percentage of British bombs and missiles that "went astray" in Kosovo. >They justify this recourse to the Code of Practice on Access to >Government Information, a decree of state secrecy that no Soviet-era >apparatchik could better. >The ethical Blairites claim they did not use depleted uranium in Kosovo, >as John Major did in Iraq. Can se believe that? Their co-crusaders, the >Americans, used it. The physicist and chemist Professor Hari Sharma, a >world authority on depleted uranium, says: "The danger is equal to that >of a long-term weapon of mass destruction. The inhalation of even the >smallest dust particle may cause irreparable cell damage in unprotected >people, resulting in a cancer epidemic that over time could kill >thousands of the exposed" - in other words, the very people Blair >claimed to be liberating. >Also unreported is the installation in Kosovo of paramilitary regime >with links to organised crime. Indeed, Kosovo may become the world`s >first Mafia state. As they oversee the ethnic cleansing of 240,000 Serb >and Roma civilians Nato and its United Nations partners have established >a "working relationship" with the Kosovo Liberation Army, which Robin >Cook and Madeleine Albright once dismissed as a terrorist group. Much of >the KLA is criminalised, with war criminals. common murderers and drug >traders forming an "interim administration" that will implement the >"free-market reforms" required by the US and Europe. Their supervisors >are the World Bank and the European Development Bank, whose aim is to >ensure that western mining, petroleum and construction companies share >the booty of Kosovo`s extensive natural resources: a fitting finale to >the new moral crusade. Watch for others. > > >Secretary General >Mrs. Jela Jovanovic >Art historian >=========================== > > > > --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- __________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki - Finland +358-40-7177941, fax +358-9-7591081 e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kominf.pp.fi ___________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe/unsubscribe messages mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________
