----- Original Message ----- From: Dick Withecombe To: STOP NATO Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2000 7:31 PM Subject: [STOPNATO] ITV - interview with NATO's George Robertson STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM Part 1 is on Nato's war against Yugoslavia, Part 2, being sent seperately, was on US NMD proposals. This tanscript has been typed at speed, and therefore may contain mistakes. LWT accepts no responsibility for these. However, we will be happy to correct serious errors. http://www.jonathandimbleby.co.uk/TX20000611_Robertson/transcript.html George Robertson (Broadcast 11th June 2000, ITV) Part I JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: A year ago this weekend after an aerial bombardment lasting 78 days NATO declared victory in Kosovo. It was not only the first NATO conflict since the end of the cold war but the first in its history. The war against Slobodan Milosevic was justified as a moral necessity, a humanitarian obligation, even if there were doubts about it's legality under international law and it lacked the formal endorsement of the United Nations. The conflict aroused fierce controversy at the time and since, many of those who witnessed the aftermath in Kosovo itself, the humanitarian catasrophe which persists in that sorry corner of the Balkans now believe that while the war may have been won the peace has been lost. If that were true it would be a hollow victory indeed. So what kind of blue print does Kosovo offer for NATO's role in a world which is stricken by conflict and disaster and in any case, what price NATO in the new century when the Europeans to propose to create their own army and the Americans intend to erect a nuclear shield against so called rogue states which might leave the rest of us out in the cold. With me the man who was Defence Secretary during the Kosovo crisis and is now the Secretary General of NATO, Lord Robertson. Lord Robertson, when you look back a year on at the NATO victory in Kosovo, do you still believe it offers a beacon of hope for this century? LORD ROBERTSON: Yes it does because I would ask you think what it would be like in the Balkans if we had not acted. Leave aside for the moment, although it's important, what's going on there today and the necessity to win the peace. Just imagine if almost 2 million refugees had been expelled from Kosovo and were in the surrounding countries and scattered throughout Europe, just imagine if Milosevic had succeeded with that ethnic cleansing, where he would then have turned to Vojvodina in the North of Yugoslavia, to Montenegro in the South of Yugoslavia, the de-stabilization of the Balkans would have been there for a generation, so for that reason, that reason alone it was worth doing, but we've still got to win the peace and that will take time. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Is it a campaign, the military campaign that was 78 days of aerial bombardment, a campaign of which you are unequivocally proud? LORD ROBERTSON: Well I'm happy that what we did was the right thing. We learned a lot of lessons from that, we didn't want to do it because diplomacy would have been better, it would have been much better if at Rambouillet Milosevic had signed up to something that would have given autonomy and safety to the Kosovo Albanians and we had been therefore able to avoid military action, but having taken it it was the right thing to do and we used the means of what I'll. at our disposal to do it , it was not a war, I think people should remember that. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: It was a war if you were on the receiving end of it. LORD ROBERTSON: Well, no, it wasn't a war. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Let's stop quibbling with words. LORD ROBERTSON: No, it's a major difference. If there had been a war against Slobodan Milosevic, if it had been a war against Serbia it would have been over in the first day. It was an operation, a military operation designed to disrupt the violence that was going on in Kosovo and to degrade the military machine that was doing it. Now that meant taking out the aerial defences that Milosevic had. It meant attacking military facilities and only military facilities and that took longer than any full-scale conflict would have done. Now that is why it took 78 days but it was successful. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: But, frankly in the past two you can conduct wars that there was a Vietnam war about which similar things said, you can conduct wars in a number of ways, but let's move onto the fact that as you will know only too well, there have been many critics of the conduct of that war, as well as those who support it. Leading among those critics most recently is Amnesty International. I just want to ask you before we get into the detail of that, you respect Amnesty International as an organisation? LORD ROBERTSON: As an organisation interested in political prisoners and campaigning for the civil rights of populations, yes. I'm not entirely satisfied that it's got the capability to be able to examine crimes against humanity. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: But you've publicly in the past, along with others endorsed it's work and supported it's work. LORD ROBERTSON: Oh absolutely, but it's work has largely in the past been to do with prisoners of conscience campaigning for them and for the civil rights of those that are persecuted because of their political beliefs. It's never been involved in being a key judicial organisation, leveling charges of crimes against humanity. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Well the point is, it's levelled charges in the past not only against China, Russia, Iraq, but specifically against the behaviour of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and I would imagine that you would endorse virtually every word that they have said on that front? LORD ROBERTSON: Well where they are involved, in examining cases of breaches of human rights and the rights of people to have political opinions, they're a good organisation and I've been a member of Amnesty International myself, but I make the point again, they have no jurisdiction to deal with the investigation of war crimes or crimes against humanity but there is an organisation set up by the United Nations to do that. The International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia was set up by the United Nations to look precisely at these things. They considered the Amnesty International report but still have concluded very strongly that NATO did not act outwith International Law, that NATO did not target civilians and that they are therefore not pursuing any investigation into war crimes there. Now they took the Amnesty report but they are the organisation charged by the UN and they have got a very high reputation and I think we should listen to that. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: It is, it will be to some people however odd that Amnesty can do no wrong until it comes to acts for which you in part are responsible when suddenly it's talking rubbish. LORD ROBERTSON: Well I don't use the word rubbish. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Well you say it was baseless and ill-founded. LORD ROBERTSON: Yes. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Which is a sort of smart way of saying rubbish. LORD ROBERTSON: No it's not. These are words that have some strength of meaning in it, I've read that report, but then so did the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal, Carla del Ponte. And she concluded in her report to the United Nations Security Council that there was not a case to be made against NATO on these crimes. Now they are the Criminal Tribunal they've been set up by the United Nations to do that so . JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Let's let's just look at. LORD ROBERTSON: . so Amnesty's entitled to it's point of view, but the International Criminal Tribunal as well as me disagrees with what they say. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Now the areas which caused problems were manifold which were investigated by the Tribunal and by Amnesty and indeed by observers on the ground, they relate to attack on infrastructure, individual civilians who are being killed, and so called civic targets. I want to pick up one of these, the one that's caused the most controversy. NATO planes, by the admission of NATO spokesman, deliberately targeted a TV Station, 16 people died as a consequence many more were injured. The NATO justification the next day was that the bombers had struck at, your phrase, NATO's phrase, the regimes ability I quote to transmit their version of the news. I ask you whether it constitutes formerly a war crime or not whether killing civilians for transmitting government propaganda is a jusifiable act of war? LORD ROBERTSON: Well that's up to the International Criminal Tribunal and they will be publishing quite soon I think their full report. The conclusions of which Chief Prosecutor del Ponte has already outlined. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: But the target was deliberately selected, that's conceded? LORD ROBERTSON: Yeah, yeah. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: And civilians were bound to be killed, that's acknowledge? LORD ROBERTSON: No, because there were no foreign journalists in there, all the foreign journalists in that building were withdrawn. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: So domestic . don't count? LORD ROBERTSON: Now just a minute, no, no, no, that's not what I'm saying Jonathan. There was an expectation that that conflict which did not just include the civilian television manufacturer but included military facilities, it was one of the nerve centres of Milosevic's war machine, there was a reasonable expectation that it would be a target and that is why all of the foreign new companys took their people out of there. I remember watching a television programme where some of the people whose families had been affected blaming Milosevic for not taking people out of that complex. It was part of Milosevic's military structure and it was therefore a quite legitimate target. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: In what is an effect, you describe it as not a war, but it's a legitimate target in what, as a war if it's relevant to say that is wasn't a war crime? LORD ROBERTSON: Well, no, it's not a war crime, because the International Criminal Tribunal has said that it's not a war crime. not me. but we took huge precautions to avoid civilian casualties, but we said all along that military infrastructure was going to be hit, military facilities were going to be hit, whether it was barracks, whether it was communications, radio relay points - that was. and it is now widely acknowledged to have been part of the military superstructure, it was used, that building was used to communicate military instructions to the field. and remember the kind of killing that was going on nonetheless. forget at the present moment. the sort of violence that was going on in Kosovo: you know, thousands of people were being put to death, people were being raped and tortured and over a million people were expelled from their country with the intention that they were never ever to come back. That is what was going on and we were out to stop that. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: It is appreciated that you were out to stop that and you are telling me that NATO would do the same thing again, that television stations used for propaganda, internal or external, are fair targets? LORD ROBERTSON: They. let me just make the point, it was being used for propaganda, yes. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: And that was part of the justifi. LORD ROBERTSON: No, wait a minute. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: That was part of the justification for the attack by your own spokesman, by Colonel Freitag, that. and I quote it again to you just so people don't forget, that it. you struck at the ability of the regime to transmit their version of the news. Now, that sounds to me like. LORD ROBERTSON: Yeah. yeah, but I. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: It's valid to stop propaganda being transmitted by civilians and that is a legitimate target for NATO? LORD ROBERTSON: No, no, yeah. but. yeah, but I hope you go on to actually give the full justification that was given at the time. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Which includes what you've just said, that you believed that they were also. LORD ROBERTSON: That was the primary reason, that was the primary reason. Now. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: So it was just an additional reason that you. that, that they were transmitting propaganda and you had to cut that out as well? LORD ROBERTSON: Well, it has been decided that it was a war crime in Rwanda for the radio station there to incite people to kill, that has already been decided and indeed I think there has already been a prosecution of the individual who was. who was. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: But this was. there was not an incitement coming from that television station to kill? LORD ROBERTSON: Well. well, let me go back, the. the main reason that the TV station was targeted was because it was part of the military infrastructure. It was a communications nerve centre for the military machine that was killing, butchering people in Kosovo at that time and the reason was. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: And knowing what the situation is today, knowing what happened, knowing that there was likelihood of civilians in there, you would do the same again? LORD ROBERTSON: Well, part of that. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Just in a word, would you do the same again? LORD ROBERTSON: Well, we would be attacking the military. the military infrastructure. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Okay. LORD ROBERTSON: Because that is our purpose. But just let me make the point that there was a reasonable expectation that that was going to be a target. and that is why every foreign news organisation took every one of their people out of there. But the. the Yugoslav authorities chose to keep their people in there. and it's interesting that some of the relations of the people who were killed blame Milosevic before they blame NATO. They knew. they believe that he had a reasonable assumption that that would be hit because they knew, and everybody in Serbia knew, that it was being used for military communications as well as for individual television programmes. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Secretary-General, you also went to war without formally seeking the endorsement of the United Nations Security Council. Would you do that again? LORD ROBERTSON: Well, I think it's an exception rather than the rule, because we were faced with the prospect that there would have been a veto on a specific UN Security Council Resolution. but it's worth remembering. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: So you go when you can, but if you think you'll get a veto, then it's okay not to go? LORD ROBERTSON: Well, we were faced with a situation where there was this killing going on, ethnic cleansing going on. the kind of ethnic cleansing we thought had disappeared after the Second World War. You were seeing people there coming in trains, the cattle trains with refugees. once again, we were faced with that dilemma at that time and. and with all the. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: But you remember at that time, you will remember. as a matter of fact, you will remember very clearly at that time that in comparison with the mass cleansing and exodus that occurred once the bombing started, there was a trickle out of the country - and that's why there were those who said, "Maybe this isn't wise." So, let me put the principal question to you again. against. against the background of that situation, are you saying that if NATO in future judges there to be a humanitarian catastrophe which you would seek to avert. then if you can't get the consent of the United Nations you would bypass the UN again? LORD ROBERTSON: Well. what I'm saying to you is that I hope we are never placed in a situation once more where individual members of the Security Council will veto a Resolution or threaten to veto a Resolution, when they themselves - as they did in the autumn of 1998 - had laid down the demands of Milosevic and had recognised that we were facing a humanitarian catastrophe. You can't eliminate the possibility ever again, but I see Kosovo as being an exception and not the rule. and I think that is widely seen as being the. the situation. and it seemed by that as other members. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: But it sounds. it sounds to me as if there's a new principle of international law being defined by NATO through you as Secretary-General, which is. if you can get the consent of the UN for actions which you believe are right, that's great. If you can't, you go ahead anyway? LORD ROBERTSON: Well, I remember being on your programme during the conflict and we'd go over and over the. the. the fine print of UN Security Council Resolutions and whatever. The world, the international community, was faced with what was acknowledged to be an impending humanitarian catastrophe. and we were right, absolutely right, it had been systematically planned and organised and it started long before the. the NATO bombardment, took place long before the. the Serbs pretended to be interested in a democra. a, a diplomatic solution at the Rambouillet talks. That was there. were we supposed to stand back? Were we supposed to stand back and watch people being murdered, butchered, tortured, raped, expelled from their country. simply to do nothing, because there was a prospect of a veto at that stage of the Resolution - especially when UN Security Council Resolution 1199 had been passed in 1998. Now, people tend to forget that Resolution, which said Milosevic had to stop the violence, he had to take his troops out of Kosovo and bring them back to the April '98 level, that the. the Resolution itself recognised that there was an impending humanitarian catastrophe - that was the list of demands by the United Nations itself. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Okay. So we've established that you would hope never to have to avoid the UN, but there would be conceivably - you very much hope not - circumstances which might mean that you would. Let me move to the. to the aftermath, the year since the end of that war. You hoped to avert a human. humanitarian tragedy: I suggest to you that there is a humanitarian tragedy in Kosovo now, but it happens that the boot is on the other foot. Do you agree? LORD ROBERTSON: No, I don't. There is a level of violence that is still unacceptable, but if you go back to Kosovo, as I did a week last Thursday, that is a dramatically different place to the one Kosovo was just over a year ago. You. on the anniversary of the start of the air campaign I went to a village called Poklet (PHON) and in the village of Poklet the Serb paramilitaries came, put 53 adults and 12 children into a house, threw hand grenades through the window and set fire to that house - and I was at the school that they demolished, in the village that they demolished, to pay a tribute to the 12 murdered children at that time. Now, that was going on not just in Poklet but on a widespread basis throughout Kosovo. We still don't know how many people are dead. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Absolutely. I don't think. LORD ROBERTSON: Everyone assumes that it is at least 10,000 out of a population of 2 million. so, if you image, in. in Manchester that you took out 10,000 people and simply shot them dead, murdered them, executed them. you know, that that would not be regarded as something absolutely appalling beyond belief. that was going on little over a year ago there. Now. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Okay, but since. LORD ROBERTSON: The violence level is massively down. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: The total level is massively down. You talk about proportions, citing for instance Manchester. no-one knows quite how many people. I want to just quote to you the OSCE Report which says. the most recent report, a year on report. not much reported incidentally, but not uninteresting, which says. talks about harassment, intimidation, arson, assault, kidnapping, murder, which recently is on a rising scale against the Serbian minority, which any objective reader would say is on an alarming scale. and specifically, since the end of the war, though no-one knows the precise figures, whether it is 400. 500. 600 or as the moderate Church Serbian leadership claims, upwards of that. that number, those numbers murdered since the end of the war while NATO, Kfor, the UN have been there. equivalent, if it's, say, 500,000, to something like 300,000 British citizens having been murdered in that time. And you say that's not a disaster? LORD ROBERTSON: Well, it is not acceptable. and I met the leader, I met Bishop Artemije and his monastery in Gastrazonica (PHON) the week before last and I met the leader of the Serb community in Mitrovice (PHON), Mr Ivanovic as well. and I 've talked to them and I've made it clear that we have an obligation, Kfor and NATO have an obligation to protect all of the different communities inside Kosovo. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: But what. ? LORD ROBERTSON: And I told the Albanian leadership that. But don't make the comparison, Jonathan, between the State. the State-sponsored, systematic organised ethnic cleansing that was taking place last year against the majority population with the level of criminality. unacceptable level of criminality that is going on today. There are still almost 100,000 Kosovar Serbs inside Serbia today and I'm. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: According to the. according to informal figures of the UNHCR that is. that is after something like between 150 and 200,000 Serbs have left. You seem to me. LORD ROBERTSON: Yeah, the both. the both of them. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: . with respect, if I may put this to you, from the reports of the OSCE, the body with which Kfor and NATO works very closely, they describe a situation in which 70% of the Serbian population or so has either fled or has been displaced. the vast majority living in ghettos, surrounded by barbed wire, protected by NATO troops on a 24 hour basis, where children can't go to school because they're not accepted by the State schools, where if they travel they have to have 24 hour Kfor protection to protect them from death - now, you're saying that that situation is something which is just criminal activity? I suggest to you that there is a powerful view in Kosovo, rightly or wrongly, that is authorised at least by powerful figures in the Albanian community and that if they wanted to stop it they could? LORD ROBERTSON: Well I'm saying to you that its unacceptable, I use that word and I used it in ? with the Albanian leadership, I used it at the press conference and I used it with the leaders of the third. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Why didn't you go out of your way? How ?? leaders go out of their way as you so eloquently and in most people's judgement rightly said the appalling horrors perpetrated by Slobodan Milosevic and his people must stop. Why don' t we hear you publicly, repeatedly all of you saying 'this outrage must stop ' rather than talking behind closed doors generally or making speeches which say we have to solve this criminal problem? LORD ROBERTSON: Jonathan first of all, forty years Percival suffered under communist. For 10 years from when Milosevic came to power the majority population was denied several rights denied, ordinary rights denied, the right to educate their children in their own language, in their own schools. Systematic discrimination which we would otherwise call apartheid, then face 18 months of the most horrifying violence - the OSCE that you were quoting, the OSCE pointed out that children were specifically targeted by the Serb thugs and paramilitaries and forces, just over a year ago putting babies on bayonets in order to terrorise the civilian population. That is what was going on, that is what is going on for 50 years in Kosovo, now that doesn't excuse any individual murder that is going on. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY But you said . you said it does excuse it? LORD ROBERTSON: No, no, no - but no, but I think we've got to have reasonable expectation surely. We're not going to create Switzerland in 12 months. After that level of violence and discrimination inevitably there are going to be, that there are going to be strong feelings. If your sister had been raped, if your father had been murdered in front of you, if your children, you know, had been brutalised I doubt whether you would be listening to authority of international figures say 'please will you love your neighbour, your Serbian neighbour'. But I tell you that since ? and they have - life is getting back to normal. There will be more of the Serbs who left Kosovo most of them who left right at the end of the conflict who will come back and determined efforts are being made at the moment to do and at least 50% of the work of Kfor is devoted to protecting the minorities and I believe that the Kosovo Albanian leadership is now taking steps to control the violence that has gone on that I described as unacceptable and something that we will not tolerate. We didn't set out to stop the creation of a mono-ethnic state to see yet another one put in its place. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY You have now, by OSCE's accountant, two societies separate from one another in almost all aspects of life against that background of defacto apartheid in Kosovo you have the Albanian leadership insisting, said it to me in the person of the so-called self-appointed Prime Minister Thaci, you can't have democracy in this country, Kosovo, until we have independence. There is no prospect if resolution 12:44, the UN resolution, is followed of independence for Kosovo. I suggest to you that the possibility of establishing a multi-ethnic democracy Kosovo which is your stated goal is pie in the sky? LORD ROBERTSON: No it's not, and I told Mr Thaci that the week before last as well and I told Mr Rugova and the other leaders of the Albanian community. But I also went to address a meeting of the Percival Transitional Council which had represented us of the Serb community on it as well and I delivered exactly the same message there too and the leader of the NATO Alliance, I speak with some authority, they listened to me because I was one of the leaders of the campaign to stop the violence against them and I will keep making that message. But. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY The message is having the impact, the message is having an impact. LORD ROBERTSON: Well. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY . saying the same thing while NATO is still bogged down for the indefinite future? LORD ROBERTSON: You - if you there can see the difference and the changes that have taken place. The murder rate has moved from being huge and the immediate aftermath I think one might have expected it, indeed Bishop Artemije said you would have expected that to take place immediately after the conflict was over, down to the levels where it is below the murder rate of Washington or of Moscow at the present moment. So we are making progress. Small inadequate progress at the moment but I went to meet . now that's the real, the real flashpoint, the real hotpoint there where the Ibar River is in prospect of being the new Berlin Wall. But I sat at the table with Mr Nash who represents the United Nations, on one side of him on the other side of the table was Mr Ivanivich (PHON) and the other side the leader of the Kosovo Albanians. Both of them with him now trying to get over that divide. After a year, its only a year in something like seven hundred years of Kosovo history marked by violence right down there, we're making progress and we will eventually achieve that multi-ethnic democracy. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY You assert that, you can see that the peace has yet to be won and is far from won, I suggest to you that given that and the fact that the man who caused all this, Milosevic, is still in place means that you've had a hollow victory? LORD ROBERTSON: No I don't use the word victory anyway. We set out to stop the violence and to get the refugees back and we succeeded. NATO succeeded, the international community succeeded in doing that. The next stage will be difficult and it will take time but it will happen and the South East of Europe that plagued the last century with its instability will be safer and more secure place at that so the success if there but its going to require determination and resources if we're going to win the lasting peace that is our objective. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY Lord Robertson we must take a pause there. In a moment the United States wants to build a nuclear shield against so-called rogue states. But what happens if, if the rest of us are left to defend for ourselves? That's after the break. End of Part I. To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb
