http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/357999.stm BBC News June 1, 1999 Harold Pinter takes on Nato One of the UK's most important playwrights, Harold Pinter has challenged audiences around the world since his play The Birthday Party first hit London in 1958. He has become increasingly outspoken about the issues of the day and now talks to BBC HARDtalk about his current concerns over the Kosovo crisis. "This Nato action is not only illegal, immoral, and also crazy and infantile, it will achieve absolutely nothing," says Harold Pinter. The playwright, who describes himself as "a bit of an old warrior", has been speaking out on human rights issues since the overthrow of Chile's President Allende back in the 1970s, and how he is standing his ground over the crisis in the Balkans. Angry at Nato's intervention, Pinter claims "the plight of the Kosovo people is irrelevant to the US and the UK". Instead he says the two nations are more interested in "domination and assertion of power", and are pursuing a course which will "only agravate the misery and the horror and devastate the country". Such outspoken views have seen Pinter attacked by the British press, but he remains determined to have his say. "I live in a very hostile press world because I speak my mind," he says. "The tradition for artists in Britain is to shut up and write." But Pinter feels that as British citizen he has an "obligation" to speak out about the bombing, "Not as an artist, but as a man," he adds. .... ------------------------------------------------------ http://www.haroldpinter.org/politics/politics_serbia.shtml Harold Pinter.org The Guardian June 7, 1999 Audrey Gillan The playwright Harold Pinter told an anti-war demonstration that he was ashamed to be British because of Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia. At the gathering of more than 6,000 marchers in a park next to the Imperial War Museum in London on Saturday, he described the current peace talks as a sham, and claimed that the war had been totally unwarranted. Standing in the shadow of the two l5 inch naval guns that sit at the entrance to the museum, the playwright threw his words out like stones, each of them aimed at the Labour government. 'I am sure those people here today who voted the Labour party into power share the same feeling - a deep sense of shame, the shame of being British. 'Little did we think two years ago that we had elected a government which would take a leading role in what is essentially a criminal act, showing total contempt for the United Nations and international law." Pinter said Britain's leaders had been engaging in despicable hypocrisy, and he contrasted Tony Blair's calling the nail bombing of a bar in Old Compton Street, Soho, "barbaric", with his defending the cluster bombs dropped on Yugoslavia as "civilization against barbarism". These clusterbombs cut children to pieces and this is an act which takes place 15,000ft 'under 'those brave bombers. An act which Mr Blair, with his moralistic Christianity applauds," Pinter said. "Let us face the truth. The truth is that neither Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the Kosovar Albanians. This action has been yet another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using Nato as its missile. It set out to consolidate one thing - American domination of Europe. This must be fully recognised and it must be resisted." The march, which began at the Embankment, had been organised by the Committee for Peace in the Balkans before the peace talks began. The organisers went ahead with the protest because they said it was 'obscene" that the bombing was continuing. Carrying anti-Nato flags, target placards and crosses with the name of the civilian dead in Serbia and Kosovo, as well as trade unions, banners, the marchers chanted anti-war slogans and demanded that money be spent on welfare rather than warfare. The march coincided with a number of other anti-war marches around the world, including one outside the Pentagon in Washington, which sent messages of support. A rally in Glasgow was addressed by the Labour MP for Linlithgow Tam Dalyell, Alice Mahon the Labour MP for Halifax, told the London crowd that the real US objective in the war was the occupation of Yugoslavia, a country which had "resisted 72 days of criminal bombardment". She said that what she had learned was that Nato could now destroy any country from l0,000ft in the air and the only way smaller countries could defend themselves would be to obtain nuclear weapons. The Committee for Peace in the Balkans intends to continue its work when the bombing has stopped," she said. "We are not going to stop until justice is done. Comment in Socialist Review June 1999 When the bomb went off in Old Compton Street, Mr Blair described it as a barbaric act. When cluster bombs go off in Serbian marketplaces, cutting children into pieces, we are told that such an act is being taken on behalf of 'civilisation against barbarism'. Mr Blair is clearly having a wonderful time. But if Britain remains America's poodle, she is now a vicious and demented poodle. The Nato action is in breach of its own charter and outside all recognised parameters of international law. Nato is destroying the infrastructure of a sovereign state, murdering hundreds of civilians, creating widespread misery and desolation, and doing immeasurable damage to the environment. Underneath the demonisation and the hysteria, there is an agenda. What is it? It is certainly not what it purports to be. Neither Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the Kosovan Albanians, despite their tears. This action is yet another brutal and blatant assertion of US power, using Nato as its missile. This "new aggressive" Nato is helping to fulfil one thing and one thing only-American domination of Europe. The true danger to world peace is not former Yugoslavia, but the United States. Serbian News Network - SNN [email protected] http://www.antic.org/
