Fw: <nettime> USA Green Party Statement on NATO Bombing

[Christiane.Schulzki@t-online.de (Chr. Schulzki-Haddouti)]

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Stefan J Wray <sjw210@is8.nyu.edu>
An: nettime-l@Desk.nl <nettime-l@Desk.nl>
Datum: Sonntag, 4. April 1999 18:56
Betreff: <nettime> USA Green Party Statement on NATO Bombing


>Stop the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia
>
>Statement by the Coordinating Committee
>of The Greens/Green Party USA
>
>
>The Greens/Green Party USA calls for a halt to the US-led NATO bombing of
>Yugoslavia and demands a return to negotiations and peace monitors under
>the auspices of the UN, the European Union, and the Organization for
>Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
>
>NATO bombing only makes it harder for the pro-democracy movements of both
>Serbs and Albanian Kosovars in Yugoslavia. NATO bombing has already
>worsened the ethnic violence on the ground by providing cover for stepped
>up action by both the Serbian army and the Kosovo Liberation Army. NATO
>bombing is helping to defeat the internal democratic opposition inside
>Serbia by rallying the besieged Serbs to the militaristic forces of
>Greater Serbian nationalism. It is also heightening the danger of new
>conflict, possibly nuclear conflict, with an economically desperate Russia
>by lending credence to the apocalyptic visions of Russias militaristic
>ultra-nationalists.
>
>NATOs war in Yugoslavia is illegal. Its intervention in a sovereign state
>has received no sanction from the United Nations. No Declaration of War by
>Congress has authorized US military operations in Yugoslavia, as our
>Constitution requires. NATO's charter expressly defines it as a defensive
>force only.
>NATOs intervention, the biggest military operation in Europe since World
>War II, is setting dangerous precedents. NATO is arrogating to itself the
>right to conduct aggressive out-of-area military interventions. Germany is
>re-establishing itself as a world military power again by conducting its
>first air strikes since World War II. These actions undermine the UN and
>strengthen the NATO military alliance as the worlds military enforcer.
>They shift the balance of power in the world toward US and German
>imperialism.
>NATOs intervention is an environmental disaster for the peoples of
>Yugoslavia. The depleted uranium shells used by US forces will jeopardize
>the health of the people and the land for generations to come.
>
>NATO's Humanitarian Pretext Is Hypocrisy
>
>We do not for one minute believe the humanitarian pretext for the US-led
>NATO military intervention. If humanitarian motives guided US and NATO
>military actions, then they would have intervened long ago to stop the
>atrocities committed by NATO member Turkey against the Kurds. Why are the
>US and its NATO junior partners suddenly so concerned about civilian
>casualties while their sanctions, according to UN estimates, kill 5000
>Iraqis a month? Why should we trust a US government whose Orwellian
>rationale says this war is for peace, that this bombing is to stop the
>killing of civilians? Why should we trust a US government that sponsored
>state-terror against Guatemalan civilians for 35 years? Where is US and
>NATO intervention on behalf of the Chechnyans in Russia, the Palestinians
>in the Middle East, or the civilians now being slaughtered in the civil
>wars of Algeria, Sudan, Sierra Leone, East Timor, and many other
>countries?
>
>The man they now demonize, Slobadon Milosevic, is the man they built up as
>the guarantor of the Dayton peace accords, from which they excluded the
>Albanian Kosovars. The Rambouillet peace treaty, which NATO says it wants
>to impose on Serbia, will also have to be imposed on Kosovo as well,
>because it calls for complete dismantling of the Kosovo Liberation Army
>and denies Kosovo the independence the majority of its people seek.
>Several Kosavars who participated in the negotiations refused to sign the
>treaty. The logic of NATO intervention leads to a NATO protectorate in
>Kosovo, with NATO troops on the ground for years to come facing hostility
>from both Serbs and Kosovars. If the US was truly concerned for the
>Albanian Kosovars, it would have supported their demand for independence
>for Kosovo at Rambouillet.
>
>No US humanitarian concern was shown for ten years of massive nonviolent
>resistance by Albanian Kosovars through strikes, boycotts, demonstrations,
>and alternative institutions after Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomy in
>1989. Instead, they were excluded from the Dayton accords. Two years ago
>the KLA suddenly appeared, with weapons and mercenaries supplied by
>western intelligence agencies, and, as the London Times reported recently,
>financing from the heroin trade. The KLA's terrorist tactics have derailed
>the nonviolent mass movement in Kosovo and have given Melosevic the
>pretext he needed for increased repression. The violent turn in Kosovo
>follows a pattern that US geopolitical strategies have instigated in the
>Balkans in the 1990s. It was not humanitarian concerns that motivated the
>provisions the 1991 US Foreign Operations Appropriations Law concerning
>Yugoslavia, which cut off aid, credits, and loans to Yugoslavia when it
>did not hold separate elections in each of its six republics within six
>months. At the same time, the US was channeling money and arms to
>fascistic right-wing parties promoting ethnic chauvinism and separatism,
>parties that had not been seen in the forty-five years since the Nazis
>were driven out. This US law was adopted in November 1990. By May 1991,
>the right-wing nationalists had instigated secessionist civil wars in the
>richer republics, Slovenia and Croatia. In June they declared independence
>and were promptly recognized by Germany. In 1992 in Bosnia, the most
>multi-ethnic of the Yugoslav republics, the US sabotaged the agreement
>reached by Bosnia Muslim, Croatian, and Serb forces by encouraging Alija
>Izetbegovic, head of a right-wing Muslim party, to unilaterally declare
>independence under his presidency. In the ensuing deadly civil war,
>retired US generals planned Izetbegovics offensives against rival Muslim
>governments in Bosnia that broke with Izetbegovic and promoted
>multi-ethnic cooperation. In August 1995, the US generals planned
>Operation Storm, the bloodiest offensive in four years of civil war, where
>the Croation army drove over 100,000 Serbs from their ancestral homes in
>Krajina. Time and time again, the US undermined European-brokered peace
>agreements and encouraged right-wing separatist forces. These US actions
>were not humanitarian actions. They were about re-balkanizing the Balkans
>in order to dominate them.
>
>The US and NATO are using the pretext of concern for the rights of
>Albanian Kosovars as a cover for advancing their economic and geopolitical
>interests. NATOs intervention is the way US-led NATO imperialism intends
>to complete the dismemberment of the former multinational confederation
>that was Yugoslavia and transform it into a collection of easily dominated
>ethnic mini-states that are nothing more than NATO protectorates. Whatever
>its flaws, during the Cold War years Yugoslavia had remarkably carved out
>for itself a position of neutrality between the super-powers. It
>challenged both the Western capitalist and Soviet bureaucratic economic
>models with its experiments in workers self-management and market
>socialism. It federated the long balkanized Balkans. It industrialized
>more successfully than any other undeveloped East European country. But in
>1990, as the Warsaw Pact countries disintegrated, Yugoslavia was one of
>the last European holdouts against the neoliberal global order that the US
>and NATO sought to impose. Thus rebalkanization of the Balkans became the
>strategic objective of the US, Germany, and their NATO allies.
>
>NATOs bombing in Yugoslavia is an escalation of this policy. US-led NATO
>imperialism wants to secure pipeline routes and access to Caspian oil and
>gas in former Soviet republics. It wants to expand profitable exploitation
>of cheap labor by global corporations. It wants to legitimize NATOs post
>cold war mission of being the worlds police force, intervening anywhere
>unilaterally. It wants to extend US-led hegemony over the entire Eurasian
>land mass. It wants to justify the enormous expenditures made on new
>weapons like the Stealth B2 bomber now seeing its first military action in
>Yugoslavia.
>
>
>
>No Easy Answers
>
>There are no easy quick answers to the conflict in Kosovo. Just like
>Milosevic and the other nationalist regimes in the Balkan states, the
>US-led NATO forces are trying to resolve a political problem with violent
>force. Bombing will not resolve ethnic conflict in the Balkans. It will
>only harden the militarists on all sides and lead to occupation by NATO
>forces to enforce an unjust peace, which will meet with resistance and the
>loss of more lives, including American troops. Let us be clear that we
>oppose Milosevics reactionary nationalist project of a Greater Serbia and,
>in particular, condemn the repressive violence of the Yugoslav army in
>Kosovo. We also condemn the violence of the Kosovo Liberation Army against
>Serb civilians. We support the right of Albanian Kosavars to resist
>Milosevics repression and their right to self-determination and
>independence. We oppose the demonization of the entire Serb population,
>which of all the Balkan peoples most wanted to maintain a multicultural
>Yugoslavia. We must distinguish between Milosevics chauvinistic
>nationalism and the democratic movements among the people. We support
>pro-democracy movements in all the Balkan states.
>
>In particular, we support those democratic movements in the Balkans
>working for a voluntary confederation of free and equal states on a basis
>political and economic democracy and respect for ethnic diversity. Only a
>confederation of democratic republics can have the scale and strength to
>establish a democratic alternative to the NATO-sponsored neoliberal
>economic model that is exacerbating regional and ethnic inequalities in
>the Balkans. It will take many years to develop such an alternative given
>the legacy of the civil wars of the 1990s. NATOs intervention now is only
>strengthening the reactionary ultra-nationalist forces in all ethnic
>groups. The first victim of NATOs military intervention are the
>pro-democracy movements that could begin the process of creating a
>multicultural democracy in the Balkans.. The destruction of any such
>movements is precisely what the US-led NATO intervention intends, all the
>talk about humanitarian concerns to the contrary notwithstanding.
>
>
>
>Rebuild the Peace Movement
>
>We call for an immediate halt to NATO bombing in Yugoslavia.
>
>We call on the US to re-activate the UN (through the General Assembly, not
>the Security Council) and the OSCE (Organization for Security and
>Cooperation in Europe) to pursue non-coercive diplomacy and peace building
>steps, including:
>
>Re-negotiating an immediate cease fire
>Working closely with Russia and other European countries to facilitate
>negotiations
>Building a multilaterally-supported political process for new negotiations
>between the parties to the conflict within a  framework of international
>law
>Returning civilian observer-peace monitors to Kosovo
>Reasserting efforts to hold all actors accountable under international law
>for crimes, war crimes, and crimes against  humanity.
>We have no illusions that the US and NATO will pursue peace in the Balkans
>at the expense of their geopolitical ambitions without massive pressure
>and fundamental social change spearheaded by a pro-democracy peace
>movement in the US and Europe.
>
>We must work in direct solidarity with the anti-war, pro-democracy
>movements in all the Balkan states and support their nonviolent social
>struggles to lift oppression and resolve conflicts (for example, by
>building the campaign to support Radio B92, the independent Serbian
>anti-war, pro-democracy station recently banned by Milosevic).
>
>We must rebuild a peace movement in the US and Europe committed to
>eradicating US and NATO militarism and imperialism and to converting the
>vast resources of this now globalized Military-Industrial Complex to
>meeting the real human needs of people all around the world.
>
>We must put the dismantling of NATO high on the peace movements agenda.
>NATO was always been about keeping Europe safe for corporate capital by
>suppressing radical democratic movements internally as well as by
>repelling external threats -- real or imagined -- during the Cold War. Now
>NATO is transforming itself into imperialisms global police force. It is
>not in the interests of the majority of Americans, nor is it morally
>justifiable, for US imperialism, through NATO, to dictate to countries in
>the Eurasian land mass that they shall remain open to exploitation by
>US-based corporations. We must also put economic democracy on the peace
>movements agenda. Peace is not a single issue. It is a goal that requires
>fundamental social transformation. The peace movement must link to all
>popular movements resisting neoliberal project of deregulated trade and
>finance as the basis for the globalization corporate power and market
>forces. These forces certainly contributed to the deterioration of
>circumstances in the former Yugoslavia by exacerbating inequality between
>Yugoslavias republics, by burdening Yugoslavia with enormous foreign debts
>in the 1980s, and then by imposing IMF structural adjustment austerity
>instead of the debt relief and aid it gave to Poland and Russia in the
>1990s. These forces encouraged the bureaucratic and militaristic elites to
>enrich themselves from the privatization of Yugoslavias enterprises at the
>expense of the vast majority of Yugoslavs.
>
>Americans are victims of the NATO bombing, too. Resources devoted to US
>imperial ambitions and the Military/Industrial Complex are resources
>siphoned away from education, health care, economic security, our decaying
>cities, and our environment in the US. Rebuilding a peace movement to
>challenge these priorities is not only needed to enable people in the
>Balkans to determine their future, it is needed so Americans are free to
>determine their future as well.
>
>
>
>Solidarity with European Greens
>
>We intend to work in solidarity with Greens in Europe to bring an end to
>NATO's intervention in Yugoslavia and to support a European-based
>negotiation and peace process seeking resolution of European conflicts by
>European peoples without coercive interference by the US.. We are
>disappointed that the German Greens have not come out with an official and
>forthright statement calling for an end to NATO's military intervention in
>Yugoslavia, although we know many German Green Party members oppose the
>bombing.
>
>"The European Greens note:
>
>that there is widespread popular concern about the gross mistreatment of
>ethnic Albanian citizens in the Yugoslav region of Kosova by Yugolav state
>troops and police, the torching of villages and the creation of refugees,
>that the NATO governments' rationale for commencing bombing is that the
>Yugoslav government refused to sign the Rambouillet accords,
>that the Rambouillet talks were based on the assumptions of the Dayton
>agreement, when those assumptions do not apply to Kosova, and hence were
>fundamentally flawed,
>that the UN has not been asked and has not given its approval for the NATO
>military action, indeed that action is an infringement of the Vienna
>Convention (Art 52) which states "A treaty, the signature to which has
>been obtained through the threat of force...is illegal and void..."
>that the action is outside of NATO's mandate which is to protect its
>member states in the case of attack, and is thus a dangerous precendent
>for military interference in the internal affairs of any state offending a
>NATO member in the future,
>that much expert opinion, including several senior military officers and
>ex-EU Special Representative Karl Bildt, have declared that air strikes
>are useless without follow-up ground troops to reinforce their effect, yet
>the NATO governments have repeatedly declared that they will not commit
>their ground troops,
>"The European Greens therefore draw the conclusion that
>
>as NATO has no strategy for following up this action, that its purpose is
>to
>      (a) challenge internal questioning of the current purpose (and
>cost) of NATO itself,
>
>      (b) reinforce the impotence of the UN,
>
>      (c) remind the world community of the global military superiority
>of NATO member states, in particular the USA,
>
>"The European Greens demand that,
>
>a ceasefire be implemented immediately, by NATO, the KLA and Yugoslav
>forces,
>the UN agree to oversee it for a determined amount of time, during which
>the UN Assembly (not the Security Council) be convened to agree conditions
>for a new set of negotiations, using the OSCE mechanisms,
>following which Round Table talks commence chaired by the EU and including
>both regionally involved and neutral authorities."
>Submitted by: Marc Loveless, Starlene Rankin, and Lionel P. Trepanier,
>Coordinating Committee of the Greens/Green Party USA
>
>G/GPUSA Clearinghouse Contact information: P.O. Box 1134 Lawrence, MA
>01842 978-682-4353 gpusa@igc.org
>
>---
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