Ramsey Clark: Divide And Conquer: The Destruction of the Balkan Federation by US and NATO

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BALKAN FEDERATION
BY THE UNITED STATES AND NATO.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

PART ONE 1

Centuries of Balkan History Proclaim The Necessity
Of Federation To Prevent War. 1

I. Geography, History and The Rich Mixtures Of
Peoples, Cultures and Republics Conspired To
Create A Special Need For Government Capable
Of Assuring Peace, Equality and Justice In
The Balkans 1

II. The First Balkan Federation: 1919-1941 3

III The First Dismemberment of Yugoslavia: 1941-1945 4

IV For Nearly Half a Century, Yugoslavia Progressed
Domestically and Internationally as a Federal
Republic: 1945-1992 5

V The UN Should Act Now to Assist in Planning
the Creation of A Federation for the Balkans and Neighboring States 6

PART TWO 6

A BRIEF EXAMINATION OF THE VIOLENT DESTRUCTION OF
THE SOCIALIST FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA BY THE
UNITED STATES AND NATO 6

VI With the Economic Collapse of the USSR and
Eastern Bloc Nations the US and Several
Western European Nations Intervened Internally
In the Affairs of Yugoslavia And Its Several
Republic Supporting Secessionist Movements: 1990- 6

VII The Second Dismemberment of Yugoslavia and
The Balkanization of the Balkans: 1992- 8

VIII The US With NATO Commenced Wars Of Aggression
Against Bosnian Serbs and Serbia: 1993- 10

IX The US and NATO Committed Crimes Against
Peace and War Crimes in Their Wars of
Aggression Against Bosnian Serbs and Serbia 11

X The U.S. and NATO Must Be Held Accountable For
Their Illegal War Of Aggression Against Bosnian
Serbs and All Of Serbia, Including Kosovo 13

PART THREE 14

The U.N. Charter Does Not Contain The Power To Create
Criminal Courts And Courts Created By It Are
A Continuing Threat To Peace 14

XI The US Coerced The UN Security Council to Exceed
Its Powers and Create the First International
Criminal Tribunal Through Which The US Could Target
Enemies and Change Regimes 14

XII The US Coerced Creation Of The International
Criminal Tribunal For Former Yugoslavia to
Change Regimes, Weaken Balkan States And Demonize
Serbian Leadership 15

XIII The Bush Administration Intends to Pursue
Unilateral Policies Manifested by Its Wars of
Aggression Against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and
Iraq, the Creation of Targeted AD Hoc Criminal
Tribunals, and Its Destructive Acts Against
International Institutions, Treaties and Law.
The US Can Be Deterred Only By United Commitment
of Members of the United Nations to Its Mandate. 24

XIV The Indictment of the President of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic,
Was A Politically Determined Discriminatory Prosecution 27

XV The Sheer Magnitude And Scope Of The Trial Is Not
Capable of, or Appropriate For Judicial Resolution And
The Pace Of the Trial of Slobodan Milosevic Threatens His
Health and Right To Due Process of Law 29

XVI The UN Should Act Now To Abolish the Ad Hoc
International Criminal Tribunals It Has Created. 30

Conclusion 31

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BALKAN FEDERATION BY THE UNITED STATES AND NATO

INTRODUCTION

The break-up of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was accomplished by foreign pressures, interventions and a war of aggression by the United States and NATO against Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It was made possible by the failure of the United Nations to meet its responsibility to prevent such acts of force and end the scourge of war.
The International War Crimes Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, created by the Security Council at the insistence of the US, was part of the US plans for dismemberment of Yugoslavia and to intimidate and destroy leaders who were committed to its sovereignty and independence.
The military assaults by the US and NATO on Yugoslavia violated the Charter of the UN, the Nuremberg Charter, the NATO treaty, the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. The creation of the ICTY violated the Charter of the UN which does not empower the Security Council to create such courts. Its limited jurisdiction and authorizing statute violated numerous provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Both the aggression and the tribunal were intended to destroy the “sovereign equality” of a Member of the U.N, the principle on which “The Organization is based.” U.N. Charter Article II(1).
The Dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the wars of aggression, the failure to pay reparations for thousands of lives lost and billions of dollars of destruction and the illegal ad hoc criminal tribunal are continuing threats to peace.
The United Nations must act now to help form a new Balkan federation assuring equal sovereignty with all U.N. Members. For the integrity of the U.N., it must require accountability by the U.S. and NATO for the death and destruction they inflicted on Yugoslavia. For the legality of the U.N. it must abolish all the ad hoc criminal tribunals it has created and assure the International Criminal Court all the support it needs to fairly and effectively prosecute international crimes against peace, humanity and war crimes and such further jurisdiction as may be necessary to insure international peace and stability.

PART ONE

Centuries of Balkan History Proclaim The Necessity Of Federation To Prevent War.

I. Geography, History and Rich Mixtures Of Peoples, Cultures and Religions Conspired To Create A Special Need For a Federal Government Capable Of Assuring Peace, Equality and Justice In The Balkans

The history of the Balkans over centuries has been dominated by violent struggles of its many parts and peoples, cultures and religions, for self determination and independence from foreign empires. The Ottoman Turks brought yet another alien civilization to the Balkans beginning in the 14th century which occupied large areas of the peninsula. For the next half millennium it introduced a foreign culture in conflict with both Orthodox Russia and western European civilizations that held sway over the region. For the next half millennium the Ottoman Empire both conspired and contended at various times with the British, Austrian, Germany, Russia and French Empires for domination and exploitation of the Balkans and the subjugation of its people.
The southern and western Balkans under Ottoman control experienced near constant rebellion and violence during most of the 19th century.
The Serbs, Greeks and other struggled for independence, usually separately, but always aware of the plight of each other. The Serbian uprising of 1804 began, as is often the case, from a local conflict that sparked a full scale war for national liberation. The other Empires with interests in the region, Russia, France, Great Britain and Austria, generally found their opposition to national liberation greater than their opposition to the Ottoman, or other Empires, much as the European and US empires with interests in the Carribean opposed the slave rebellion in Haiti in 1791 more than they opposed the other empires competing for the wealth of the region. The spoils of empire are last for all when peoples theretofore subjugated establish their own free and independent government.
In 1815, a second Serbian uprising against Ottoman rule achieved limited autonomy in part of Serbia.
From 1812 through 1850 Muslims in Bosnia, overwhelmingly Slavs whose forebears had converted to Islam, revolted sporadically against the Ottoman Empire seeking to maintain and expand the power and privilege they had gained under it.
The northern Balkans was dominated by the Austrian Empire from the seventeenth century until the end of World War I in 1918. In the year 1848, Serbs and Croats joined Hungarians and some other nations in political uprisings aimed at securing national autonomy for their peoples but fearing the Ottoman, under the protection of the Austrian Empire. The Russians invaded the region to restore the status quo. At the same time, France invaded Italy to prop up the western half of the Austrian Empires.
Thereafter the Austrians sought to crush Serbian and Croatian aspirations for self determination by force. Among its methods, Austria permitted Hungarian nobility to exploit the Vojvodina region. Later it used Russia, and then Bismarck’s new German Empire as allies to gain southward expansion of its Empire into the Balkans at the expense of the Turks.
In 1875 the Serbian national struggle for independence spread into Bosnia and Herzegovina. Similar revolts occurred among the Bulgarians and Romanians. In part to annex Romanian lands as agreed to with the Austrians, Russia engaged the Ottoman Empire in war in 1877.
With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Russia, European powers divided rule over the Balkans among themselves in the Congress of Berlin of 1878.
By an agreement between Britain Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck, Austria occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina where Serbs were a majority depriving them of self rule. To give an appearance of balance after the subjugation of Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro were finally given full independence, which they had largely exercised for some years. To deter Serbia from any attempt to unit Serbs in one country, a continuing concern of the empires, Bismarck, Disraeli and the other powers at the Congress of Berlin agreed that Austrian troops should be stationed in the Sandjak region dividing Serbia and Montenegro to assure continuing political separation. In 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The experience in the north of the Balkans, Slovenia and Croatia, under the Austria-Hungarian Empire during the centuries of Ottoman occupation in the Balkans had been little better. The people suffered under foreign domination and exploitation. The violence of several centuries had forced migrations among the Balkans states with large populations of Serbs moving into Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia. Croatians moved into Bosnia and Hungarians moved into Vojvodina where they settled and lived, some families for centuries, retaining most of their old ways and loyalties. Many Croatians, Macedonians and Hungarians moved into Serbia and thousands of Albanians from Kosovo relocated to Belgrade and other cities in Serbia where their rights were protected.
To protect themselves from powerful neighbors and internal strife, small Balkan States sought independence, economic security and physical safety in coalitions.
In 1911, a loose Balkan League of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria was formed to strengthen its members against the declining Ottoman Empire.
The following year the First Balkan War broke out between Turkey and members of the Balkan League which ended in July 1913 in victory for the Balkan federation. At the conference in London establishing the terms of peace, Britain and Austria dominated decisions over new borders. Albania was made independent of Turkey, which had long controlled it, but placed under international control dominated by Britain and Austria.
A Second Balkan war followed from the terms of the London conference in late 1913. Combatants were Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Romania and Turkey. While the conflict was quickly settled, tensions from it simmered until the outbreak of World War I.
In 1914 Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo by Bosnian revolutionaries seeking separation from Austria and to join Bosnia with Serbia. Austria declared war on Serbia following the assassination its Archduke, and Crown Prince, Ferdinand and with Germany, planned and carried out deadly assault on Serbia.
World War I was extremely violent for the Balkans, the Serbs suffering more than 800,000 deaths resisting Austria and Germany. Ivo Andrics’ book The Bridge on the Drina remains an invaluable portrayal of this history, centered in Bosnia from the arrival of the Turks in the 14th Century to the end of World War I from the perspective of all the peoples who lived in this oppressed region.
II. The First Balkan Federation: 1919-1941

After World War I, it was clear that a federation of peoples in the Balkans, predominantly Slavs, however difficult to achieve, was essential to a future of peace in the region and beyond. No one understood this better than the people who lived there.
The idea of a federation of South Slav nations had existed since the end of the 18th Century. It was seen as a necessary shield against domination of foreign empires fighting over Balkans soil and bodies and the internal divisions caused by such conflicts.
A consideration of the history of Yugoslav federation since 1918 sheds light on the future course required for peace if history is not to repeat itself once again in this beautiful, tragic land.
Creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 was recognition of the necessity for a unity among the conflicting cultures, religions, histories, alliances and antagonisms of societies within the region. The new union was supported, if ineffectively, by the League of Nations which understood the importance of Balkan federation but was able to contribute only modestly to its fragile struggle.
Nine difficult years of external pressures, internal strife and dictatorial measures, were all too similar to the insecure, painful and divisive experiences under the former empires from Europe and Asia. Pressures from more powerful neighbors, Italy and others seeking to dismember it, led the Balkan Kingdom to enter into a treaty of friendship with France in 1927 in an effort to protect its sovereignty and unity. Growing tensions culminated in the assassinations in the Parliament of Croat member Stjepan Radic in 1928. Radic was head of the Croatian Peasant Party.
In 1929, King Alexander changed the name of the precarious and struggling nation to Yugoslavia (Nation of South Slaves) and pressed for reforms in the division of power in order to hold the ancient antagonistic sectors together.
In 1934 while on a state visit to France, King Alexander and the Foreign Minister of France were assassinated in Marseilles by a Macedonian with close connections to Ante Pavelic, a Croat separatist associated with a Croatian paramilitary group known as Ustashe, and with Italian and Hungarian authorities.
Thereafter, under King Alexanders’ cousin Regent Paul, Yugoslavia was caught in the growing tensions between the European Axis powers, Germany and Italy, and the principal Allies, Britain and France.
Yugoslavia struggling to maintain its neutrality, entered into an alliance with Czechoslovakia and Romania, called the Little Entente to no avail.
Because of proximity and greater coercive acts, Yugoslavia was forced to align with the Axis nations and in March 1941 signed the Tripartite Pact of the Axis. The next day, angry crowds and army established new government. It renounced Yugoslavian acceptance of the Tripartite agreement. Despite all these difficulties, there was a federation and no war in the Balkans for twenty two years.

III The First Dismemberment of Yugoslavia: 1941-1945

In April 1941, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary invaded, divided and occupied Yugoslavia. Slovenia was divided between Italy and Germany. Germany occupied Serbia. Ante Pavelic, head of the Ustashe, was placed in control of the independent state of Croatia which included all of Bosnia. Bulgaria occupied Macedonia and part of Serbia. Hungary occupied Vojvodina. Albania, controlled by Italy divided Kosovo with Bulgaria.
Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were killed during the war years, perhaps as many as a million. Some of the worst atrocities of World War II were committed against Yugoslavia and directed primarily at the Serbs.
The Croatian Ustashe fascists acting independently and for the Nazis conducted assaults of liquidation against Serbs, Jews and Romani, or gypsy people. Their concentration camps, the most infamous at Jasenovac, where as many as six hundred thousand people died, were among the most vicious in Europe. Vladmir Dedijer, an internationally respected Serbian writer and human rights activist, compiled an important report on these atrocities and the role the Catholic Church played.
Yugoslav Partisan resistance fighters, lead by Tito, initially centered in Bosnia, waged effective attacks against German forces and the Ustashe Croats from the mountainous areas of the country. By 1944 they controlled much of Serbia and had 250,000 men under arms. Yugoslavia resistance was greater and more effective than that of any other country overrun by the Nazis. They joined Soviet armies as they approached from the east in the summer of 1944 and took Belgrade in October of that year. US air raids on Belgrade on Easter 1945 created lasting resentment. Only the Nazi aerial bombardment of Belgrade in 1941 had been worse. Two US planes were shot down over Yugoslavia in 1946 revealing the continuing anger created by the Eastern assault and as an assertion of independence.
The Yalta Conference among the USSR, the US and Britain in February 1945 revealed continuing competing interests in the Balkans and particular concerns of the British, and the Yugoslavia borders with Italy and Austria. The British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden expressed opposition to a Yugoslav- Bulgarian pact of alliance which could have strengthened the independence of the Balkans. The “Big Three” recognized Marshal Tito, and called for the creation of a new government on an agreement he had made. The new Yugoslavia reached out to provide aid to Greece and Albania and reached out as well, to Bulgaria and Romania, hoping to create a truly pan-Balkan federation later in the 1940’s.

IV For Nearly Half a Century, Yugoslavia Progressed Domestically and Internationally as a Federal Republic: 1945-1992

Arising from the ruins of World War II, Yugoslavia demonstrated its ability to function effectively with its diverse religions, histories, traditions, ambitions and interests. A Federation of six Republics emerged before 1945. It adopted its first Constitution in January 1946. The Constitution contained affirmative provisions specifically protecting the three major religions, assuring religious tolerance, minority rights. It recognized the different natures and traditions of the six republics and protected even from federal interference, striving for political balance to fulfill the different needs and interests of its distinct parts and peoples. As early as 1946 and 1947, Yugoslavia discussed federation with Bulgaria, but Soviet opposition prevented action.
In 1953, a new constitution achieved better balance and incorporated progressive provisions including limitations on the terms of office to two and assuring fidelity to the constitution by empowering the Courts to invalidate legislation in violation of the constitution.
Initially Yugoslavia appeared to be close to the Soviet Union, but in 1948 the USSR attempted to overthrow its government and expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform, primarily because of its aggressive modernization of its industry and its independent foreign policy. Yugoslavia never joined the Warsaw Treaty Organization.
Thereafter Yugoslavia, despite its history and location between contending powers was successful in pursuing an independent course between pressures from the east and west, primarily the US and the USSR. President Tito was courted by and visited both countries.
Yugoslavia provided important leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement which helped maintain some balance during the Cold War and avoid conflicts which wracked countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and the America’s. The movement was an important symbol of the possibility of independence for smaller nations from foreign militarism, interference in domestic affairs and economic exploitation.
As the economic collapse of the USSR and its Eastern European bloc approached in the late 1980’s, Yugoslavia was in the strongest political and economic position of all the Slavic countries and expected to flourish free of Cold War pressures. But the United States and other interests were already working on regime change and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. The US began exerting its influence and providing aid for separation in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia. Other European governments, especially Germany, supported and aided the US actions.
Foreign influences seeking geopolitical and economic advantage and no longer confronted by the opposing force of the USSR, fed old prejudices and ambitions for the fragmentation of the federation. When Yugoslavia was finally free of cold war pressure, secessionist movements fostered by powerful foreign governments primarily the US, achieved its second dismemberment. Regime change in Serbia itself was a major ideological motivation of the US. A socialist government would not be permitted to survive, however benevolent and flexible its economic and foreign policies.

V The UN Should Act Now to Assist in Planning the Creation of A Federation for the Balkans and Neighboring States.

If the lessons of history are learned, a federation including Balkan nations will be understood as essential to peace and prosperity in the area. The General Assembly should assist in developing plans and support for federations working with the European Union and nations in the Balkans and adjacent areas.
The European Union has already considered proposals for a Western Balkans union to include the former republics of Yugoslavia, except Slovenia, and including Albania. It is important for such proposals to be developed with all the nations in the area participating.
The overview of the General Assembly is important to help find the ideal form of federation and membership and provide resources to accomplish the purpose. NATO members participated in the second dismemberment of Yugoslavia and retain economic and other interests in the region. A new federation including Balkan nations must not become a southern ghetto for Europe’s poorest, but a free, vital and prosperous part of the world community.
Accountability for the tragedy of the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia and stability and prosperity in the region requires UN guidance and support for the ideal federation for the peoples of the Balkans.
PART TWO

A BRIEF EXAMINATION OF THE VIOLENT DESTRUCTION OF THE SOCIALIST FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA BY THE UNITED STATES AND NATO

VI With the Economic Collapse of the USSR and Eastern Bloc Nations the US and Several Western European Nations Intervened Internally In the Affairs of Yugoslavia And Its several Republics Supporting Secessionist Movements: 1990-

In November 1990, the U.S. Congress enacted legislation sponsored by the Bush Administration requiring the termination of all forms of U.S. credit and loans to Yugoslavia, if within six months each of the six republics within the federation did not hold separate elections. The purpose was to break-up Yugoslavia, creating an early incentive for secession by Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia. Under the guise of democracy, the US acted directly in the internal affairs of the federation.
This was a technique for regime change the US had employed before and since, most recently in 2003 in Liberia and Venezuela where it has insisted on new elections in violation of national constitutions despite the international certification of the fairness of the election of incumbent presidents.
The history of US attempts and successes at regime change is a history of tragedy for the countries involved. Consider only Iran in 1953; Guatemala in 1954; the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1962; South Vietnam in 1963; Chile in 1970 and 1973; Haiti and many other Western Hemisphere countries over the decades. US intervened in Nicaragua repeatedly in the 1980s and 1990s, effectively stole the country from the Sandinistas by combination of economic warfare, financing the Contras in military insurgency and financing opposition politicians.
In Angola the US demanded elections and a drastic 1/3 reduction in the Angolan Army to prevent intimidation of voters. After President Dos Santos, who was opposed by the US, won re-election by an overwhelming majority, hostile UNITA forces led by Jonas Savimbi invaded and over ran most of the Angola before being stopped. The cost in lives and property was enormous. In Rwanda in 2003 the US supported elections in which opposition parties and candidates were prevented from effective participation resulting in a claimed 95% vote for Paul Kagame to create the appearance of democracy.
At the same time the US legislation demanded separate elections in each of the six republics of Yugoslavia, it provided aid and assistance to Slovenia, Croatia, Muslims and Croats in Bosnia and to Macedonia to build support for secession and to train and provide arms to achieve it.
The US legislation addressed to Yugoslavia also provided that each republic which held independent elections would receive economic aid from the US, again by-passing the federal government in Belgrade and providing a strong incentive for separation. Economic support was specifically authorized for “democratic” organizations within the republics for “emergency humanitarian aid and protection of human rights.”
This is a means used by the US to create internal opposition and destabilize governments the US opposes as it does in Cuba among many other places today. It is used against democracies more frequently than other form of government. It is a strategy for regime change that supports those who would take over government, but also supports existing governments challenged by parties, or leaders the US opposes. A US government agency, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) provides millions of dollars to frustrate self determination in countries where the US has an interest in elections.
Such unilateral interventions are destructive of sovereignty, independence, self determination and peace. They should be the subject of international criminal sanctions. US funding specifically and openly targeting the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was used to support secessionist movements in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia while the US acted in direct opposition to the federal government of Yugoslavia.
The same legislation directed US representatives in international financial and trade organizations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to use their influence to have those institutions adopt the same policies. This brought the enormous economic power of international finance into the service of US policies of political and economic subversion and discouraged unilateral support, loans, trade and investment for Belgrade from abroad.
The legislation was designed to bring about the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Germany, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands and other European countries following the US lead, joined in the threat of the economic isolation of Yugoslavia by February 1991, unless multi party elections in each of the constituent republics were held promptly.
Arms were shipped to Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia from European countries. Private funds were raised in the US and with public funds sent to the northern Yugoslav states for arms, supplies and training to enforce secession. On March 5, 1991, a federal army base at Gospic in Croatia was attacked.
The United Nations and its members seeking peace, political and economic independence and sovereign equality should have acted to preserve the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
In the 1990s, forgotten were the dismemberment of Yugoslavia during World War II, the slaughter of its peoples and its heroic resistance far exceeding that of any nation wholly occupied by Axis forces. The re-emergence of Yugoslavia from the devastation of World War II strong, independent, and progressive, able to avoid domination by the East, or West during the Cold War, a leader in the non-Aligned and forty-five years of peace confirmed the viability of Balkan federation and its necessity for peace in Europe, east Asia, the Middle East and the larger region.
To the extent that reform of the Yugoslavia federation was needed, UN efforts should have addressed those issues. Its failure to do so enabled the US to have its way with results that left the US unrestrained and set a precedent for US unilateralism and the UN failure to prevent the US from attacking Iraq in 2003.
President Milosevic struggled with all his ability to preserve the Federal Republic. It was his Constitutional duty to do so. His compromises with the forces for secession of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, at Dayton for Bosnia all were intended to preserve peace at the price of equal sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Approval of the April 27, 1992 Constitution for a third Yugoslavia reduced to Serbia and Montenegeo was his effort to preserve federation so that it might endure and grow to its ideal limits as chosen by the people that lived there. All his efforts to preserve the union did not alter the US determination for Balkan debilitation and regime change in Serbia. Preserving the Yugoslav union was also the duty of every nation, organization and individual that wanted peace, prosperity, and self determination in the Balkans and for other peoples affected by its destiny.

VII The Second Dismemberment of Yugoslavia and The Balkanization of the Balkans: 1992-

On June 25, 1991 Croatia and Slovenia announced their independence. The second dismemberment of Yugoslavia had begun. The US directly provided training and military supplies for Slovenian, Croatian and Bosnian armies. In October 1991 formal proclamations of independence were made by Croatia and Slovenia. Germany quickly recognized both as new nations. It was followed by the US and other European countries in early 1992.
In September 1991 the European Community had endeavored to negotiate a political settlement in Yugoslavia in a conference at the Hague chaired by Lord Carrington, former British foreign secretary under Margaret Thatcher. In November the UN took over the peace effort appointing Cyrus Vance, former US Secretary of State under President Carter as its Special Envoy.
The European Community reentered the negotiations, creating a mechanism for the recognition of any Yugoslavia member republic past, or present, informing each republic on December 16, 1991, though a panel chaired by Robert Badinter, former Justice Minister of France under President Mitterand, that it could apply for international recognition. Within one week Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Macedonia had applied for recognition.
In addition to inadequate, sometimes harmful efforts by the UN, the European Community and a host of nations acting independently, leadership throughout Yugoslavia sought to prevent war. In a notable effort, Bosnian, Muslim, Croat and Serb leaders meeting in Lisbon agreed on March 19, 1992 to a unified, multi- ethnic and peaceful Bosnia which could have been. But Alija Izetbegovic, head of the right wing Muslim Party for Democratic Action in Bosnia, backed by the US, proclaimed a Bosnian government under his Presidency, excluding other political parties and Bosnian Croat and Serb leaders. Violence broke out and continued for 3 1/2 years in Bosnia.
The US action was consistent with its enormous support of Muslims in their struggle to drive the USSR out of Afghanistan and of Muslim separatists in predominantly Muslim Republics of the USSR. Violence and conflict between Slavic peoples and Muslims promoted by the US has eroded the power of the two greatest barriers to US world domination since World War II. The war in Bosnia like the war in Afghanistan brought Muslims from all over the world to fight Slavs. In the process it fostered the belief that Islam was under attack and Muslim militance. The US policy has nurtured extremism within both the Slavic and Muslim populations each of which is enormous and strong, and contributed to instability and violence worldwide.
Under US pressure, the UN Security Council in 1992 imposed sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia complementing the unilateral sanctions of the US, declaring it responsible for civil war within its territory. On April 27, 1992, a new constitution for the remaining states, Serbia and Montenegro was affirmed. A new Yugoslavia, vastly diminished and more embattled than ever, was born. The army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ceased operations and withdrew to the greatly diminished third federation of Southern Slavs.
In May 1992, the General Assembly granted UN membership to Slovenia and Croatia. On September 22, 1992, it suspended the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from work of UN bodies. Macedonia seceded from Yugoslavia and achieved UN recognition as the “former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia” in April 1993.
A consequence of secession and the ensuing conflicts was a balkanization of the Balkans beyond anything the region had ever known. “Ethnic cleansing” was rampant and refugees among Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrans and Romanis streamed toward the perceived security of kindred populations.
By the end of 1995 more than 500,000 Serbs were driven from Croatia, fully 12% of the entire population. Most left the Krajina area of Croatia to which their forebears had fled from the Ottomans centuries before. Refugees from all over the former federal republic, caught up in violence, seeking safety, or re uniting with families, created the most intensely segregated area in the world. Altogether Serbia was supporting more than a million refugees by 1998 adding to the enormous strain on its depressed economy.
The UN Security Council under pressure from the US imposed severe economic sanctions on Serbia on May 30, 1992, blocking exports, imports and vital shipping on the Danube injuring all the nations of the Balkans, including Greece and most other European states. The combined effect of US and UN sanctions is still felt and shipping on the Danube is only now slowly returning.
During 1992, the economy of all six republics collapsed. Industrial output fell by 25% compared to 1990 which had seen an 11% decline and an 8.5% shrinkage of gross domestic product. Per capita income in Serbia declined from $3000 in 1990 to $700 in 1991. Ninety percent of all trade of the federation had been within and among the six republics before 1990 and only 10% with other nations. Trade among the former states has been radically curtailed since dismemberment.
A Pentagon document leaked to the NY Times and published on March 8, 1992, forewarned the wary:
It is of fundamental importance to preserve NATO as the primary instrument of Western defense and security as well as the channel for US influence and participation in European security affairs… We must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine NATO.

The document proclaimed the most important basis of US policy to be
…the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the US…. The US should be positioned to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated.

It is instructive that Dick Cheney, now Vice President, was Secretary of Defense at the time. Paul Wolfowitz, now Deputy Secretary of Defense, was the alleged author.
An op-ed piece in the N.Y. Times on November 29, 1992 gave further evidence of US intentions. Entitled “Operation Balkan Storm”, it stated “A win in the Balkans would establish US leadership in the post-Cold War world in a way Operation Desert Storm never could.” The author, retired U.S. General Michael J. Dugan was the Chief of Staff of the US. Air Force in September 1990 when the US was planning operation Desert Storm and George Kinney who was classified with the US Department of State.
General Dugan was removed from his position after an interview in September 1990 in which he listed civilian targets in Iraq stating “the cutting edge would be downtown Baghdad.” His continuing influence is found in the fact that this is what happened to Baghdad in 1991, again in 2003, occasionally in between, and to Belgrade in 1999.
With secession, violence broke out. There were brief military clashes in Slovenia, more protracted combat and violence in Croatia and continuing deadly clashes and ethnic violence and “cleansing” in Bosnia over a period of more than three years, primarily between Serbs, or Croats and Muslims.

VIII The US With NATO Commenced Wars Of Aggression Against Bosnian Serbs and Serbia: 1993-

The US, seeking to create the appearance of an international action, enlisted NATO which it dominated, and without Security Council approval began a war of aggression against Yugoslavia, starting with sporadic bombing in Bosnia from 1993 to 1995.
Under the distraction and protection of US bombing attacks in August 1995 called “Operation Storm”, the Croatian Army with US military assistance and guidance from the US Ambassador and other US leadership cleansed the Krajina area of Croatia of more than 300,000 Serb civilians, killing thousands. NATO aerial assaults during the operation exceeded 4000 bombing sorties. Leading the Croatian assault was General Agim Cheku who would later lead the Kosovo Liberation Army during massive US/NATO aerial assaults on Serbia, including Kosovo.
The US took over peace negotiations in Bosnia again in 1995, replacing UN and EU efforts, assuring further fragmentation of the region. Convening meetings at a US Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio attended by President Milosevic, the US forced recognition of a Constitution for an independent Bosnia that divided the small economically unviable area into two apartheid like portions. The agreement signed in November 1995 provided for the occupation of Bosnia by 60,000 NATO troops.
Violence spread from Bosnia to Kosovo. The KLA with US support conducted a growing terrorist-guerilla upheaval against the Serbian government, Serb population and loyal citizens of all ethnicities. Serbia reinforced police capacities in Kosovo to provide security and prevent KLA assaults. With violence escalating, the Serbian Army attacked the KLA to restore order. The US and NATO began aerial assaults on Serbia on March 24, 1999 which continued for 78 days to June 10 inflicting billions of dollars of damage to the vital facilities of the country and taking thousands of civilians lives.

IX The US and NATO Committed Crimes Against Peace and War Crimes in Their Wars of Aggression Against Bosnian Serbs and Serbia

The US, in defiance of the Charter of the United Nations, the Nuremberg Charter, the Geneva Conventions and other international laws, joined by NATO, initiated and led attacks against Serbs in Bosnia and against the Republic of Serbia killing thousands of civilians and destroying billions of dollars of vital civilian facilities, buildings and other property.
The UN Charter, to end the scourge of war, recognizes the “sovereign equality” of all its Members and prohibits “the threat or use of force” by one Member against another. Article II(2) and (4).
While the Security Council may call on Members to contribute military forces to confront threats to, or breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression, Members cannot commit acts of war, or threaten, or use force without explicit authorization of the Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter, except “in self defense if an armed attack occurs against” it and then only until the Security Council has taken measures to restore peace and security, or exercised authority as provided in Article 51.
No one attacked, or threatened, the US, or any other NATO member and the US and NATO never sought authority from the Security Council to attack Yugoslavia.
There is no legal basis for a claim by the US that its attacks in Bosnia and Serbia were in self defense, or otherwise legal. General Wesley K. Clark, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and a General in the US Army wrote in his book “Waging Modern War”
It was coercive diplomacy, the use of armed forces to impose the political will of the NATO nations on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, or more specifically, on Serbia. The NATO nations voluntarily undertook this war. It was not forced on them, nor was it strictly defensive…. It was much more like the interventions of an earlier era… Id at p. 418.

General Clark is now a candidate for the office of the President of the US.
The US violated its obligations to the United Nations and became an outlaw nation when it unilaterally initiated military aggression against Bosnian Serbs and later against Serbia. The violations challenged the Security Council to act and its failure to do so weakened its authority in the international community and violated its awesome duty to end the scourge of war.
The US inducement of NATO to support its unlawful attacks, brought NATO into violation of the UN Charter and the NATO Charter, as well. It increased the challenge to UN authority by involving an organization of the richest countries, all Caucasian, including most of the Colonial powers of recent centuries, the most sophisticated military technologies, the greatest arms industries and stockpiles of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. It set a precedent for NATO’s illegal involvement in Afghanistan which brought the youth of rich nations, white and Christian bearing deadly, sophisticated arms to attack a poor, Muslim nation of dark skinned people. It wrested military support from Canada and European nations in a military organization created to confront the USSR and dominated by the US challenging the broader based European Community which dealt with all the problems of the Continent including security. The need for NATO has happily expired. It should be abolished. But its use as an international military and police force in underdeveloped countries is the worst possible choice for a world seeking peace, for a peaceful planet.
The violation also set a dangerous precedent, which the US followed as it threatened to do, for its massive unilateral “Shock and Awe” war of aggression against Iraq in March and April, 2003 and its unlawful military occupation which continues. At least 30,000 Iraqi lives have been lost, including thousands of civilians. Their deaths are rarely noticed and never counted in the international media. No single violation of the UN Charter has created a greater risk of wars without end. Daily violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and terrorist bombs in Casablanca, Jakarta, and against the UN in Baghdad are warning signs of what may come.
The Nuremberg Charter makes “Crimes Against Peace” the first of the three offenses it defines, followed by “War Crimes” and “Crimes Against Humanity”. Principle VI, Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal. The first crime against peace is a war of aggression. Principle VI(a)(i). Id. It is the most serious of all international crimes because it unleashes the demons of war with the uncontrollable and unforeseeable consequences that can follow.
The US and NATO war crimes committed in their assaults which began February 5, 1994 with attacks against Bosnian Serb military facilities and continued through the massive 78 day aerial assault on civilians and civilian facilities in Serbia in 1999 was a celebration of war against defenseless people. Direct bombardment of cities including Belgrade, Pristina, Novi Sad and Nis made civilians and civilian facilities the direct object of attack taking thousands of civilian lives in violation of the Geneva Convention 1977, Protocol 1 Additional, Article 51.
Apartment houses, homes, hospitals, schools, office buildings and other facilities essential to support civilian life were damaged and destroyed. Bridges across the Danube at Novi Sad and elsewhere in Serbia were destroyed. The Serb radio and television building in the heart of Belgrade was targeted with cruise missiles and reduced to rubble, killing 16 people and injuring others. Many other radio and TV facilities were attacked and destroyed. Housing for refugees was attacked in Belgrade and elsewhere.
In Kosovo, among the many attacks on civilians, the heart of Pristina was destroyed, the university and many other facilities there were extensively damaged.
Elsewhere in Kosovo, remembered by persons all over the world who watched films of the attacks on T.V., a train crossing a bridge over the Grdelica gorge was attacked by US aircraft on April 12, 1999, causing many deaths. On April 15 a refugee convoy near Djakovisa was attacked by US planes killing scores. On May 14, the village of Korisa was attacked with 87 reported dead.
Other fatal NATO attacks against Serbia were reported daily by the international media worldwide.
On April 22, 1999 the home of President Milosevic, hundreds of feet from any other structure in a wooded residential area of Belgrade, was destroyed. The family survived only because they were not home when the missiles struck.
Huge amounts of depleted uranium were spread by bombs and missiles throughout Serbia promising death from cancers, leukemia, tumors, and future birth defects to the population and to occupying NATO personnel in Kosovo. The reported unprecedented incidence of cancer among Italian soldiers who had been stationed in Kosovo created alarm in Italy and in other countries who contributed troops as early as 2000. The long term consequences for the population, the members of the occupying forces, subsequent generations and the environment are unknown.
Cluster bombs fell among apartment houses in Novi Sad, in the major regional hospital complex in Nis, the suburbs of Belgrade and generously elsewhere.
The central heating plant for New Belgrade was bombed into scrap metal leaving hundreds of thousands of people with the prospect of a heatless winter.
The Chinese Embassy in New Belgrade was targeted and extensively damaged, killing three persons, on May 27, 1997 one week before the end of the bombing. The Greek Consulate in Nis, a prominent 19th Century building, was damaged by US/NATO bombs. Lesser acts have caused bigger wars.
The bombing of Yugoslavia came in part from airfields in Italy, Hungary and Turkey recalling past aggressions on southern Slavs from those quarters and in creating new hostility among nations that have warred against each other in the past.
Already nations are using the precedent of US assassinations and attempts to assassinate in foreign countries and its wars of aggression to commit the same crimes. Both Pakistan and India have cited US conduct to justify military, interventions in Ksahmir. Israel cites US conduct to justify its almost daily assassinations of Palestinians and on October 4, ITS bombing raids in Syria.
These crimes are a small illustration of what the US and NATO war of aggression inflicted on the defenseless people of Yugoslavia.
X The US and NATO Must Be Held Accountable For Their Illegal War Of Aggression Against Bosnian Serbs And All Of Serbia, Including Kosovo

U.S. and NATO caused the deaths of thousands of people and inflicted billions of dollars in property damages against Serbs in Bosnia, primarily in Republika Srpska, and later throughout Serbia, including concentrated attacks in Kosovo. All the deaths and destruction came from aerial assaults. Because the U.SN failed to address their illegality, these lawless assaults, lead to later wars of aggression by the U.S. in Afghanistan where it was later assisted by NATO and in Iraq. Together they threaten the utility, credibility and very existence of the United Nations when it is most needed. To assure the integrity of the Charter of the United Nations, there must be accountability for these crimes and reparations for the deaths and destruction they inflicted.
The spectacle of a superpower capable of destroying any country on earth, unilaterally attacking a nation that is no possible threat to it and is defenseless against its bombs and missiles pose the greatest danger to world peace and are the deadliest terrorist acts on the planet.
The United Nations should assume leadership in compelling accountability by the US and NATO through payments to families of persons killed by their illegal acts and for public and private properties destroyed. There must not be impunity for wars of aggression, or profits for aggressor nations through economic exploitation of their victims, through contracts for reconstruction, or from profits from privatization of public utilities, services and properties.

PART THREE
The U.N. Charter Does Not Contain The Power To Create Criminal Courts And Courts Created By It Are A Continuing Threat To Peace

XI The US Coerced The UN Security Council to Exceed Its Powers and Create the First International Criminal Tribunal Through Which The US Could Target Enemies and Change Regimes

The Charter of the United Nations was “forged” at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. in August and October 1944 and San Francisco during April to June 1945. The United States and each of the other four permanent members of the Security Council, all victors in World War II, though already wary allies, were given the power to veto Security Council resolutions, as a power demanded by the five most powerful nations, at the risk of paralyzing the UN.
Not a word in the Charter implies that power is conferred on the Security Council to create any Court. The structure of the Charter, the nature of the powers delegated by it, and the incorporation into the Charter and the Charter provisions for Amendment, of the Statute for the International Court of Justice, its authority narrowly defined and strictly limited, belie the delegation of any power to create any criminal court.
If power to create a criminal court can be tortured from the terms of the Charter, then there is no limitation on the power of the Security Council to do whatever it chooses.
Above all, the immediate history of the nations actively involved in drafting and ratifying the Charter leaves no doubt that there would not have been a United Nations if it was believed a criminal court in which they could be prosecuted might be created under the Charter. The nations that fought in World War II and played the major roles in drafting the Charter, most surely the US, would have rejected their own work.
The history of the planning meetings, the preparations and instructions of the national delegations, particularly the five nations which were to be permanent Members of the Security Council, the Central role of the host nations, the US, the records of the drafting and consideration of the Charter by the delegates, if we are to believe the public record, leave no room for doubt that there would never have been a United Nations if the Charter had included either expressly, or by implication, the power to create an international court of criminal justice.
From the four power Dumbarton Oaks conference in 1944 to the fifty nation conference at San Francisco in 1945, which ratified the Charter as drafted and imposed by the US, Britain, China, France and Russia, there was never any suggestion that an international criminal court could be authorized under the Charter. It would not have been accepted by the major powers if there was. Those nations were not prepared to risk subjecting their leaders, armed services and citizens to the possibility of prosecution by an international criminal tribunal in the aftermath of World War II.
The manner in which the Nuremberg Tribunal was created is further evidence of an intention to deny power to the UN to create courts. The US, France, Great Britain and the USSR, permanent members of the UN Security Council and pre eminent in drafting its Charter, starting immediately after the UN Charter was adopted in San Francisco, initiated, drafted and promulgated the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Charter) at London between late June 1945 and August 8, 1945 when it was signed.
The Nuremberg Charter referred to the declaration by the UN of an “intention that War Criminals shall be brought to justice” and it provided that: “Any Government of the United Nations may adhere to this Agreement by notice given through the diplomatic channel to the Government of the United Kingdom.” But the Nuremberg Charter claimed no relationship to the UN and makes no reference to the UN International Court of Justice. The UN was excluded from even an advisory role and participation in the creation and work of the Nuremberg Tribunal. The Tribunal was created completely independent of the UN.
The UN was completely ignored and it made no protest. The permanent members of the Security Council and other members of the UN opposed any power in the UN to create a permanent criminal tribunal, or the creation of such a tribunal under UN authority, or otherwise.
The US was fully aware that there is no delegation of power capable of legal restraint on the Security Council within the UN system. Judicial review by the International Court of Justice of the legality under the UN Charter of acts by UN organs was rejected during the drafting of the Charter. At the San Francisco conference “the proposal to confer the point of preliminary determination [of each organ’s competence] upon the International Court of Justice was rejected. The view was preferred that each organ would interpret its own competence.” See, The Development of International Law Through the Political Organs of the United Nations, Rosalyn Higgins, (1963). Ms. Higgins later served as a Judge of the ICJ.
John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State in the Eisenhower Administration, in his memoir, War or Peace, published in 1950, expressed the US view concerning legal limitations on Security Council power. “The Security Council is not a body that merely enforces agreed law. It is a law unto itself… No principles of law are laid down to guide it, it can decide in accordance with what it thinks is expedient.” The veto power provided the US significant protection from UN action it opposed. Its ultimate protection was withdrawal which after US rejection of the League of Nations has remained a threat.
The Security Council knew there were only two ways to create a criminal court under existing international law, by treaty, or amendment to the Charter of the UN.
The General Assembly, which initiated among other invaluable contributions to world peace, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, authorized studies for the creation of an International Criminal Court Pursuant to Article 13 of the Charter. It assigned the task to its International Law Commission which worked on the project for years. The contemplation has always been that such a court would be created by multinational treaty, or amendment to the UN Charter.
Later the General Assembly authorized planning and drafting of a treaty to create a permanent International Criminal Court by the International Law Commission. See James Crawford, The ILC Adopts A Draft Statute for an International Criminal Court, 89 Am.J.Int’l.L. 404 (1995). After years of effort, in June 1998, 120 nations agreed on a treaty to create such a court. The United States and six other countries rejected the treaty.

XII The US Coerced Creation Of The International Criminal Tribunal For Former Yugoslavia to Change Regimes, Weaken Balkan States And Demonize Serbian Leadership

After flagrantly violating the UN Charter by unilaterally planning the dismemberment of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and imposing unilateral economic sanctions against Yugoslavia while providing internal support for secessionist movements within Yugoslavia, the US coerced the Security Council to violate the UN Charter by exceeding powers granted to it by the Peoples of the United Nations to create the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia on February 22, 1993.
The US Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, was the official responsible for achieving the creation of both the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 1993 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in late 1994 and early 1995. “The United States was at the forefront in creating both tribunals and continues to be their leading source of political financial, personnel, logistical and information-sharing support.” International Judicial Intervention, David Scheffer, Foreign Policy, Spring 1996. Mr. Scheffer who was an assistant to Ambassador Albright was later Legal Advisor in the U.S. Department of State on international criminal tribunals.
The ICTY was intended by the US as a weapon to destroy the leadership of Yugoslavia by demonization, marginalization and incapacitation providing an ideal mechanism for regime change without the appearance of US intervention, or coercion, removing selected leaders, creating the opportunity for new leadership supportive of the US while branding the old regime as genocidal war criminals under the appearance of objective, judicious, international condemnation. It is the most effective form of regime change, successful political intervention, selective prosecution, demonization in the name of international justice through the United Nations.
Three key players in the US foreign policy concerning Yugoslavia and in the role of the ICTY, Richard Holbrooke, Richard Goldstone and Madeleine Albright, in recent memoirs have declared their support for military threats, war, bombing and coercion by threats of prosecution by the ICTY to coerce foreign leaders and change regimes.
Richard Holbrooke, a career US diplomat who had served as US Ambassador to Germany, and Assistant Secretary of State acted as chief US negotiator during the Bosnian conflict and through the Dayton Accords. Holbrooke supported a major military role for NATO and the use of bombing to force Yugoslavia agreement to US demands. Brian Urquhart, in a review of Holbrooke’s book “To End A War” wrote “UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali bears the full brunt of Holbrooke’s contempt, especially for his early opposition to NATO bombing. Nearer home, he has little patience with the commander of NATO’s Southern Forces, Admiral Leighton Smith, who opposed the bombing that Holbrooke believed to be indispensable to the start of a serious negotiating process.” Time Magazine, May 18, 1998.
When the cease fire in Bosnia was approaching before the Dayton negotiation, Holbrooke, “…urged Tudjman to do as much as possible militarily ‘in the next week or so'” to gain last minute advantage and inflict further injury on the Bosnia Serbs.” To End a War, p. 191. Holbrooke believed in the use of violence to force agreement.
In his book, Holbrooke wrote
“When it was established by the United Nations Security Council in 1993, the Tribunal was widely viewed as little more than a public relations device. It got off to a slow start despite the appointment of a forceful and eloquent jurist, Richard Goldstone of South Africa, as its chief. Credit for pumping up its role in those early days went to Madeleine Albright and John Shattuck, who fought for its status and funding. Other nations, especially its Dutch hosts and the Germans, also gave it substantial support.” Id pp. 189-190.

Later he recognized political utility in such a Tribunal.

“During our negotiations, the tribunal emerged as a valuable instrument of policy that allowed us, for example, to bar Karadzic and all other indicted war criminals from public office.” Id. p. 90.

Holbrooke found it advantageous that President Karadzic could be excluded from peace negotiations. Muslim and Croatian leaders had open access and direct input. In contrast, President Milosevic remained in charge of negotiations for Serbia to end the NATO bombing in 1999 after his indictment by the ICTY.
President Izetbegovic is quoted as saying to Holbrooke “If you can get Karadzic out of power… I can work with Krajisnik”, Karadzics’ heir apparent. Id. p. 342. He, too, saw the ICTY as a tool to be used to gain political advantage and remove opposition leaders.
Holbrooke felt the vast display of US military power at the Wright-Petterson Air Force Base would intimidate the Bosnia participants and strengthen the US hand in the negotiations. In furtherance of regime change, he told President Clinton after the 21 day negotiation of the Dayton agreement that “… the arrest of Karadzic and Mladic was the most critical issue that was not resolved…” Id. p 315.
The Dayton accords removed Karadzic from office immediately and, as demanded by Holbrooke, Karadzic was barred from “public activities,” “I cited a number of examples, especially his appearances on television and the use of posters bearing his likeness, that could constitute violations.” Id. p. 343.
While appreciating the power policy makers gained from ICTY indictments and their threat, Holbrooke resented actions by the ICTY that interfered with his activities, or policy goals. He was
“confronted by an unexpected problem: the local police had arrested two senior Bosnian Serb officers, General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic, as they entered Sarajevo in a civilian car. The Bosnians claimed the two men were war criminals…”

The arrest had violated “free movement” agreements made at Dayton. President Milosevic demanded their release. The Bosinian Serbs threatened further participation in the Accord. Holbrooke continued,
“we would normally have insisted that the Muslims release them immediately. But Justice Goldstone complicated matters considerably; from the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, he issued a warrant for the two men–even though they had not been indicted.” Id.

Holbrooke did not intercede to defend the Dayton Accord. The two men were held for several months at the Hague before the Charges were dropped for lack of evidence.
The real objective of US policy is reflected in Holbrooke’s description of President Clintons’ unplanned stop at a US military “staging area in Taszar, Hungary”, forced by bad weather en route to the US military base in Tuzla, Bosnia after Dayton. The President, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Hungary hurried to meet President Clinton. Holbrooke wrote
“The presence of six thousand American troops on Hungarian soil only four years after the end of the Cold War–and forty years after the 1956 Soviet invasion–was in itself a remarkable symbol of the transformation of Europe. The Hungarians had one message for President Clinton: that they were ready for NATO membership and that the staging area at Taszar was part of that goal. ‘Stay as long as you like,’ they said. ‘Turn this into a permanent NATO installation–and let us join the West.'” Id. p. 326.

For his part Richard Goldstone, the first Chief Prosecutor to take charge of the office with ICTY, in his memoir, For Humanity, Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator, acknowledged the central role played by the US in creating the Tribunal “Madeleine Albright, … had played the leading role in having the tribunal established. Her continued support for the work of the Yugoslavia tribunal, and later the Rwanda tribunal, was crucial to their success. She appointed one of her senior advisors, David Scheffer, to take special responsibility for moving the work of the tribunal forward.” Id. p. 78.
On Goldstone’s first day at the Hague, he found “twenty-three Americans working in the office. They included lawyers, computer technicians, and police investigators, all of whom had been assigned to the tribunal by the US government, at no cost to the United Nations. He claimed the United States had provided assistance only in an attempt to “jump-start the Office of the Prosecutor and so make up for the slowness and inefficiencies at the United Nations headquarters in New York.” Id. p. 82. He complained of the “well documented inefficiencies of the UN” and used funds from private sources to pay expenses of his work as Chief Prosecutor. Id. p. 80?81.
Judge Goldstone reported that much time during his last months in office in 1996 was spent pushing for the arrest of Karadzic and Mladic to no avail. In 1998 he participated with Theodor Meron, a US citizen who was his advisory at the Hague and is now President of the ICTY, in an organization campaigning for the same arrests.
Judge Goldstone cited, as the few leaders who advocated the use of force to accomplish the arrest, Klaus Kinkil, the German Foreign Minister, Robin Cook when he became British Foreign Minister and Madeleine Albright. Id. p. 117. Even without arrests, Judge Goldstone called investigations and indictments of individuals, including Karadzic and Mladic, “achievements, because, though not convicted, they were marginalized.” Id. p. 126. He praised the US and NATO for bombing Yugoslavia, calling it an historic watershed, even “in apparent breach of the Charter of the UN.” Id. pp. 136-137.
The singular role of the US in support for all the UN created ad hoc criminal tribunals, as the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, support for the RPF government of Rwanda and the arrests of selected leadership in the nations targeted for discriminatory prosecution demonstrates the political use it makes of such Courts. As recently as September 2003, Theodor Meron, President of the ICTY called for the arrests of Karadzic and Mladic–a questionable role for a person who must presume their innocence and impartially judge the charges against them, a role usually left to the Prosecutor and governments.
In her memoir, published in September 2003, Madam Secretary, Madeleine Albright writes proudly that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the first international war crimes tribunal “of its kind” since World War II, was created in her first year as US Ambassador to the UN. Describing the difficulties that faced the tribunal she proclaims
“…the Clinton administration, the leading financial contributor, didn’t waver. We shared our technical expertise, while our volunteers helped interview witnesses and refugees. We made cooperation with the tribunal a top issue in all our bilateral relationships with governments both in and outside the region. I was proud of the role my office played.”

Noting that more than four dozen suspects has been tried by 2003, she concluded “…the tribunal would eventually land the biggest fish of all.” She was referring to Slobodan Milosevic.
Describing her frantic efforts to secure approval for a NATO assault on Yugoslavia in 1999, she recalls a conversation with Igor Ivanov, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation during an intermission in a performance of La Traviata at the Bolshoi Theater. By then Secretary of State, Albright told Ivanov “The Europeans are worried about your reaction if NATO tries to act without going to the Security Council…” Id. at p. 396. Ivanov responded “‘Russia will never agree to air strikes against the Serbs,’ he began. ‘That would be totally unacceptable. NATO has no right to attack a sovereign state.'” Id. at p. 397.
As the NATO bombing continued into April, Secretary Albright rejected a pause in the attacks “as a sign of weakness”. She considered “declaring Milosevic’s removal from power an explicit war aim.” Referring to the British, she recalled “We agreed among ourselves that Kosovo would have to become an international protectorate after the war, with Yugoslavia sovereignty retained in name only.” Id. p. 411.
To secure approval for a NATO attack, the State Department
“…put together a long-term reconstruction plan for the entire Balkans region. … This initiative would foster cooperation among countries throughout the region, and, by promising aid to Belgrade only if a change in government occurred, create an additional incentive to dump Milosevic.” Id. pp. 411-412.

The long term reconstruction plan has not begun, but Slobodan Milosevic is on trial at the Hague.
Working on Russia, Albright writes
“I began an almost continuous dialogue with Ivanov, telling him that I hoped our differences over Kosovo would not jeopardize cooperation on other matters. He said there was no avoiding it. ‘Russia cannot,’ he said, ‘sit around and watch NATO destroy a sovereign nation.'” Id. p. 413.

On May 7, US B-2 bombers hit the Chinese Embassy killing three Chinese in the Embassy and injuring twenty. Albright writes “our pilots had thought (it) was a Yugoslav weapons acquisition agency.” Id. p. 417.
Twenty days later,
“the war crimes tribunal announced the indictment of Milosevic, Milutinovic, (President of Serbia) and three other Serb leaders for crimes against humanity. There were those who were nervous about Milosevic’s indictment, feeling that it would mean we couldn’t negotiate with him. I was not in that camp. I was gratified by the indictments…” Id. p. 419.

A week later, Albright states,

“On June 3 peace terms were agreed upon. NATO would occupy Kosovo. On June 9, Yugoslav military forces started withdraws from Kosovo, the following day NATO suspended air strikes. Secretary Albright awaiting the news in Europe was elated. “Walking down the streets in Cologne, I received a round of applause. During the G8 meeting, Foreign Minister Fischer had said, ‘Well, if it was Madeleine’s war, it is now Madeleine’s victory.’ … ‘After dinner President Clinton called and his opening line was, ‘So you’re a happy girl.’ He was certainly a happy boy. He told me about a column he had just read by John Keegan in which the British historian had written, ‘There are certain dates in the history of warfare that mark real turning points…Now there is a new turning point to fix on the calendar: June 3, 1999, when the capitulation of President Milosevic proved that a war can be won by airpower alone.'” Id. p. 421.

President Clintons’ pleasure with John Keegans column proclaiming President Milosevics’ “capitulation” “proved that a war can be won by air power alone” reveals a greater interest in military power than in history. The US was forced to go back to the United Nations, whose authority it had flaunted, to secure approval of the terms for ending its aggression. Resolution 1244 (1999) adopted by the Security Council on June 10, 1999 ended the bombing of Yugoslavia. While speaking of substantial autonomy for the people of Kosovo, a status Yugoslavia had previously recognized, the resolution provided that Kosovo shall remain “within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” (Para 10). It further demanded that the “KLA and other armed Kosovo Albanian groups end immediately all offensive actions and comply with the requirements for demilitarization laid down by the head of the international security presence in consultation with the Special Representative of the Secretary General.” (Para. 15) Air power did enormous criminal damage. Id did not win a war. The failure of the peace that followed, is a failure of the US and of KFOR which was authorized by Resolution 1244, to fulfill the U.N. Mandate.
Secretary Albright concedes in her memoir
“Well before the war in Kosovo, I gained administration support for a policy of trying to replace Milosevic. For two years we moved both behind the scenes and in public toward that end. With colleague Joschka Fischer and others, I urged Serb opposition leaders to build a real political organization and focus on pushing Milosevic out. … In public remarks I said repeatedly that the United States wanted Milosevic ‘out of power, out of Serbia, and in the custody of the war crimes tribunal.'” Id. p. 500.

In late July 1999 she visited Kosovo for the first time. In Pristina she spoke to
“an enormous crowd gathered in the city’s central square. The crowd, swollen by returned refugees, was dressed in a mixture of Albanian national costumes and Chicago Bulls jerseys. … I said, ‘We must support the war crimes tribunal, because those indicted for ethnic cleansing and murder should be held accountable, and Slobodan Milosevic must answer for his crimes.’ The crowd yelled even louder.” Id. p. 425.

After her speech in Pristina, Secretary Albright drove to the
“Serb Orthodox monastery of Gracanica, the mood was fearful and bitter. I was visiting the monastery to meet with Bishop Artemije Radosavljevic and other local Serb religious leaders. The bishop had strongly opposed the NATO bombing.”

“When I had met the bishop in Washington before the war, he had warned that a military confrontation would be a disaster. Now he showed me pictures of destroyed churches, recounted attacks that had been made on Serbs, and expressed his fear that all Serbs might have to leave Kosovo. I told him that outcome was the opposite of what I wanted; NATO peacekeepers and the UN would do everything possible to help his people feel secure. The bishop said that if Serbs were driven out, Milosevic would be proven right. I agreed.” Id. p. 426.

Now four years later violence flares out frequently and more than 250,000 Serbs have been driven out of Kosovo.
By Secretary Albright’s acknowledged test, Milosevic was right.
NATO attacks in Bosnia and against Yugoslavia were the first in NATO history. Its victims were defenseless against its air power. The vast destruction it inflicted has not been replaced by NATO, or its members individually. Two NATO members had bombed Belgrade and other Yugoslavia cities before: Germany in 1941 and the US in 1945.
The ease and confidence with which principals involved in the war of aggression against Yugoslavia and prosecutions of the ICTY, including Albright, Holbrooke and Goldstone, speak in the most derogatory terms of Slobodan Milosevic and other Serb leaders can only be understood in the light of years of demonization by the western media of Yugoslavia, its leaders and for the past fifteen years, Milosevic and Serbia with special vehemence. As a single additional illustration, Holbrooke describes how a waitress at a restaurant in the Wright-Patterson air base during the negotiations at Dayton in 1995 was charmed by President Milosevic, adding that she was unaware she was talking to “one of the most reviled people in the world.” That revile was a creation of western media. It makes attacks on the victims of its demonization politically profitable.
The media overwhelmingly supports US militarism, military expenditures and both US economic and military interventions. In war and peace it glorifies US military actions conditioning the public to accept and seek the use of US military power to advantage US economic and political policies. The media and the Pentagon tell much the same story in wartime and peace time. They serve the same master, the American plutocracy. They rarely question the legality, or morality of US military actions, nearly always justify and celebrate US military operations and demean the victims, both soldiers and civilians, so often defenseless against US high technology warfare. Foreign military casualties are overstated during combat, civilian casualties are understated and both are ignored thereafter. The US media has made no effort to report civilians casualties in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, or Iraq and does not publish them who do.
The Western media is owned and financed by concentrations of great wealth. Its principal income is from sales to major corporations of advertising for their products. The western media is overwhelming responsible for demonizing individual leaders, organizations, governments, ethnic groups, even religions largely as a worldwide chorus for US government propaganda. Such wealth overwhelmingly supports militarism, exploitation of foreign resources and labor, foreign investment and trade advantages and protection of its foreign assets because it profits from all of these. The media informs, omits and misinforms public opinion creating a climate in which war and war crimes by the US will be supported, or ignored and demonization of its enemies accepted. The public accepts the message which appeals to emotion from fear, hatred, nationalist pride, indifference and a sense of powerlessness.
Peace will be difficult to achieve until the media seeks to provide the public with a range of facts, opinions and perspectives sufficient to make informed judgments.
Recent wars of aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq might have been successfully resisted by the people within the aggressor nations and by world opinion if the media served the public need for knowledge. What is past will be prologue unless access to needed information becomes available to all who seek it.
The failure of the ICTY to even investigate US and NATO crimes against peace, war crimes and their violations of the UN and NATO Charters which eroded of UN authority and challenged its capacity to keep peace painfully exposes the unilateral use of the ICTY to prosecute those who resisted the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and demonized them for posterity.
The Tribunal accusations, focused on Serbs, is psychologically more devastating then bombs which are only brute force. The Court can destroy the honor of a whole people. To employ the Court unilaterally, to assure impunity for power, corrupts justice and forces inequality in prosecutions by the Tribunal. Equality is the mother of justice. Its absence breeds the revolutionary impulse, hatred and war. Other criminal courts created by the Security Council confirm the political motivation of the US and its use of them to enforce its policies.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was created to be a fig leaf for the failure of the UN and powerful countries to prevent the tragic political violence of 1994. The unauthorized Security Council statute limited ICTY jurisdiction to events in a single year 1994, after thirty four years of aggression against Rwanda by Rwandan exiles who supported the Belgian Colonial government and in later years by the RPF which was founded in Washington, D.C. and supported by the US. By restricting jurisdiction to 1994, the US prevented investigations for crimes against peace and war crimes by the RPF which conducted major invasions from Uganda in 1990 and 1993. The invasion in 1993 was stopped by the French government, after major incursions which provided enclaves for RPF forces within Rwanda, including a negotiated deployment in Kigali itself of greater than battalion strength.
The Tribunal has ignored the key causative factor in the violence; who shot down the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on April 6, 1994? It has ignored the slaughter of the Catholic Archbishop with ten other bishops and other Catholic leaders by RPF soldiers at Gitarama in late April 1994.
The restriction of ICTR jurisdiction to the geographic limits of Rwanda excluded the slaughters of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans who fled and were pursued by RPF violence in neighboring Zaire, now again the Democratic Republic of Congo. The consequence was violence across Congo to Kinshasa with untold hundreds of thousands killed and the RPF briefly in Kinshasa and controlling vast parts of Congo, exploiting diamonds and other resources with impunity and US support.
War rages today in Burundi and Rwanda itself is a time bomb, waiting to explode with more than 100,000 uncharged prisoners, most held for more than nine years under cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions. During the 1990s, the US established hegemony, with Tutsi leadership, from Uganda, through Rwanda and Burundi and briefly in most of Congo.
If the ICTR had been granted jurisdiction over persons in adjacent nations who provided bases, arms, training, sanctuary and soldiers to invade Rwanda, the Tutsi leadership of Uganda, including its US supported President Museveni, might have been indicted, President Kagame of Rwanda served for years in Museveni’s forces as he fought to rule Uganda and become his intelligence chief.
In contrast, the Security Council criminal court created for Sierra Leone was given jurisdiction to indict President Taylor of neighboring Liberia, a long time target of US plans for regime change. The court indicted Taylor who is now exiled in Nigeria. Such are the powers of selection in ad hoc Tribunals.
Faustin Twagiramungn, chosen to be interim Prime Minister of the Broad Based Transitional Government of Rwanda under the UN sponsored Arusha Accords in 1993 and Prime Minister of the RPF government in the immediate aftermath of its surge to power from July 1994 to October 1995, testified before the ICTR that he believes more Hutus were killed than Tutsis in a “political struggle” in 1994 and not in what the ICTR has labeled an ethnic genocide of Hutus killing Tutsis. See Transcript, Trial of Prosecutor v. Ntakirutimana, February 4, 2001, pp. 143 to 168.
The Gersony Report sponsored by the UNHCR, described RPF attacks and the slaughter of tens of thousands of Hutus during a brief period in the summer of 1994 in only 2 prefectures.
To date the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has failed to indict a single Tutsi more than eight years after its creation.
The removal in September, 2003 of Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte for the ICTR at the insistent of the RPF government of Rwanda, because she threatened to make token indictments of Tutsis to create the appearance of even handedness reveals the power one nation targeted by an international tribunal depended on its assistance for witnesses, documents and access to sites has over such a tribunal and the continuing domination of the US over the ad hoc UN criminal tribunal it brought into being and the impunity favored powers and leaders of the US enjoy in those courts.
The criminal tribunal authorized for Sierra Leone with its jurisdiction defined to permit indictment before it threaten President Charles Taylor of Liberia who was elected with a large majority in the presence of international monitors, was planned by the US as a means of marginalizing and destroying leadership hostile to US dominion in Sierra Leone and regime change in Liberia. The US had sought to remove Charles Taylor for years at terrible cost in life. It succeeded in violation of Liberia’s institutions and the legal term of office to which Taylor was elected after President Bush’s arrogant public demand “Taylor must step down” in the face of continuing rebel violence supported by the US stiffened resistance to foreign demanded reforms across Africa. The US has had a dominant relationship with Liberia since the 1820s. Liberia’s capital is named for US President Monroe of Doctrine fame. Its second city and major port, Buchanan, is named for the last US President to serve before the US Civil War ended its slavery. Despite this close history and consequent high obligation, the Bush Administration never provided the least protection of Liberians crowded into the Capital from all the countries in the county and under attack by rebels, mostly foreign. Nor will the Bush Administration talk of “rebuilding Liberia”. It never has. To their credit, several African nations sent peacekeepers and the UN provided a significant policing capacity in October 2003.
The long struggle to create a UN supported criminal tribunal for Cambodia was fueled by the US desire to remove the Prime Minister and other officials who served in the government of Kampuchea during and after the Vietnam war.
The ad hoc criminal tribunals created by the Security Council corrupt international law, create hatred and division that lead to war and are incapable by their very nature and purpose of achieving equal justice under law. They are selective, discriminatory and by their creation call for conviction of targeted persons and groups.
The Nuremberg Tribunal created by the victors of World War II separated from the UN, taught the international community which seeks peace under the rule of international law that in the future all nations and their leaders must be equally accountable for violations of international laws. The US Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg, US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, proclaimed with memorable passion the importance of this principle and applying it to his own country. Speaking to the American Society of International Law on April 13, 1945, the day after president Franklin Roosevelt died with World War II still raging Justice Jackson also emphasized that while victors had always acted as they chose toward defeated people, if the choice was for trials in a court of law for alleged crimes
“… all experience teaches that there are certain things you cannot do under the guise of judicial trial. Courts try cases, but cases also try courts.

You must put no man on trial before anything that is called court…under the forms of judicial proceedings if you are not willing to see him freed if not proven guilty…”

The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, Telford Tayor, Little, Brown and Co. 1992 at p. 45.
Following the Nuremberg trials, the UN and the international community approved the Geneva Conventions and a host of other treaties, covenants and principles to prevent war and protect rights. They are based on the principles that no nation, however powerful, can be above the law.
To restore integrity to its own Charter and honor to its Members, the UN and the Security Council should abolish all the existing international tribunals it has created and pledge never to create another.
Efforts by the US, or others to create new ad hoc criminal tribunals, or to be seize and try persons for alleged criminal acts committed outside the US, will undermine the authority and effectiveness of the ICC and because they are an exercise of power in violation of international law, make the world a more lawless place, more prone to war.
The harm done by continuing their unauthorized activity far exceeds any fear that the future of international law might be impaired, or “criminals might go free”. The accused and convicted are sufficiently identified.
The positive steps that must be taken are to protect and strengthen the International Criminal Court, reform its mandate and reform defects and deficiencies by the UN Charter that imperil its performance.

XIII The Bush Administration Intends to Pursue Unilateral Policies Manifested by Its Wars of Aggression Against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq the Creation of Targeted AD Hoc Criminal Tribunals, and Its Destructive Acts Against International Institutions, Treaties and Law. The US Can Be Deterred Only By United Commitment of Members of the United Nations to Its Mandate.

The unilateralist policies of the US threaten the UN and world peace. Ad hoc UN created criminal tribunals are part of the US unilateral approach. Beyond the long list of unilateral US military interventions and threats and the several ad hoc UN criminal tribunals, the US is debilitating the UN and dismantling the web of international laws and treaties on which the UN must depend to prevent war.
While President Bush will challenge the UN to outlaw proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as he did once again in his address to the General Assembly on September 23, 2003, he ignores the near US monopoly of the technology, development and possession of WMDs and the sophisticated rocketry and other technology to deliver them anywhere in the world. Realizing that megaton nuclear bombs are too brutish, dumb and dangerous even for their sender, President Bush is now pressing hard for the development of tactical nuclear weapons which can destroy a selected suburb or a battalion at a time.
The US military budget exceeds that of the next fifteen largest in the world combined and exceeds the gross national product of most Members of the UN by a multiple. The US sells nearly half of all conventional arms sold in international traffic which contribute to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the impoverishment of hundreds of millions annually.
Many members of the UN who have watched the brutal US assaults on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, or even Grenada, Libya, Panama, or Sudan realize they have a choice. They must develop weapons of mass destruction sufficient to deter the US, or be prepared to surrender independent action on any issue the US seriously demands. The US wars of aggression and their threat spawn proliferation of WMDs as they create hatred and new capacities for terrorist violence.
The US is unilaterally undermining the fragile and inadequate treaty frame work designed to prevent nuclear war. In the Non Proliferation Treaty, the then six nuclear powers agreed to plan and act to dismantle their nuclear weapons in return for the agreement of the non nuclear powers to not develop or obtain nuclear weapons. The US has unilaterally proliferated ever since. The US is unilaterally abandoning the ABM and Test Ban treaties endangering the entire world. It seeks a monopoly of military power for mass destruction.
The US has rejected treaties banning land mines regulating small arms which kill thousands every year claiming the Second Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits it. It has even opposed prohibition of the use of children in war. Its unilateral policies and coercive power in international finance, trade, health and environmental protection threaten everyone. The most pervasive unilateralism of the Bush Administration is its refusal to respect the rights of others. Mexico’s gift to the UN, standing outside the entrance to the General Assembly, bears the words of its Zapotec Indian President Benito Juarez who knew that “A respect for the rights of others is peace.”
These unilateral polices place the US above international law, or control, as do the unilateral ad hoc criminal tribunals which target leaders and peoples chosen by the US.
President Bush has made clear his intention to continue his unilateral militarization. Continuing threats against Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, and hostile acts and interference in the affairs of many nations, confirm his policy.
The US wants other nations to help pay for its crimes against Iraq with troops and funds, to “stabilize” and “rebuild” a nation on which the US inflicted tens of thousands of deaths and tens of billion in damage with bombs in 1991, debilitated with a decade of Security Council approved genocidal sanctions taking more than a million lives, then attacked again despite UN opposition in March 2003 killing at least 30,000 people. It will force privatization, turning vital facilities and services over to foreign interests. It will control oil. It will give rich contracts to favored corporate friends.
The US will not pay to rebuild nations it destroys, or damages. Ask any victims of the past fifty years. For all its wealth, US non military foreign aid is the lowest per capita of any developed country. Over a period of twelve years without a casualty the US caused hundreds more deaths by random rocket and air assaults. Deaths included Leila al Attar, an internationally famous artist and Director of Baghdad Museum of Modern Art in her home and two employee’s of the Al Rashid Hotel in an attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein in 1993. Even a UN helicopter and its seventeen passengers fell victim to US fighter jets in the illegal US imposed no fly zone over Iraq.
If there is to be peace and justice, the US owes tens of billions of dollars to the people of Iraq and must pay to rebuild the country. A payment to Iraq of 10% of the US military budget for the next decade would take the money from the offending source and provide a means for Iraq to rebuild. Nothing can compensate for the lives lost. US firms must be barred from profiting for the crimes of their government.
Actions by the US against the International Criminal Court reveals its determination not to be held accountable for its acts, and to destroy the court which it fears. The US coerced the Security Council into creating ad hoc Tribunals. It provided funds and personnel. Then it threatened nations with sanctions and other harm to coerce agreements to arrest and surrender persons within their borders charged by the ad hoc Tribunals. This is its chosen means: selective prosecution.
The US, while clearly opposing an International Criminal Court that could claim jurisdiction over it, took a major role in drafting the treaty for the ICC. It insisted on provisions and amendments which weakened and impaired the effectiveness of the tribunal as the price of its participation.
The ICC faces an extremely difficult challenge if it had a perfect charter and full support. President Clinton signed the treaty late in his administration, but cautioned the US Senate not to ratify it, as is required to bind the US. President Bush then withdrew the Presidential approval and has attacked the ICC at every turn.
The US attempted unilaterally to coerce many nations from adopting the ICC treaty, seeking to prevent its ratification. Since ratification, the US has coerced nations from the Philippines to Colombia as recently as September 18, 2003 to agree not to surrender US citizens to the ICC. This is a clear act of obstruction of justice, a criminal offense in the domestic laws of nations.
In a bold act of coercion, on June 30, 2002 US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador John D. Negroponte, announced that without a Security Council resolution establishing immunity for personnel contributed to Security Council-authorized peacekeeping missions, the United States would veto the resolution to renew the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ambassador Negroponte argued that, having accepted the risks of “exposing people to dangerous and difficult situations in the service of promoting peace and stability, we will not ask them to accept the additional risk of politicized prosecutions before a court whose jurisdiction over our people, the Government of the United States does not accept.”
On July 12, 2002, after intense negotiations, the Security Council, by a unanimous vote, adopted Resolution 1422, which provides that for one year from July 1, 2002, the ICC will not begin, or proceed with, an investigation or prosecution for acts committed within the year against officials, or personnel of UN peacekeeping operations contributed to such operations by states not party to the Rome Statute. Resolution 1422 further stated an intention to renew its term for additional one-year periods as long as necessary. The King can do no wrong. Should the US have such impunity? And if there is a risk of “politicized prosecution” should anyone be subjected to the jurisdiction of such a court? Yet surely an independent, impartial and competent International Criminal Court with worldwide jurisdiction is essential to peace in these times.

XIV The Indictment of the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, Was A Politically Determined Discriminatory Prosecution

There is not a more extreme case of discriminatory political prosecution by the ICTY than the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic. He was President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the highest official of the Balkan federation. He is an Orthodox Christian Serb. The Muslim President of Bosnia Aliya Izetbegovic, now deceased, and the Roman Catholic President of Croatia Franjo Tudjman, were not indicted by the ICTY. By any measure each of them is more politically extreme than Milosevic, but he alone represented the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Its dismemberment had to be justified. He was a former President of the Serbian Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbs were the largest part of the Yugoslav population and had the strongest commitment to the federation.
Within Bosnia, which in the Dayton Accords was divided into three parts, Muslim, Croatian and Serbian living in Srpska, among the political leadership only the Serb, Radovan Karadzic, President of Republia Srpska, who had strongly supported the Federal Republic, and his successor, Biljana Plavsic, were indicted.
Richard Goldstone, who began service as the Chief Prosecutor for the ICTY on August 15, 1994 opened an investigation of President Milosevic within two months. When he left the office in late 1996 he had not obtained any evidence justifying the indictment of President Milosevic. He wrote in his memoir published in 2001,
“…to indict Milosevic it was necessary to establish before a criminal tribunal that he was a party to the crimes committed by the Bosnian Serb Army. Had there been such evidence he would have been indicted. I frequently assured the public that no person ever pressed me to refrain from indicting Milosevic or anyone else.”

Goldstone was aware when he wrote this that President Milsoevic had been indicted later in 1999.
Goldstone was replaced by a Canadian jurist Louise Arbour who continued the investigation. And still there was no indictment of President Milosevic for two and a half years. An indictment could not be justified in light of the facts.
Though a passionate beliver in the necessity and desirability of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia if there is to be peace in the Balkins, President Milosevic recognized that peace was the end to be sought, federation was a means to that end not a reason for war. As even Holbrooke concedes, President Milosevic negotiated for peaceful resolution. In the wake of secession, President Milosevic presided over the formation of the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on April 28, 1992. Civil War had not yet broken out. Comprised of only Serbia and Montenegro the new Constitution recognized the withdrawal of four Republics from the federation. The Constitution affirmatively declared the new Republic had no territorial ambitions against its former Republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia. Serbia and Montenego accepted secession and renounced force which would necessarily diminish the possibility of a large Balkan federation in the near future.
The new Constitution was adopted quickly. The European Union, urged by Germany, had recognized Bosnia and Herzegovinia on April 6, 1992. It chose the 51st anniversary of the first dismemberment of Yugoslavia by Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria to destroy the achievement of federation among South Slavs won by the Balkan victors in World War II. President Milosevic did not intend to risk a repetition of the Balkan tragedy of 1941 to 1945.
Though Bosnia had seceded from Yugoslavia, President Milosevic used his influence with Bosnian Serbs to persuade them to accept the UN sponsored Vance-Owen settlement which they signed in Athens, only to see it fail from US opposition. All other international peace initiatives met the same strongest support by President Milosevic.
President Milosevic then became the negotiator at Dayton for the Bosnian Serb leadership which was barred from participation, the indictment of President Karadzic by the ICTY being the justification. Once again President Milosevic was the key person in securing a peace agreement even though it reinforced the dismemberment of the successful Socialist Federal Republic he cherished.
Serbia and Montenegro under President Milosevic’s leadership did not expel anyone, or “ethnically cleanse” any Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, or Macedonians during the difficult years 1992-1999. On the contrary, the new Republic accepted 70,000 Muslim refugees from Bosnia who sought safety in Serbia. Even before the immigration of 70,000 Muslims from Bosnia, Serbia had a larger Muslim population than Bosnia. Muslims in Serbia were never attacked, except by NATO bombs, and then only as part of the general population.
President Milosevic’s successful efforts to maintain the peace despite the cost to federation, stands in sharp contrast to the acts of President Tudjman in Croatia, Izetbegovic in Bosnia and Serb and Croat Bosnians who used military force to purge others from territory they would govern.
Perhaps most revealing of the pure political nature of the ICTY indictment of President Milosevic is the fact that when indictment was announced in late May 1999 it was not for acts during the preceding seven years in Croatia, or Bosnia which had been under investigation for years. He was first indicted shortly after April 22, 1999 when NATO bombed his home in the suburbs of Belgrade in an assassination attempt.
The indictment was for alleged Serb military activity in Kosovo earlier in 1999. Kosovo was under heavy NATO bombardment at the time which continued into June. Only after the bombing ceased was it possible for NATO to occupy and for the ICTY to enter Kosovo to investigate.
President Milosevic was indicted during the midst of the US/NATO aerial and missile attacks throughout Serbia which were most intensive in Kosovo in order to justify the US and NATO criminal assault against Serbia and to obscure the thousands of deaths it inflicted from the air. Included among the many notorious assaults causing deaths was the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in New Belgrade which had created an international uproar shortly before the indictment. It was a case of demonization and persecution by a presumptively neutral UN Tribunal proceeding first with the indictment, then later with an investigation of the alleged crime.
Months later Slobodan Milosevic was indicted for alleged crimes years earlier in Croatia and Bosnia.
The US and NATO maintained control of the ICTY just as they did over the peace negotiations and bombing in Bosnia and Serbia. The Chief Prosecutor, President of the Tribunal and President of the Trial Chamber that indicted President Milosevic were all from NATO countries and the US was the dominant force creating and guiding both NATO and the ICTY.

XV The Sheer Magnitude And Scope Of The Trial Is Not Capable of, or Appropriate For Judicial Resolution And The Pace Of the Trial of Slobodan Milosevic Threatens His Health and Right To Due Process of Law

President Milosevic, with the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and all its people, are victims of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the violence it entailed, the devastation by US and NATO wars of aggression and finally of regime change from foreign intervention. He was surrendered to the ICTY in violation of the Constitution and laws of Yugoslavia in 2001.
His trial began in February 2002. President Milosevic chose to “defend himself in person”, a fundamental human right recognized by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Part III, Article 14(3)(d). As of October 1, 2003 the prosecution had presented its case over a period of twenty months.
There has never been a trial like it in history. Nuremberg with twenty one individual defendants and charges relating to all the horror of World War II excepting the Pacific conflict, was completed in eleven months. Beginning in November 1945, the prosecution finished its presentation on March 4, 1996. The defense then proceeded and the final judgment was announced on October 1, 1946.
Unlike criminal prosecutions which are based on the responsibility of the accused for his individual conduct, the ICTY prosecutor, lacking evidence of criminal acts of President Milosevic, has put the history of the conflict in evidence, first Kosovo, which was chronologically last, then Croatia and Bosnia. The Prosecution may, or may not finish its presentation by February 19, 2004.
To date the prosecution has produced some 500,000 pages of documents and 5000 video cassettes. There have been approximately 250 days of hearings with about 200 prosecution witnesses testifying. The transcript of the testimony runs more than 30,000 pages.
Overwhelmingly the evidence involves events in which President Milosevic was not present and played no role. He has nevertheless vigorously cross examined the witnesses in defense of the truth and for history. While it is awkward, if not impossible, and dangerous for a judiciary to attempt, write, or find the facts of history in a legal proceeding, President Milosevic, standing alone for the defense, has fought for the facts and to keep the trial record true to the history it purports to determine. Historians tend to believe history cannot be professionally written for a century after the times it describes, when passions cool, the dust settles and events have been examined from many perspectives. Many agree with Voltaire that history is fiction agreed upon. The ICTY seeks to write a history dictated by the US and NATO, not by the facts. The entire procedure is alien to truth and justice.
The spectacle of a lone man defending history and truth to exhaustion against the power of the UN court created to bury Yugoslavia signals “unfair” and “untrue”.
The Herculean task, combined with the conditions of the prison in which he is confined, which was used as a Nazi prison during the occupation of the Netherlands in the 1940s, have drained his energy and stamina and endanger his health. The very fact that the accused is confined in a former Nazi prison symbolizes how little power has learned from the past.
The Tribunal has the duty to protect President Milosevic’s health. The death penalty is not an option. It also has a duty to respect his right to represent himself and not impair his health to do so. It has shown little if any propensity to perform such imperative duties.
At this time the Tribunal has stated it will provide President Milosevic only three months to prepare his defense from the time the Prosecution is expected to rest in December.
The first necessity is for President Milosevic to have time as determined by medical experts to rehabilitate physically. He cannot prepare his defense until it is medically safe for him to do so and then at a pace that does not further endanger his health. The Tribunal must plan accordingly.
Both health and more efficient preparation will be served by releasing President Milosevic to a healthier location with better climate, greater physical comfort, readily available medical and health services, easier access to the scores of witnesses, perhaps 200, or more, he may need to call, ready access to documents and to the assistance of researchers, investigators and lawyers who can help him prepare “to defend himself in person.”
Judge Goldstone began his investigation of President Milosevic in November 1994. The first indictment for alleged acts in Kosovo was announced in May 1999. When the prosecution began the presentation of evidence in February 2002, it had been investigating, seeking evidence, finding witnesses, organizing documents and monitoring events as they occurred for nearly eight years. Two years and nine months had passed since the indictment on which the tribunal first heard evidence.
The prosecution had enormous resources and large staffs of researchers, investigator’s and lawyers available to prepare its case. It has direct access to the documents of all the governments involved, including Serbia and Republic Srpska. The prosecution had years in which it prepared its case before the trial began. It had access to witnesses and evidence who could only benefit by joining the future, brought to power by the same power that created the ICTY, and by condemning the past. Political enemies of Yugoslavia federation and its champion, Slobodan Milosevic, working with the US and NATO, while anxious to see the last President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia bear the full blame in history for what they had done.
Under present conditions, it does not seem possible to respect the legal rights and present health requirements of President Milosevic and begin the defense case in 2004. Hopefully for all, if the U.N. fails to abolish the ICTY, the trial can resume in 2005.
The tenacious and effective examination of prosecution witnesses by President Milosevic, day after day, is the best evidence anyone could ask of his determination to fight for the truth to the end of the trial.
the Trial Chamber decided in October 2003 that the prosecution could present its remaining evidence by affidavit in violation of the accused’s right to confront his accusers as they give their testimony. This is another violation of rights protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights intended to present direct evidence as written by the prosecution and destroy the meaningfulness of cross examination.
In the interest of truth, fairness in fact and appearance, justice and respect for international law and organizations, Slobodan Milosevic must be afforded medical and health care, living conditions that protect his well being, require presentation of prosecution evidence through witness testimony and provide the time and means necessary to present his defense in a fair trial in the absence of the abolition of the ICTY.
Until the ICTY is abolished, the U.N. has a duty, through oversight, to assure fairness in the proceedings of its illegitimate offspring.

XVI The UN Should Act Now To Abolish the Ad Hoc International Criminal Tribunals It Has Created.

An International Criminal Court could have been created by amendment to the UN Charter, but it would have faced veto by the US. The ICC treaty acknowledged the ex post facto concern which arises if jurisdiction is given over crimes committed before the creation of the Court, a concern not shared by the US in its insistence on the creation of target courts that have jurisdiction over acts which had already occurred. While substantive crimes in international law had been established by the Nuremberg Charter, the Genocide Convention, other treaties and jus cogens, international institutions, procedures and in many case penalties for their enforcement were lacking. Having failed for fifty years to establish a permanent ICC, the UN should have and must now assure that the ICC be independent, impartial, competent, effective and in act in strict accordance with recognized principles of equal justice under law.
The staggering international violence, civil wars and revolutionary and liberation struggles from 1945 to 1993 were carried on with impunity from international prosecution. These included millions of deaths in the Korean and Vietnam wars, a million or more in Kampuchea and Afghanistan, still millions more in internal struggles in Africa, Asia, the Americas, with dozens of deadly conflicts in progress at any given time, many instigated, funded, aided, or encouraged by rich and powerful members of the UN, all with international impunity.
Against this history, the UN created for the first time an illegal criminal tribunal at the insistence of the only superpower to assist in crushing a Balkan federation and to achieve regime change. The federation was and is recognized as necessary to prevent wars in the region and beyond. The tribunal has prosecuted US enemies who struggled to hold the federation together and to debilitate the Balkanized new nations. The US fueled separatism, committed war crimes and killed thousands of civilians. Such conduct and courts will never bring peace, truth, justice, or respect for international institutions and law.
The United Nations must act now to abolish all the ad hoc criminal tribunals it has created, including the ICTY, the ICTR, the court in Sierra Leone and the court in which the U.N. participates with Cambodia. They all represent the corruption of the most basic principles on which both the quest for, and effective performance of, law depend. Equality is the mother of justice. Ad hoc tribunals are inherently selective and discriminatory and are created to convict and brand enemies of the controlling nations of the creating authority. They are incapable of efficient performance, because each court involves on the job training without professional experienced staffs, and personnel unfamiliar with the history, tradition, cultures, languages and contending parties in isolated areas of conflict. The very creation of the special court is a commitment to conviction, for otherwise, the very purpose of its creation is fails.
At this critical stage in the challenging struggle of the International Criminal Court to build a permanent, effective, respected international institution of criminal justice, the ad hoc tribunals encourage evasion and subversion of the ICC mandate in favor of the selective political demonization of enemies sought by the superpower that rejects jurisdiction of the ICC over it, but seeks persecution to destroy individuals it opposes.
It is imperative to the future of international criminal justice which is so central to establishing world peace that ad hoc tribunals created under pressure of the United States be abolished and condemned as threats to the pursuit of equal justice under law.

CONCLUSION

For there to be peace in the Balkans and among its neighbors, the United Nations must sponsor a new federation of Balkan States assuring it equal sovereignty and freedom from foreign domination and exploitation. The U.S. and NATO must be held accountable for their military aggressions against Yugoslavia, compensate families of persons killed and pay the billions of dollars owed in reparations for property destroyed. The ad hoc international criminal tribunals created by the Security Council in violation of the Charter of the United Nations must be abolished.
The United Nations must resolve that such illegal acts will never again be tolerated.

Ramsey Clark
New York, NY., U.S.A.
February 2004