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BELGRADE - NATO's aggression on Yugoslavia has trampled all fundamental principles that have been adopted to protect life on the planet, said Thursday former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark in an interview for Tanjug and Radio-Television Serbia.
Clark is at the center of an international action to bring the aggressors to justice and condemn their three-month bombing campaign that killed 2,000 civilians and destroyed civilian facilities in the country.
Clark said the bombing was in violation of international law in the sense that it undermined the work of the United Nations because NATO countries have take upon themselves the authority of the U.N. so that they can act as they please in military aggressions. The danger that this poses is huge, because NATO includes all former colonial powers. Now they want, he said, to be world policemen, to control the same peoples whom they exploited and dominated for years.
Clark is the president of the most massive anti-war movement in the United States, The International Action Center, that has founded a commission for investigating war crimes committed by the U.S. government and NATO in Yugoslavia during the illegal and brutal aggression and bombing of a sovereign European country. The Center has already organized a public trial at which was presented numerous evidence about the violation of the U.N. Charter and international conventions, as well as of other international acts.
A similar trial will be held next weekend in Berlin, which will attract legal experts and other personalities from Europe who have seen through the intention of the administration in Washington to win world domination, under the guise of "humanitarian interventions," he said.
Clark said that his attempts were aimed at explaining everywhere the role of NATO in Europe, to point to the specific characteristics of the aggression against Yugoslavia and to the consequences of the attack, as well as to inform the wider pulic about the criminal nature of the U.S. and NATO attacks on Yugoslavia.
Future actions, Clark said, are aimed at emphasizing the fact that huge damage has been inflicted to the U.N. which since the end of WW II represents the main international organization for peace.
The United States, Clark further said, has used NATO as its instrument for the attack, during which 90 percent of the bombs that fell on Yugsolavia and Kosovo were delivered by U.S. aircraft. The use of NATO as a shield for such actions is very dangerous because, if you look at the rest of the world, NATO is made up of former colonial powers.
America, Clark warned, is using those arms against the rest of the world, and used its also against Yugoslavia, breaching the NATO Agreement. NATO member countries have violated their own statute and the U.N. Charter.
Asked whether he considered that aggressor countries could be forced to pay war damages to Yugoslavia inflicted to it in the bombing and which has been estimated at about one hundred billion dollars Clark said that it is not possible to estimate exactly the damages inflicted by the attack on Yugoslavia in dollars or or measure it by any other economic indicators. The main damage has been inflicted on mankind, not only in the terms of directly killed people.
The aggression, Clark warned, has condemned Yugoslavia and some of its neighbours to economic impoverishment for generations.
Clark raised the opinion that in the Balkans should be established a new unity. It is absolutely necessary to directly compensate the damages, but also needed is long-term, permanent economic aid for uninterrupted and faster development of education, health, housing and of everything that is indispensable for people.
The world, Clark said, needs long-term demilitarization, and in Yugoslavia, in the Balkans, is needed a leadership that will resist interventions aimed at destroying sovereignty, culture, which cannot be measured in dollars.
Asked whether he was following developments in Kosovo and Metohija after the arrival of KFOR and the U.N. mission and whether the international forces were complying with U.N. Resolution 1244, Clark said that it was quite clear that there had never been an intention to implement Resolution 1244.
In Kosovo-Metohija, despite all the propaganda, which is so poisonous, there is violence every day directed against the Serbs still living there, Clark said. In his assessment, it is necessary to enhance the idea of unity with Serbia to unite again with Serbia, because it is tragically ironic what President Clinton has done in order to break up the Yugoslav federation. Now he is trying to separate Kosovo-Metohija from Serbia and to separate Montenegro from FR Yugoslavia.
They want to divide you compeletly, to destroy your economy, culture, to leave you without any means to resist so that they can then come to exploit, dominate your lives by privatizing your factories, and you will then be forced to work for them, Clark said.
In the context of the aggression on Yugoslavia, Clark was asked also about the relationship of the United States and Europe. He affirmed that most NATO members were apparently forced to follow the policy of the United States.
Ramsey Clark, who visited Serbia also during NATO's aggression, said that it was always with pleasure that he returns to Yugoslavia.
This time the aim of his visit was to see how Yugoslavia was managing after the heavy bombing and approaching winter conditions, and to collect information about the consequences of the bombing which will be delivered to the war crime tribunal, Ramsey Clark said in an interview for Tanjug and Radio-Television Serbia.