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BERLIN - Last spring, NATO mounted an aggression on Yugoslavia not in order to protect human rights in Kosovo- Metohija, but so as to expand its power, gain new markets and enact its new global strategy, it was heard in Berlin on Saturday.
The assessment was reached unanimously at a European hearing for an international trial of NATO for its war against Yugoslavia, held in Berlin's Heilige Kreuz (Holy Cross) Evangelical church, which was filled to capacity for the occasion.
The gathering was addressed by jurists and historians from 12 European countries and the United States of America.
They stressed the aggression was a crime punishable under all norms of international law and most of all - according to the prime mover behind the indictment of NATO in the United States, Ramsey Clark - as a deliberate and premeditated crime against civilians.
When the war ended, much time and energy was wasted to establish whether NATO had destroyed 3 or 7 Yugoslav army tanks, but no thought was spared for the 328 demolished schools and 33 demolished hospitals, said CLark, former U.S. attorney-general.
Clark has drawn up a 19-count indictment, under which NATO and the leaders of its member-states should answer before an international court in the spring of 2000 for violating international law and for crimes against humanity.
German political scientist Tobias Pfliger said that the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia, in which the United States and Germany had played a leading role, had been planned long ahead, in the summer of 1998, and was just waiting for a pretext to be launched.
Ahead of its 50th anniversary, NATO wished to implement at all costs its new global strategy which leaves no room for international law or for the U.N. Charter, and under which NATO arrogates the right to "enforce the law" at will all over the world, Pfliger said.
Former Admiral in the Bundeswehr Elmar Schmelling said that, in preparing for the war, NATO had waged a lengthy propaganda smearing campaign, in which the media had played a shameful part.
The local participants in the Berlin hearing especially strongly criticised Germany's role during and since the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia.
Berlin publicist Peter Gerlinghof said that Germany had wanted the war even before the Greens-Social Democrats coalition came to power, headed by Gerhard Schroeder and Joseph Fischer.
In this, he added, the Constitution, which clearly forbids the German army from taking part in operations outside the national territory, was totally ignored.
Also sharply criticised was German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping who, when the German public questioned the validity of the aggression, mouthed absolute fabrications about mass graves, death camps and torturing of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo-Metohija.
All this has subsequently turned out to be untrue, of course, fabricated to serve NATO's propaganda purposes and demonising an entire nation in the process, Gerlinghof stressed.
The speakers referred also to the current situation in the Yugoslav republic of Serbia's U.N.-secured Kosovo-Metohija province.
They noted that it is only now that the worst violations of human rights, persecution and killing of Serbs, as well as of Goranies, Romanies, ethnic Turks and other non-Albanians, are happening.
The importance was stressed of this and similar gatherings for the future, in order to prevent future aggressions under NATO's new strategy.
This was especially stressed by Zoran Stojanovic of Belgrade, who said that mankind today would probably gain little from initiatives of this kind, but that future generations would certainly be grateful for them.
Clark exhorted against keeping quiet and for raising one's voice against the arrogance of a power that is certainly plotting new wars.