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NATO'S bombing campaign against Yugoslavia was in breach of the UN Charter and violated the Foreign Office's own guidelines on "humanitarian intervention", a leading British lawyer said yesterday.
In a report that dismissed the Government's legal justification for intervening in the Kosovo crisis, Mark Littman, QC, an international commercial barrister, said that ministers had "wrongly assured" the House of Commons that the bombing was not a breach of international law. The use of force in the settlement of disputes between states was prohibited except in two circumstances: in self-defence and under the authority of the United Nations Security Council.
The report, published by the Centre for Policy Studies, quoted Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, who said in February: "It is clear we have legal authority for action to prevent humanitarian catastrophe."
However, Mr Littman said that that argument had "no basis in treaty law and little basis in state practice". The report also cast doubt on whether the bombing was necessary to resolve the Kosovo crisis.