Return to: Left History: a digital archive	Return to: Say no to imperialist wars!	Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources

---

Author:  Centre for Policy Studies (UK)  

---

Publisher/Date:  November 1999  

---

Title:  Press Release for Kosovo -- Law and Diplomacy  

---

Original location: http://www.cps.org.uk/kosovo.htm

"Any military action by British forces would have to be lawful under international law."

- Tony Lloyd, Minister of State, Foreign Office, 3 February 1999.

NATO's military intervention in the Kosovan crisis was illegal, unnecessary and unsuccessful, demonstrates Mark Littman QC, one of Britain's leading international commercial barristers, in the pamphlet, Kosovo: Law and Diplomacy.

It was illegal because it was in flagrant disregard of the United Nations Charter and the Foreign Office's own guidelines on "humanitarian intervention." The UN Charter gives two grounds on which it is valid to use force: in collective self-defence and with the sanction of the UN Security Council. Neither applied in Kosovo. The Foreign Office guidelines state that "the overwhelming majority of contemporary legal opinion comes down against the existence of a right of humanitarian intervention ... finally, on prudential grounds, the scope for abusing such a right argues strongly against its creation."

It was unnecessary because NATO did not make every effort to secure a diplomatic solution at Rambouillet. At a critical point in the Rambouillet discussions, NATO abandoned diplomacy in favour of a package of non- negotiable demands contained in a document described by Henry Kissinger as "a terrible diplomatic document as a "provocation" and as "an excuse to start bombing."

And it was unsuccessful because the bombing campaign precipitated the exodus of the Kosovan Albanians; the region remains unsettled; and the ethnic: cleansing of Kosovan Albanians has been replaced by ethnic cleansing of Serbs.

And it was extremely expensive: the bill for the campaign and the damage it caused will, according to third party estimates, come to $100 billion, the equivalent of $50,000 for every man woman and child in Kosovo.

With the Government's handling of the campaign due to be debated in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords on 22 November, several questions must now be raised, including:

• What was the legal advice upon which the Government assured Parliament that the intervention was lawful? Will it publish such advice (as it did the earlier Foreign Office advice against humanitarian intervention)?
• Did John Morris, then Attorney General, ever advise the Government that any element of NATO's campaign was illegal?
• Why was the full draft of the Treaty, including the all-important military annexes, only placed in the House of Commons Library on 1 April 1999 - the day when Parliament had risen for the Easter recess and eight days after the first debates on Kosovo took place in the House of Commons?
• Why were the terms agreed at the end of the campaign so much more lenient than those offered at Rambouillet?
• Is the precedent set by the intervention one which the Government plans to follow? Does it intend to act without concern for international law?