By DAVID HARTSOUGH

Excerpted from a proposal presented at a May Peace Conference in The Hague, Holland, attended by 10,000 peace activists. The author, Executive Director of Peaceworkers, has worked with nonviolent peace movements around the world, including in Kosovo and Yugoslavia for the past three years. In March of 1998, after accompanying Albanians in their nonviolent demonstrations in Kosovo, he was arrested, jailed, and later expelled from the country by the Yugoslav authorities. David and his wife, Jan, were leaders at Peace Camp in 1986.

Remember, underneath the present tragic violence, the overwhelming majority of the people in both Yugoslavia and in Kosovo do not want war or violence or oppression. What they want in Serbia, in Kosovo, and in Montenegro is the opportunity to join Europe and live in peace. Instead of economic sanctions and bombs and restrictions on travel and trade and dictatorship, they want the opportunity to raise their children without fear of violence and with dignity. They want a sense of being a part of the European community. They want to live normal lives and to travel freely, to have convertible currency, and to have cultural exchanges with the rest of Europe and the world. We put forward these proposals in a spirit of appeal to those strong, legitimate wants and needs of the majority of Balkan people.

1. Yugoslavia, for its part, should grant Kosovo independence. The terms of independence should include international safeguards for all the sacred sites in Kosovo including the monasteries and the battlefield of Kosovo Polje (where the Serbs were defeated by the Turks in 1389) and a guarantee for the respect of the human rights of all people in the province. In return there would be an offer for Yugoslavia to be integrated into the European community.

2. In return for withdrawing all Yugoslavian military, police, and paramilitary and military equipment from Kosovo, Kosovo would agree to be a demilitarized state with NO military presence, neither armed Kosovo Liberation Army nor NATO nor Yugoslav troops or police or paramilitaries. Instead, thousands of international civilian UN or OSCE peace monitors, trained in peacemaking and peace•building, would monitor this agreement and assure that all refugees were allowed to return safely to their homes. These peace monitors would also guarantee the respect of the human rights of all people regardless of their ethnicity in an independent Kosovo.

3. The international community would:

• Offer free trade, free travel and free flow of information and cultural exchanges with Yugoslavia and Kosovo.

• Offer a new "Marshall Plan" to help rebuild Yugoslavia and Kosovo, focused on rebuilding the infrastructure of these societies.

• International Peace Corps volunteers could play an important role in this rebuilding.

• Offer support to the Yugoslav and Kosovar people who want to build a civil sociality—the nongovernmental institutions and an independent media—which can be the foundation for a democratic society.

• Finally, there is the matter of war crimes which have been perpetrated in the heat of this wrenching conflict. While the International Court in the Hague could be encouraged to try certain people regardless of rank or nationality who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity in Kosovo, we believe that another mechanism would be far more effective at healing the appalling wounds of this conflict and building a future of stable peace: national "truth and reconciliation" commissions for each region, on the model of those employed with considerable success in South Africa and Guatemala. In addition, nongovernmental organizations skilled in postwar reconciliation, some of which are already operating to good effect in other parts of ex-Yugoslavia, can be brought in to both regions. They can work toward interregional healing, with a strong emphasis on working with young people to ensure a safer future.

International Action Center Report

In the largest national demonstration against NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, 10,000 anti-war protesters marched on June 5th from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to the Pentagon. The Washington, D.C. demonstration coincided with protests in San Francisco, London, Prague, Italy, Amsterdam, Mexico, Brussels, and Australia.

The call for this protest came from the International Action Center (IAC). The chairperson of the IAC, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, demanded that "the bombing of Yugoslavia be ended immediately and that NATO should be abolished permanently.

"We must abolish NATO. It is a relentless killing machine made up of the former colonial powers who enslaved Africa, Asia, and Latin America," Clark stated. He charged that Clinton and other U.S. officials are guilty of "crimes against peace for their role in the break-up of the Yugoslav Socialist Federation."

The demonstrators included delegations of students, labor unionists, anti-war organizations, religious institutions, and members of the Serb-American community.

A number of Vietnam combat veterans addressed the rally held adjacent to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. John Jones, a Vietnam combat veteran and long-time anti-war organizer, said young soldiers should resist orders to occupy Kosovo. "We need a ground war right here against poverty, racism, and the Pentagon," Jones declared.

John Kim of New York Vets for Peace and the National Association of Korean Americans asked: "Remember Panama? Somalia? Iraq? The U.S.-led war against Yugoslavia reminds me of the war crimes committed against Korea half a century ago."

Protesters carried signs with slogans like "Pentagon: Racist, sexist, anti-gay," "Stop bombing Yugoslavia," and "150 schools, 18 hospitals bombed by NATO."

Banners identified protesters from across the U.S.: "Cleveland Coalition to Stop the Bombing"; "Mid-Hudson, N.Y., National People's Campaign"; "Arizona Coalition for Peace in the Balkans"; "Alabama Stop the War." Buses and car caravans came from New York, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Philadelphia and dozens of other cities.

Kadouri Al-Kaysi, an Iraqi American and member of the Committee in Support of the Iraqi People, helped to captain one IAC bus from New York. He said, "The bombing of Yugoslavia and Iraq is the same thing. They want to install a puppet government in Belgrade. Clinton says they are bombing to save Muslim people in Kosovo. Well, what about the 1.5 million Muslim and Arab people in Iraq who have been killed by sanctions?"

International Action Center 39 West 14 St. #206, New York, NY 10011 (212) 633-2889 fax: (212) 633-2889 www.iacenter.org email: iacenter@iacenter.org

By Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA (excerpted from an article in Common Knowledge, May 1999)

It may be safe to say that almost every reader of Common Knowledge has heard media reports of the US Interfaith delegation to Belgrade that the Rev. Jesse Jackson and I recently co-led. Because we sought and secured the release of three American soldiers held in Yugoslavia—as one of our goals—media attention focused on the trip so intensely as to be frightening at times. On our way into the building our delegation was literally bruised by the press of reporters and film crews. We could not have run the gauntlet without the help of the Yugoslavs...

Important parts of our story got trampled in such a mob scene. I would like to have seen more attention given to the ability of churches to reach across national boundaries to create an opportunity for peace.

The actual invitation for our visit had originated with the Patriachate of the Serbian Orthodox church...

We crossed the room, barely noticing the oriental carpets underfoot, the icons on the walls, so focused were we on greeting His Holiness Patriarch Pavle, leader of the Church. He projected a sense of the life of prayer and spiritual retreat that he in fact lives.

He had a powerful and faithful message—a message about the risks that the Serbian Orthodox Church has taken to raise objections to "ethnic cleansing" and to the behavior of Yugoslav President Milosevic. [He spoke] of his communion's call both for the release of the three soldiers and a halt to the bombing and about the deception of terms such as "collateral damage" for the loss of civilian lives.

Despite the differences in our traditions, our forms and customs, despite the barriers of culture and language, our unity as children of God, the author of peace and justice, was very real. So far from home we realized that we stood on common ground.

Our meetings with other religious leaders in the region, including Muslim leaders, were cut short by developments related to the soldiers' release. But they did reinforce our ties and strengthened the message of peace we take to our respective governments and to the people and faith groups in our respective nations.

It was important for our delegation to have traveled to Belgrade to make our witness for peace. As the Patriarch said, we put ourselves in harm's way, if only for a few days. We could not have demonstrated our witness from New York or Washington or any other of our hometowns. The visit gave us credibility.

Many other times we have visited other places around the world where people suffer: to Archbishop Desmond Tutu when no one knew when apartheid would end; to places where North and South Koreans can speak with us and each other; to East Timor, China, Cuba and many other countries.

The contribution of faith forms a spiritual bridge between our peoples that cannot be destroyed.

Grace and Peace, Joan Brown Campbell

(Submitted by Tom Hampson)

By DUANE CADY

In November the United Nations passed a resolution declaring the first decade of the new millennium a "decade of nonviolence for the children of the world." In March NATO violated its own charter to open an offensive war against Yugoslavia. We aspire to nonviolence but our actions reveal our true values: In violence we trust.

It's hard to figure out why we are so committed to violence given its track record after World War II. The results have been mixed at best; often violence has made bad situations worse. The Kosovo situation fits this pattern.

In one of his more famous aphorisms Nietzsche says, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail." Watching a small child with a hammer makes the point obvious. Recognizing the broader implications may give us insight into our continuing to rely on violence to address bad situations.

I think the main reason we continue to design, create, stockpile, deploy, use, clean up after and replace ever more ingenious means of violence is that we don't know what else to do. But we are Americans, after all, and we have to do something; we can't just sit by and let grave injustice flourish and we're not about to admit that we have no idea what might actually help the situation.

Taking up violence satisfies our need to do something to counter violence, invasion, injustice. Violence can satisfy an urge for revenge and occasionally it can set a temporary negative peace in place, at least for as long as we're willing to remain an occupying force. But negative peace wrought through violence is at best a begrudging concession of a beaten, resentful and humiliated enemy.

Genuine peace involves willful participation, cooperation and community. These are created not by violence or threat of violence but by care, trust, respect and equality. Genuine peace is complex, fragile and develops slowly; violence is simplistic, insistent and quick. Powerlessness, frustration, impatience and injustice all tempt us to seize the means of violence to achieve the ever-elusive quick fix. We Americans simply can't resist the temptation even though we know better when we reflect on the legacy of violence.

As soon as we are seduced to violence in yet another bad situation where violence is only likely to make things worse, we in fact reinforce the illusion that violence can fix injustice and we reinforce the destructive cycle.

Our problem is that we have only a hammer. Virtually all of the effort and resources we put to preparing ourselves for dealing with bad situations are focused on the means of violence. If we were to take seriously the U.N. resolution to open the millennium devoting our effort and resources to create a decade of nonviolence for the children of the world, then perhaps we would have more effective tools available to us in 2010 when we face bad situations.

Until we build the tools for a truly new world order we will be stuck with the legacy of the failed violent world order.

-- Published Sunday, April 11, 1999 Minneapolis Star Tribune. Duane Cady teaches philosophy at Hamline University in St. Paul. He is the author of From Warism to Pacifism and coauthor of Humanitarian Intervention: Just War vs. Pacifism.

We The People

We the People demand that everyone throughout the World
be warm enough and well enough and have enough to eat.

We the People insist that all Humanity be free from Fear.

We the People are unbearably weary of angry, senseless wars and
the killing of others for reasons which are never good enough.

We the People desire for all Humankind what we,
at our most wise and lucid moments, desire for ourselves.

We the People explore the far reaches of possibility
in search of everlasting Peace.

We the People implore whatever Power exists by whatever name
It will be known, to inspire us towards the Good and guide us Home.

We the People, in order to remember ourselves
as one with All Encompassing Spirit, do hereby recognize that
whatever burden we pile on the shoulders of others
will be piled as well on our own, that whatever we do on Earth,
we will carry with us for all Time.

We the People of the world conspire to change for the better
and for always, all dimensions of the Universe.

—Sheila D. Landre, 1997-99

The Kosovo Crisis: no easy solutions to troubling dilemmas

By JIM HIGGS, DAN ONORATO, & DAVID ROCKWELL

(The writers are Board members of the Modesto Peace/Life Center)

At a recent Wednesday afternoon peace demonstration in front of the 12th St. Federal Building, a woman from across the street yelled out in angry frustration, "Ethnic cleansing sucks!" Yes, it does. But is the daily rain of bombing destruction and terror by U.S.-led NATO an appropriate response?

The Kosovo crisis presents us with troubling dilemmas and no easy solutions. Current efforts by both NATO and Slobodan Milosevic to extricate themselves from this war offer some hope, and attempts by Germany, Russia, and the U.N. to assist should be quickly embraced. However, no matter how soon this crisis passes, what is most important for us as Americans is to seriously engage the question: what role should the United States have, as the world's single superpower, in this still new post-Cold War era?

The United States' self-appointed status as international policeman is misguided, inappropriate, and morally objectionable. Clinton and NATO's precipitous action in Yugoslavia has undermined the peacekeeping efforts and capabilities of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the proposed International Criminal court, and The Hague war crimes tribunal, among others. Furthermore, serious doubts exist under international law as to the legality of the U.S.-NATO actions in Kosovo and Yugoslavia. Equally suspect is the official justification that the bombing is for humanitarian reasons.

According to The New York Times (4/18/99), the U.S. began bombing Yugoslavia with no consideration for the possible impact on the Kosovar Albanians — despite earlier warnings that bombing could well lead to a massive population expulsion that has been "the currency of Balkan wars for more than a century." If the goal of U.S. policy were humanitarian, would there not have been some planning for the welfare of these refugees?

Even now official attention given to humanitarian aid for refugees and for bordering countries accepting them remains inadequate, and is trivial compared to the billions spent to bomb Yugoslavia. And why is not more being done to airlift food and water to refugees within Kosovo?

If U.S. foreign policy were truly motivated by humanitarian concerns, why did the Clinton administration provide Indonesia with weapons and military training to bolster its murderous occupation of East Timor? Why was there no outcry and action to stop the slaughter of half a million Tutsis in Rwanda? Why no condemnation of Turkey's ongoing killing and suppression of tens of thousands of Kurds? Why no end to sanctions that each month kill nearly 5,000 innocent Iraqi people, including children?

The inconsistency and hypocrisy are blatant. Clinton and U.S. propaganda play upon the legitimate revulsion over Serbian atrocities, but it is hard not to conclude that the real underlying issue is power. At stake is U.S. hegemony in Europe and a message to errant nations and groups worldwide: refuse to play according to our rules and we will pound you, if not into submission at least into terrible punishment — as we did in the Sudan and in Afghanistan in 1998, and as we continue to do every two or three days in Iraq.

It seems, however, that the show of force is ineffective and counterproductive. NATO was originally designed as a defensive force, and its blundering in Serbia and Kosovo calls into question any new role as a peacekeeper. Furthermore, it should have been clear from the beginning that bombing would not halt Milosevic. In fact, the bombing has greatly worsened the plight of the Kosovar Albanians, as is now universally recognized.

The bombing has also destroyed the pro-democracy movement within Yugoslavia and is destabilizing neighboring countries. Moreover, the rampant air war destruction has escalated ominously. With television stations now designated as military targets (never done before), with Yugoslavia's economic infrastructure being blown to pieces, with bombs landing in Bulgaria and on the Chinese Embassy, and with increasing numbers of civilians being killed, where will the violence end? And what good will it have achieved?

Further escalation by widening the air war or introducing ground troops will not end the suffering of the Kosovar Albanians. When an end to this conflict comes, there will be no winners.

The war has only deepened the scars of hatred between Serbs and Albanian Kosovars. The Yugoslav people now hate the United States, and who can blame them. Who among us would not hate a country that bombed our homes, bridges, power plants, and factories and killed innocent civilians, including children and the elderly? On their side, the Kosovar Albanians are suffering more today than before. Large numbers have lost family members, hundreds of thousands are homeless, and both within and outside of Kosovo they struggle desperately to survive.

Morality, wisdom, and perhaps even cold pragmatism dictate that the harm be halted, the losses be cut. The bombing must stop. Now.

Stop the bombing. Start the bargaining. However, even if a diplomatic solution is found soon, the long-term prospects for peace are doomed unless the roles of the U.S. and NATO are scrutinized and held in check.

What is imperative for us in the United States, especially as part of a reorganized peace movement, is to press for a national discussion on the proper role this country should play in an international arena whose challenges are new and uncharted. What principles, for example, should undergird U.S. foreign policy in a world whose conflicts are more within nations than between nations? What limits should be placed on the concept of national sovereignty? What new international mechanisms under a stronger U.N. could be created and enforced to prevent genocide or ethnic cleansing wherever they occur, in ways that would not increase the power of any nation? Under what circumstances and on what conditions should the U.S. participate in such an action? Could large numbers of highly disciplined, unarmed civilians serving as peacekeepers and human shields in areas of conflict — as Peace Brigades International and Witness for Peace have demonstrated on a small scale — be a viable nonviolent alternative?

This dialogue is crucial for peace and a less violent future. In the mean time, this war must end. The bombing must stop. And we must begin to rebuild what we have destroyed.

To the old woman shot in Kosovo just before Easter

The trees stand silent
As the shots are fired
Their leaves flutter in fear
Or from air disturbance
As the bullets, the ones that miss,
Whiz through the leaves to find their mark somewhere in the woods.
They said she was an old woman. That’s all..
They didn’t give her name. A nameless old woman.
Why shoot an old woman?
No good for sex; no good for babies.
She had once thrilled perhaps to spring, perhaps to a babies grasp, perhaps to a lover’s desire.
And she is dead. An old woman in a war.
The trees of my home are silent, waiting for the full surge of spring to flower and leaf.
The bullets are an image away, a TV screen away from our brains, our hearts, and our minds.
It seems, at times, that we are dead or too full of TV screens and little wars.
Our technology forgets—or maybe hates—the surge of spring and the dead leaves on the ground that nurture her to full bloom.
Our military objectives forget the terror of one old woman on the road.
Statistics don’t count the anguish of homes destroyed
Cranky personal lives of half-expressed love yearning for peace don’t fit the spread sheets of war.
How strange that power is so potent and ordinary life so expendable
We worry about our Easter eggs and if our bunnies are cute
And she is shot.
She will rise as surely as the dawn and springtime.
She will rise, the old woman.

— Bryson Dean

Departure statement: U.S. religious leaders to Belgrade

May 2, 1999

By The Mission of United States Religious Leaders to Belgrade

(Ed note: Connections feels its readers should be aware of this statement even though the religious leaders have returned from their mission)

We, the Mission of the United States Religious Leaders to Belgrade, headed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, give thanks to God, the Author of peace and justice. Our common faith in God has brought us together in our opposition to all forms of violence and to offer a positive option for peace. The choice we affirms is to go forward by hopes and dreams and not to recycle pains and sorrows. We rejoice greatly this day in the release of the three American soldiers held captive in Belgrade. Nevertheless, our joy is framed against the sorrowful reality of the many innocent lives lost in the current NATO bombing campaign. Therefore, we remain firmly committed to the non-violent resolution of this conflict.

The conflict in Yugoslavia must end quickly and humanely. Together with the religious leadership of Yugoslavia, we want to help build a bridge of trust leading to just diplomacy. The contribution of faith forms a spiritual bridge between our peoples which cannot be destroyed.

Many things trouble us deeply: the violence in Kosovo which has led to thousands of refugees; the death and destruction from the bombing campaign; and the constant rhetoric that demonizes rather than engages.

The violence suffered by all people in Yugoslavia must end. Bombing and more war cannot bring peace. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" brings mutual blindness and disfigurement. Our sense of kinship transcends political lines and this is why we want to build the bridge of peace. Peace with justice is worth the risk. The role of faith must be a binding factor in this entire equation. We want to be forces for good and to promote negotiation over confrontation. We can bring about peace with security if we have the will to co-exist.

Our allegiance is to peace and justice for all of God's children. We have met with the religious leadership of Yugoslavia and together:

• We affirm that we are one family of God.
• We believe that animosity amongst God's children is destructive to all.
• We are convinced that war is evil. It harms both the Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
• We affirm our support for each other in our pastoral efforts toward peace.
• We will continue to work together to heal the wounds of war.

We wish to thank the Serbian Orthodox Church, under the leadership of His Holiness Patriarch Pavle, and all other communities of faith in Yugoslavia and throughout the world for their efforts in seeking the release of the three American soldiers. We appeal to all persons of goodwill to build lasting bridges of peace and reconciliation.

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227 E-mail: news@ncccusa.org; Web: www.ncccusa.org

If a cluster bomb could talk

By NORMAN SOLOMON

Creators Syndicate

Hi! My name is CBU-87/B, but let's not be formal. A lot of my friends call me Cluster Bomb.

I've been busy lately, doing what I'm supposed to. And I sure appreciate the careful treatment that I receive from the American news media.

My pals at the Pentagon put me in the category of a "Combined Effects Munition." My maker describes me as an "all-purpose, air-delivered cluster weapons system." Not to brag or anything, but such labels don't do me justice. When I explode, the results can really be quite awesome.

I have gotten to do my stuff in Yugoslavia this month. One of my memorable performances came at around noon on a Friday. Some people in the city of Nis were shopping at a vegetable market when -- boom -- I arrived. It was dramatic as hell.

A news article that I found in the May 8 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "the bombs struck next to the hospital complex and near the market, bringing death and destruction, peppering the streets of Serbia's third-largest city with shrapnel and littering the courtyards with yellow bomb casings."

This was one of my few moments in the U.S. media limelight, so forgive me while I quote some more: "In a street leading from the market, dismembered bodies were strewn among carrots and other vegetables in pools of blood. A dead woman, her body covered with a sheet, was still clutching a shopping bag filled with carrots."

I know, it's immodest to flaunt my press notices. But people don't get to see those sorts of news accounts very much in America! If the stories are reported at all, they're usually buried (ha ha) on back pages of newspapers and rarely even mentioned on the networks.

Once in a while, some Western journalist decides to put me down. The moralizing can be unpleasant. For instance, a BBC correspondent named John Simpson has been reporting from Belgrade, and he did a rather brusque commentary that the Sunday Telegraph in London published a few days ago.

"In Novi Sad and Nis, and several other places across Serbia and Kosovo where there are no foreign journalists, heavier bombing has brought more accidents," Simpson carped. He complained that cluster bombs "explode in the air and hurl shards of shrapnel over a wide radius." And he went on to say: "Used against human beings, cluster bombs are some of the most savage weapons of modern warfare."

Cluster bombs like me could do without the overheated pejoratives, thank you.

Fortunately, we hardly ever have to endure such indignities in the American press.

But please don't forget the very real accomplishments that I can partially claim as my own. The next time you see a headline or hear a newscaster referring to the "air campaign," remember that my achievements are outrageously understated by such jargon!

You see, I'm a 1,000-pound marvel, a cluster bomb with an ingenious design. When I go off, a couple of hundred "bomblets" shoot out in all directions, aided by little parachutes that look like inverted umbrellas. Those 'chutes slow down the descent of the bomblets and disperse them so they'll hit plenty of what my maker calls "soft targets." Before that happens, though, each bomblet breaks into about 300 pieces of jagged steel shrapnel.

Sometimes, as a cluster bomb, I get a little jealous of the exaggerated notoriety that the news media confer on outfits like the National Rifle Association. They get credited with the proliferation of murder and mayhem. Well, they're rank amateurs! Piddling sidearms pushers! Compared to me, they're small-time retailers. I'm into wholesale. They don't know how to preserve, protect and defend the Grim Reaper like I do.

I just laugh when I read the nasty things that so many pundits have been writing about the NRA. While they rant and rail against assault rifles that take a few lives now and again in the United States, I've been busy slicing up tender human bodies in Yugoslavia.

When those high school students died in Colorado, the news media kept saying what a horrendous tragedy it was. But what about the work I've done on kids and grownups in Yugoslavia? Journalists merely echo the statements coming out of the White House, mumbling that it's regrettable and can't be helped.

The pundits keep talking about gun control. Meanwhile, big bombs like me are more and more out of control as we roam the skies above Yugoslavia.

Overall, this has been a great spring for me as I serve my lord, the Grim Reaper. And from the standpoint of public relations, I'm doing fine. Back in the offices of top Washington officials, and in the upper echelons of American news media, I've got lots of friends in very high places. They may pretend not to know me, but we understand each other very well.

Norman Solomon's latest book is The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media.

Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Quaker organization:

The coercion seems to have failed to elicit cooperation from President Milosevic. Your strategy has given him the power to narrow U.S. options to two different responses: do nothing or bomb. We cannot accept either response, and either would be ineffective. To do nothing leaves civilian lives at risk and opens the way for ethnic cleansing and the violation of human rights. [Bombing] also puts civilian lives in jeopardy and risks escalation of new fighting that could spread war in the volatile region of the Balkans.

We urge you to gamble again on another risky approach: seeking peace through peaceful means. You can win peace and a victory for human rights in Kosovo by creating new options through intensive multilateral, non-coercive diplomacy.

Your job is to narrow the choices for the representatives of Serbia and Kosovo to choosing participation in an ongoing political process for a peacefully negotiated outcome. Better to take years of political talking and spend millions of dollars on this kind of war prevention than to spend billions for a militarily imposed "peace" that will require decades of occupation forces to maintain.

We call on the United States to activate the UN Security Council and OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) to initiate the following six peace-building steps for Kosovo, in the context of non-coercive diplomacy:

• immediate stopping the U.S.-NATO bombing and developing a close working relationship with the Russians and other Europeans to facilitate negotiations;

• re-negotiating an immediate cease-fire in the civil war between the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and the Serbians;

• a massive return of civilian observer-peace monitors throughout the Kosovo region, and a sustained presence until a political settlement is reached;

• a multilaterally-supported political process for new negotiations within the framework of international law between the parties to the conflict; representation of the leaders should include not only governing officials, military officers, and leaders of armed fighters, but also the eminent leaders of civil society institutions;

• assertive and continuing efforts to hold all actors accountable under international law for crimes, war crimes, or crimes against humanity excepting no official, no matter how central to the previous Dayton Accords or to these new Kosovo negotiations;

• fund and immediately begin radio and TV broadcasting to Serbia and Kosovo of objective, international reporting of events in Serbia and the Kosovo region.

If you persist with bombing, then, at a minimum, we believe you must request and receive a Congressional declaration of war against Serbia. We would, of course, lobby Members of Congress to vote against a declaration of war; but we believe you must respect the constitutional provision that the President and Congress should share the decision to go to war, before a bomb is dropped or a shot is fired. This is not an emergency situation, and, therefore, the War Powers Act does not apply.

—From a letter to President Clinton.

American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker organization:  http://www.afsc.org

• Call President Clinton TODAY at 202-456-1111 and tell him that bombing is no the answer, and that every option for resolving the conflict without further bloodshed should be explored.

• Call your elected representatives TODAY at 202-224-3121 (Congressional Switchboard) and tell them the same thing.

• Learn about this complex situation so that you can think critically about how we in the United States can help.

• Take this information to your Minister, Priest, Rabbi, or Imam and ask that a sermon be devoted to nonviolent options for helping the people of Yugoslavia find peace.

• Start a letter writing campaign in your neighborhood, at your workplace or school, or in your church, synagogue, or mosque. Write the newspaper and your elected officials. The more of us advocating for a positive resolution to the conflict, the better!

Doug Hostetter, Fellowship of Reconciliation ,the oldest and largest interfaith peace and justice organization in the US:

Break the logic of war! Desert! Open the borders!

[NATO countries] must take responsibility by not only offering humanitarian aid and shelter to the civilian population, but also by opening up their own borders. Any attempts at fleeing the war must be actively supported, in whichever way possible.

This is particularly important for deserters and conscientious objectors who defy being drafted into one of the fighting armies. In Yugoslavia, many reservists are currently being called up - patriots as well as opposition supporters - to fight on the Serb side. The possibility of them being put into dangerous positions, prone to NATO attacks, is particularly high. There is a moral obligation towards the men and women who defy serving in the army. They deserve special protection in the region and must be received as legitimate asylum seekers in any and all of the NATO countries.

We demand that Europe - individual citizens, countries and their governments - should open their borders for refugees, war victims and deserters, and to offer them shelter and political protection. Extensive material support should also be given to neighbouring countries, including Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, and the Republic of Montenegro, to deal with the large influx of refugees. Humanitarian budgets must be able to rival military budgets.

Let us defy the mad logic of war!

— email: DHostetter@forusa.org, Tel. 914-358-4601

David McReynolds, War Resisters League USA:

. . . Please think of the not distant past. I remember sitting in a room at the F.O.R.[Fellowship of Reconciliation] headquarters in Nyack during the invasion of Somalia and some of those good and decent pacifists argued that the U.S. troops sent by Bush were necessary to prevent bloodshed and starvation. Look at the result - the U.S. had to flee the scene, in the face of what is now conceded to be the universal hatred of the U.S. troops by everyone in Somalia. Look at Iraq, where we said we wanted to do good. As a result of our "necessary" actions, in addition to the 100,000 or so killed by the U.S. during Desert Storm (never forgetting the faithful contemptible support of the British government), we gave hope to religious groups that were restless, they rose up, got no help from us and were slaughtered by Saddam. Then we imposed sanctions and a half million or more died.

We will never get the kind of world we want, in which the bloodshed diminishes, if we keep agreeing to military actions.

I know bad things are happening in Kosovo. They got worse since Clinton started to make them "better".

Stephen Zunes, assistant Politics professor and chair of the Peace & Justice Program at the University of San Francisco:

By waiting for the emergence of a guerrilla group before seeking a solution, the West gave Slobodan Milosevic the opportunity to crack down with an even greater level of savagery than before. The delay has allowed the Kosovar movement to be taken over by armed ultra-nationalists who are far less ready to compromise or guarantee the rights of the Serbian minority in an autonomous or independent Kosovo. It is a tragedy that the West squandered a full eight years when preventative diplomacy could have worked. It has also given oppressed people around the world a very bad message: in order to get the West to pay attention to your plight, you need to take up arms.

The root of the Kosovar crisis, as was the root of the Bosnian tragedy, is the extreme Serb ethno-nationalism which emerged from the collapse of Yugoslavia. The paranoid view of Serbia as a besieged, isolated and threatened nation put forward by Milosevic and other Serbian demagogues has brought untold tragedy to a once peaceful - if mildly autocratic - multi-ethnic federated system. The best way to undermine such dangerous ideologues is through supporting the growth of a more pluralistic Serbian society, such as encouraging Serbia's burgeoning pro-democracy movement. Instead, the threat of military action only re-enforces the Serb's self-perception that they are a people under siege, playing right into the hands of Serbian ultra-nationalists. Furthermore, as any authority on conflict resolution can attest, workable conflict resolution cannot come from a pre-packaged "settlement" imposed from the outside through threat of force. True conflict resolution can only come from the interested parties themselves. At best, an imposed Western formula on Kosovo will result in an uneasy truce in a badly divided society which will not heal the wounds, encourage democracy or lead to real peace.

Dr. Jan Oberg, Director, Conflict-Mitigation team to the Balkans and Georgia, Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, Lund, Sweden:

NATO's unwise, counterproductive and non-legal bombing of sovereign Yugoslavia is justified by President Bill Clinton, European Union and other Western leaders and media with reference to humanitarian concerns. Supposedly air strikes serve to stop ethnic cleansing, future massacres, refugee flows, and prevent innocent children and women from being killed. Diplomatically expressed, this comes from the marketing department. Bombings will produce what it purports to prevent.

THIS WILL MAKE SERBS AND ALBANIANS HATE EACH OTHER (MORE)

NATO bombings will be perceived as a punishment of Serbs and a clear support to Albanian hardliners. Serbs will feel that it was the Albanian side that called this hell upon them. Thus, the little hope we may have had about Serbs and Albanians living peaceful

together or as trustful neighbors in the foreseeable future, is now gone. Producing hate is the opposite of a humanitarian effort.

SANCTIONS CREATE HUMANITARIAN PROBLEMS

Why has the West upheld various types of sanctions against the people of Yugoslavia since 1991? The majority of citizens suffer one way or the other from that, not the least the sick and the pensioners. They and everybody else will stand behind President Milosevic in this crisis.

IS THIS RHETORIC AIMED TO CONVINCE WOMEN?

All the "soft" humanitarian coating of this type of militarist policies is probably an attempt to convince women, soldiers' and pilots' wives and mothers and the general do-good sentiment in the American public.

— http://www.transnational.org

Christopher Hitchens:

But then, just try asking [anyone in Washington] whether Kosovo, in the United States' design, is intended to get its autonomy back, or to become a part of Serbia, or to be subject to an improvised partition, or to become independent, or to federate with a future "Greater Albania" (which would itself be an ugly metastasis of the model Greater Serbia). Blank looks is what you get. These people don't think, and probably can't think, beyond the next news cycle.

The likeliest outcome is obviously a de facto partition of an "ethnically cleansed" Kosovo; the very objective proposed by Milosevic's then-crony Dobrica Cosic back in 1988. Such a partition in which our Russian allies would be eager to help out as brokers would be the infallible cause of another and even nastier war. But by then, President Clinton will have retired to his presidential library in Arkansas.

The "line of the day" among administration spokesmen, confronted by masses of destitute and terrified refugees and solid reports of the mass execution of civilians, is to say that "we expected this to happen." They did? (They never told anyone.) If they want to avoid being indicted for war crimes themselves, these "spokesmen" had better promise us that they were lying when they said that.

—From "Bloody blundering: Clinton's cluelessness is selling out Kosovo."

"If administration leaders really expected NATO airstrikes to accelerate the carnage in Kosovo, they should be indicted for war crimes." www salon.com

Kai Bird:

And yes, one of the lessons to be learned from Vietnam and applied to Yugoslavia is that bombing campaigns inevitably stiffen the will of those being bombed--and rarely achieve throughout Europe.

In the twenty-first century, we are all going to be trying to build a world in which common-sense international law begins to transcend outdated sovereign rights. An estimated 111 million people died in twentieth-century wars. The human race won't survive the next century unless the nation-state as we know it is regulated by international law.

And yet, as we have seen in recent years in Rwanda, Bosnia, Sierra Leone and now Kosovo, intraethnic, communal violence is precisely the kind of "war" we will face in the next century. Because of political considerations both here and abroad, US unilateralism is ill suited to smothering this kind of war. (Remember Somalia.) Neither is a US-led NATO a viable peacekeeping force. Indeed, it has already become a liability.

In the next century the new tools of internationalism must be more truly international and democratic than are cold war dinosaurs like NATO.

—From The Nation .

"Madeleine Albright commented on national TV in 1996 when asked for her reaction to the killing of half a million Iraqi children in 5 years, but "we think the price is worth it." Current estimates remain about 5000 children killed a month, and the price is still "worth it." [This] might also be kept in mind when we read awed rhetoric about how the "moral compass" of the Clinton Administration is at last functioning properly, as the Kosovo example illustrates."

— Noam Chomsky

"[P]ressures eroding the prohibition on the use of force are deplorable, and the arguments to legitimize the use of force in those circumstances are unpersuasive and dangerous... Violations of human rights are indeed all too common, and if it were permissible to remedy them by external use of force, there would be no law to forbid the use of force by almost any state against almost any other. Human rights, I believe, will have to be vindicated, and other injustices remedied, by other, peaceful means, not by opening the door to aggression and destroying the principle advance in international law, the outlawing of war and the prohibition of force."— Leon Henkin as quoted by Noam Chomsky.

Noam Chomsky: Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

It could be argued, rather plausibly, that further demolition of the rules of world order is irrelevant, just as it had lost its meaning by the late 1930s. The contempt of the world's leading power for the framework of world order has become so extreme that there is nothing left to discuss. A review of the internal documentary record demonstrates that the stance traces back to the earliest days, even to the first memorandum of the newly-formed National Security Council in 1947. During the Kennedy years, the stance began to gain overt expression. The main innovation of the Reagan-Clinton years is that defiance of international law and the [UN] Charter has become entirely open. . .

While the Reaganites broke new ground, under Clinton the defiance of world order has become so extreme as to be of concern even to hawkish policy analysts. In the current issue of the leading establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, Samuel Huntington warns that Washington is treading a dangerous course. In the eyes of much of the world -- probably most of the world, he suggests -- the US is "becoming the rogue superpower," considered "the single greatest external threat to their societies." Realist "international relations theory," he argues, predicts that coalitions may arise to counterbalance the rogue superpower.

Where does that leave the question of what to do in Kosovo? It leaves it unanswered. The US has chosen a course of action which, as it explicitly recognizes, escalates atrocities and violence -- "predictably"; a course of action that also strikes yet another blow against the regime of international order, which does offer the weak at least some limited protection from predatory states. As for the longer term, consequences are unpredictable. One plausible observation is that "every bomb that falls on Serbia and every ethnic killing in Kosovo suggests that it will scarcely be possible for Serbs and Albanians to live beside each other in some sort of peace" (Financial Times, March 27).

-- From "The Current Bombings: Behind the Rhetoric" by Noam Chomsky on meisenscher@igc.org in labr.newsline */ /*

[This column was completed a few hours after the bombing of Yugoslavia began on March 24.]

By NORMAN SOLOMON

Creators Syndicate

WASHINGTON -- Listen up, future leaders of America. If you want to develop the necessary skills for promoting a war agenda in our country's news media, recent events are instructive.

Going to war is not simply a matter of ordering soldiers to fire missiles and drop bombs. There's a lot more involved. The public must be induced to accept and even cheer the bloodshed. That requires some careful preparation.

Consider the steps taken by our leaders before missiles began to explode in Yugoslavia on March 24. Prior groundwork was needed. Top U.S. officials deserve a lot of credit -- but they couldn't have gotten the job done without assists from reporters in Washington and their colleagues overseas.

Oh yes, there were exceptions -- some skeptical journalists raised pointed questions about the harm done by launching a military assault on Yugoslavia -- but they mostly served to underscore that dissent can be properly subsumed by a war agenda.

Anyone who wants to wield the national-security apparatus of this great nation must learn to steer the mass media in the right direction. It's a matter of sustained guidance rather than turning on a dime.

Let's face it: The world is filled with countries run by governments that abuse human rights. (Yugoslavia is one of many.) But the USA has to be very selective. After all, a lot of those governments are closely allied with Washington. And you can't exactly bomb a government while you're sending it millions of dollars every week!

An evenhanded approach to human rights would seriously damage the capacity of the United States to launch attacks across the globe. If you're going to demonize certain leaders -- and that's just about a prerequisite for building a war agenda -- then you've got to pick and choose.

To create the proper conditions for war, leave as little to chance as possible. Certain criteria must be met in order to exercise appropriate leadership for war:

• If you're going to bomb a country, it may as well be one that arrogantly refuses to allow U.S. troops to be stationed on its soil. (European countries are wonderfully hospitable in this regard, but Yugoslavia is a notable exception.)

• Steadily vilify the leader of the country you're interested in bombing. Repeatedly emphasize his evil deeds so that reporters, editorial writers and pundits will relay the message.

• Meanwhile, to avoid distractions, be careful to downplay or ignore the evil deeds of the governments of countries you're not interested in bombing. If a regime is allied with Washington, you'll want to ignore its human rights violations as much as possible.

• Don't even think about applying a single standard for human rights. The Pentagon would sure look silly firing cruise missiles at countries that receive massive amounts of U.S. aid, such as Egypt, Israel and Turkey. Get it straight: Some torture is deplorable, some is fundable.

Most skills must be learned, so don't hesitate to sit at the feet of the masters of war. You can appreciate -- and emulate -- their achievements. The Clinton administration has put its dazzling media acumen behind the NATO forces dropping 2,000-pound bombs on a sovereign nation, in tandem with cooperative American news outlets.

About an hour before the first missiles struck Yugoslavia, viewers heard a Fox News Channel anchor make an understandable slip: "Let's bring in our Pentagon spokesman -- excuse me, our Pentagon correspondent." The fact that it's so often difficult to tell the difference is a triumph for effective perception management.

Soon, all the networks were filled with exciting footage of U.S. planes taking off from bases in Italy and England. And, across television screens, a parade of former military officers began. A retired Marine Corps general named Richard Neal -- now a "CNN military analyst" -- bedazzled a fawning anchor with euphemisms like "neutralize," "take out" and "collateral damage." Just what the spin doctors ordered.

State-of-the-art TV graphics continued to enhance the war-viewing experience for a large nationwide audience of Americans who could see their tax dollars at work -- dramatically underscoring President Clinton's longtime assertion that the government can do some things very well. More than one Pentagon spokesman -- er, Pentagon correspondent -- hailed the "combat debut" of the B-2 stealth bomber.

The war was off to a fine start. The Fourth Estate functioned smoothly as a fourth branch of government. Let that be a lesson to you.