>I consider the war of the Albanians of Kosovo for their independence to be
>a just war.
>
>It is quite right that public ministers should be carefully
>cross-questioned about their evidence. But I consider that there is an
>important element of truth to Scharping's assumption, which Hinrich did not
>answer. Kosovo has been treated as one large concentration camp with the
>Albanian population driven over the border.
We do not have to speculate about atrocities in the - as Wallerstein calls it "low-level" [1] - civil war in Kosovo. And we do not have to speculate about atrocities with several hundreds of thousands victims at earlier stages of the high-level civil war during the process of breaking up the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. We know for certain that there have been atrocities and victims both in the civil war in Kosovo and at earlier stages of the civil war in former Yugoslavia. And we know for certain that the atrocities were aggravated after NATO started the bombing of the sovereign state of Yugsolavia. This aggravation - more violent terror against civilians, higher death-toll in all parts of Yugoslavia, more refugees and more expellees in and outside Kosovo - was deliberately accepted by both the military leaders of NATO and its respective political organs, including governments and parliamentary majorities of the NATO member states, by starting the war of aggression - regardless of whether in the tactical form of air warfare without or including ground troops. War victims and the huge number of refugees are now used by the NATO - and hence by the German defence minister Scharping (SPD) - to justify the war of aggression once more and in order to continue to divert the attention from the violation of international law. And I am not surprised that justifying a "just war" a person tends to exaggerate only one part (atrocities committed by one side in the former negotiations and their aggravation by military intervention) and to keep quiet about the other part (new terror and bloodshed against civilians).
I repudiate the constant insinuations of those who back the NATO war of aggression that the opponents to this war would not notice the atrocities of a civil war, that they would not condemn these atrocities committed by all participating sides, and that they consistently would have backed or would back the politics of the Milosovic regime.
And I repudiate the constant comparisons of atrocities in a situation of civil war to the type of concentration camps and extermination camps run by the Nazi regime. The atrocities in a civil war are worse enough - you do not have to exaggerate them. The comparison of these civil war atrocities to the holocaust is used by the supporters of the war of aggression in order to get another argument by devious means. And this comparison does not gain more persuasiveness when it is done by a member of the current German social democratic and green party coalition government which alarmingly has no sense of history.
Those who are now backing the NATO war of aggression will have to politically justify *all* the results of this wrong method to solve a political, economical, social, and juridical conflict, especially the new instability within the international political institutions (UNO, OSCE) due to the renewed and continuing violation of international law which now have opened all doors to the expansion of the current war and to repetitions of this inhuman way of conflict resolution.
I disapproved and I am still disapproving of the bombing of Belgrade, Novi Sad and Pristina by any "international community" as a means to solve the political, social, and military conflicts within Yugoslavia.
I keep to the conviction that war has to be ostracized as a means or method of politics. The undeclared war of aggression against Yugoslavia must be stopped immediately.
The obvious lack of success of the military attacks must be taken as an opportunity to return to and to resume political means in order to strive for non-violent solutions by negotiations.
I support the following political demands (seen on a statement circulating for signing within the German trade union movement):
*** immediate stop of the bombings
*** immediate stop of persecutions and expulsions in Kosovo
*** Summoning a Balkan conference with the participation of representatives of all concerned states and representatives of all national communities of the states concerned
*** regulation of conflict under United Nations control
*** effective emergency relief for all refugees in and outside Kosovo.
Hinrich Kuhls
PS - Note:
[1] "Juridically, the bombing is an act of aggression. It is totally unjustified under international law. The Yugoslav government did nothing outside its own borders. What has been going on inside its borders is a low-level civil war into which the U.S. and other powers intruded themselves as mediators. The mediation took the form of offering both sides an ultimatum to accept a truce on dictated terms, to be guaranteed by outside military forces. At first, both sides turned this down, which upset the U.S. very much. They explained to the Kosovars that they couldn't bomb the Serbs unless and until the Kosovars accepted the truce terms. The Kosovars finally did so, and now the U.S./NATO are bombing." Immanuel Wallerstein: "Bombs Away!" - Comment No. 13, April 1, 1999 ( http://fbc.binghamton.edu/13-!en.htm )