Responding to open and extensive intervention in Yugoslavia’s election last week, former Attorney General Ramsey called Sept. 30 for a Commission of Inquiry to investigate U.S. manipulation of elections and other interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries.
U.S. and European Union involvement in Yugoslavia’s democratic elections has taken the form of military pressure--with NATO naval maneuvers in the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas and threats of resumed bombings--economic pressure that a 9-year-long embargo would be relieved only if the vote went against President Slobodan Milosevic, and direct financing of organizations and parties that oppose the Milosevic-lead coalition.
Clark, the founder of the International Action Center, was a leader of the antiwar struggle against the 78-day U.S.-NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last year and has played a major role to end sanctions against Iraq and Cuba, as well as Yugoslavia.
The U.S. government has boasted that it injected $77 million into Yugoslavia to build up the opposition to President Slobodan Milosevic and his governing coalition. The U.S. House of Representatives authorized another $105 million Sept. 26, two days after round one of the Yugoslav elections. The runoff election is scheduled next week
“To put this amount in perspective,” said Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, “the U.S. has voted more money to subvert an election in little Yugoslavia than the total funds both major U.S. Presidential candidates have raised. This year Al Gore has reported $47 million in contributions and George W. Bush $87 million. And this is only hard money. What about the millions of dollars in soft money from the Soros Foundation and the NGOs that is seeping into Yugoslavia? This money goes a long way in a poor country with only 11 million people.”
In calling for the creation of the Commission of Inquiry, Clark drew attention to past U.S. manipulations of elections, giving the example of Nicaragua, where the popular Sandinista government was voted out in 1990 and where Washington injected $54 million into that poor country. He also spoke of countries where the U.S. overrode the electoral process and organized violent coups to put in its own person, as with Mobutu in Zaire (now Congo), or in Chile, Haiti and Iran. “In all cases where the U.S. put ‘its man’ in office,” said Clark, “the people wound up worse off than before.” (end)