Syndicate: Ukraine War Crimes Tribunal condemns Washington, NATO

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 23:37:22 +0100
From: integer@www.god-emil.dk
Reply-To: typedmess@www.god-emil.dk
Subject: [typedmess] [ot] [!nt] \n2+0\


UKRAINE WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL CONDEMNS
WASHINGTON, NATO

KIEV, Ukraine--President Clinton and other NATO leaders were
found guilty of crimes against peace by an International Peoples
Tribunal on NATO War Crimes Against Yugoslavia (English
translation) that met Jan. 23 in the parliament building of this beautiful
ancient capital. The hearing was held in defiance of the U.S.-backed
regime of President Leonid Kuchma, who wants to bring Ukraine into
NATO.

Delegates from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Yugoslavia, the Czech
Republic, Poland, Germany and the United States took part in the
hearing. The U.S. was represented by Larissa Kritskaya and Bill
Doares of the International Action Center. Kritskaya and Doares
were shown on the front page of the major daily Kievsky Vedomosty
under the headline "Americans Who Dream of Destroying NATO."

The Kiev tribunal was the second in a series of hearings organized by
the International Peoples Tribunal, which was initiated in Russia by All-
Slavic Assembly. The first was held in the Russian city of Yaroslavl
Dec. 14. Others are planned for Belgrade (March 27), Warsaw and
Minsk. The Kiev tribunal focused on charges of crimes against peace-
conspiracy to cause a war. IPT organizers plan to coordinate their
efforts with the Commission of Inquiry on U.S./NATO War Crimes
Against Yugoslavia organized by the International Action Center and
former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark.

The Ukraine hearing, which was chaired by Prof. Mikhail Kuznetsov
of Moscow, got considerable support from the Socialist, Communist
and other Ukrainian opposition parties. Socialist Party deputy Vil
Nikolayich Romashenko was vice president of the tribunal.

The judges and participants heard eyewitness testimony from
Yugoslav delegates who told of the death and destruction inflicted by
NATO bombs and missiles, which took 2,000 civilian lives. They also
heard several parliamentarians who had visited Yugoslavia during the
war.

Deputy Sergei Kaszian of the Belarus parliament told of his meetings
with ethnic Albanian Kosovar leaders who condemned the NATO
bombing and held the U.S. responsible for the destruction of their
country. Kaszian said that NATO forces used had brutalized Kosovar
refugees, separating children from mothers and sending them to
different countries. He also testified to the large number of children
killed or wounded by NATO bombs and missiles.

Ukrainian Communist deputy Vladimir Moiseenko represents the
Donbass coal-mining region and chairs the Ukraine Association to
Restore the Soviet Union. He pointed out that NATO was from its
inception an aggressive alliance aimed against East Europe and the
Soviet Union and compared the U.S.-NATO strategy used to break
up Yugoslavia with its current strategy toward Ukraine. He quoted
U.S. strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski's description of Ukraine as a
"military platform" for NATO's expansion to the east. A NATO
Ukraine would become a base to invade Belarus and later Russia,
Moiseenko said. He condemned Ukraine's U.S.-backed president
Leonid Kuchma for facilitating NATO's expansion but said, "The
Ukrainian people are waking up to resist Ukraine's colonization." He
also called on the rest of the world to apply economic sanctions
against the U.S. and other NATO states if NATO is not dissolved.
"But the world is not insane yet and has the strength to stop NATO
and its 'spiritual leader' the United States."

Retired Soviet admiral Anatoli Yurkovsky, now a member of
Ukrainian parliament, testified that NATO was also aimed at the
Albanian people. He told of the 1996 mass uprising in southern
Albania against the U.S.-backed Berisha regime. The insurgents
"formed committees of national salvation that were like the workers'
councils in Russia in 1917. But they were smothered by the massive
intervention of NATO troops."

Larissa Kritskaya, a member of the International Action Center, said
that "corporate America has dominated Ukraine long enough to
deliver the country to the point of total destruction. But there is
another America inside the land of giant corporations, and that is
conscious people in the U.S. We are happy to be here today
representing these people as your friends and supporters in your
struggle against the coming colonization planned by U.S.-led NATO."

IAC spokesperson Bill Doares condemned the war against
Yugoslavia "as a cynical maneuver carried out to enrich giant U.S.
corporations that profit off death and destruction." He said that
"bombs and missiles are not the only agency of destruction. When the
International Monetary Fund orders Ukraine to close down its coal
mines and steel plants, reducing workers to starvation, is that not an
act of war?" He denounced NATO as "the strike force of the
International Monetary Fund."

Yugoslav ambassador to Ukraine Goiko Dapcevic said, "the fact that
the war crimes tribunal took place here in Ukraine and the fact that
there were many representatives of your country willing to testify in the
name of truth about the horrible crimes committed during this unlawful
war that brought a human tragedy to Yugoslavia speaks to our unity.
Yet the war in Yugoslavia is still far from its end," he continued.
"Though there are no missiles and bombs falling from the sky right
now, there is also no peace for us at this time. And the most difficult
thing now is our incapacity to break the blockade on information.
Therefore an event like the war crimes tribunal has special value in our
struggle to tell the world the truth about this war and the present
condition of my country."

International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: iacenter@iacenter.org
http://www.iacenter.org
phone: 212 633-6646
fax:   212 633-2889

dear f1f0,

the sig is too long

see:


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