AN OPEN planning meeting of International Workers Aid in Britain was held on December 18 in the Lambeth Trade Union Resource Centre.
The aim of the meeting was to elect a committee to run the work in Britain pending a full conference of the campaign.
The meeting took a report from the international meeting in Copenhagen and discussed its various probusdis It was agreed:
* To organise a second Tuzla Airport protest in Britain - on January 29.
In London the protest will be on Friday evening (28) because of the clash with the Bloody Sunday demonstration.
Campaigns outside London will take their own decisions on the date.
* To organise a speaking tour in Britain with Jenny Mees from IWA in Belgium who reached Tuzla with the convoy.
* To organise lorries onto the IWA convoy scheduled to leave in March.
* To raise money for one of the vehicles to be based in Split.
To support Education/Student Aid.
* To ensure that International Workers Aid has a strong women's perspective and campaigns around issues which effect women lies. in ex-Yugoslavia Committee The meeting elected an interim steering committee and appointed a series of anyone. working groups to take responsibility for the various aspects of the campaign.
The next meeting of the steering committee will be held on January 22 at the IWA office. our region. But, of course, there is a massive shortage of housing and food for these people. A large part of the refugees are housed with famiOnly the refugees get aid from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees but for some months only 20 to 30 percent of their needs have been met. Our own population gets no aid from The city administration has two bakeries and, in the past, we also had several kitchens. For the moment, however, they are all closed because we no longer have the basic necessities.
Our conception is that all the refugees must be able to return to their own region.
We do not accept that frontiers can be drawn by force, we don't accept a peace which deprives people of their home! JM: What do you think of the way in which the peace negotiations are progressing? You are, yourself, an important participant... SB: Well, no war has ever been stopped because of a slip of paper. What matters are the military relationship of forces. No lasting peace is possible if it is unjust.
We don'taccept having to negotiate with war criminals, we don't want to find ourselves on an equal footing with war criminals because we are legally elected. We want peace, we are in favour of negotiations, but we SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.55, January 15 1994, Page 9 don't want to sign a peace which will mean the death of our Bosnian population. JM: You mentioned the airport at Tuzla which is usable but cannot be opened. International Workers Aid led an action in several countries on 11 November BOSNIA CONVOY governments, and that this question can reverberate throughout your media and so become a burning political issue. I also want to say this.
You arrived here with three lorries. It's not much and will in no way relieve our distress here. But the quantity isn't important. What counts is moral support.