Stop the bombings, self determination for Kosova!
The following letter was signed by 25 prominent French socialists including Catherine Samary and Daniel Bensaid of the French section of the Fourth International, and published in Le Monde, March 31.)
We do not accept the following false dilemmas:
"Either support the NATO intervention or support the reactionary policies of the Serb authorities in Kosova?"
The NATO bombing raids, which made necessary the withdrawal of OSCE personnel from Kosovo, created more favourable conditions for a ground offensive by Serb paramilitary forces, rather than preventing it.
They encourage the worst forms of ultra-nationalist Serb desire for revenge against the Kosovar population.
They consolidate the dictatorial power of Slobodan Milosevic which has muzzled the independent media and succeeded in uniting round it a national consensus which must, on the contrary, be broken if a path to peaceful and political negotiations on Kosova is to be opened up.
"Either accept as the sole possible basis for negotiation the "peace plan" drawn up by the governments of the United States and of the European Union or bomb Serbia?"
No long-term solution to a major internal political conflict can be imposed from outside by force. It is not true that "every attempt was made" to find a solution and an acceptable framework for negotiations.
The Kosovar negotiators were forced to sign a plan which they had initially rejected, after they were given reason to believe that NATO would become involved on the ground in defence of their cause.
This is a lie which fosters a total illusion: not one of the governments which have supported the NATO air strikes are willing to wage war against the Serb regime to impose independence for Kosova.
The strikes will perhaps weaken part of the Serbian military machine, but they will not weaken the mortars which are being used to destroy Albanian houses, nor the paramilitary forces which are executing UCK (Kosova Liberation Army) fighters.
NATO is not the only, nor above all the best, foundation on which to base an agreement.
It would have been possible to find the conditions for a multinational police force (including Serbs and Albanians) within the framework of the OSCE, which would oversee the application of a transitional agreement.
It would above all have been possible to enlarge the framework of the negotiations by including the Balkan states destabilised by this conflict: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania..
One could at the same time have defended the Kosovars’ right to self-government of the province and protected the Serb minority in Kosova; one could have sought to respond to the aspirations and fears of the different peoples concerned through links of cooperation and agreements between neighbouring states, with Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania.
No such attempt was made.
We do not accept the arguments with which it has been sought to legitimate the NATO intervention:
It is not true that the NATO air strikes will prevent the conflict spreading to the region, to Macedonia or Bosnia-Herzegovina: they will on the contrary encourage this.
They will further destabilise Bosnia-Herzegovina and no doubt endanger the multinational forces responsible for enforcing the fragile Dayton Agreement. They have already fanned the flames of conflict in Macedonia.
It is not true that NATO is protecting the Kosovar population or their rights. Nor is it true that the bombing of Serbia is opening the way to a democratic government there.
The governments of the European Union and of the United States perhaps hoped that this demonstration of force would force Slobodan Milosevic to sign their plan. Does this reveal on their part naïveté or hypocrisy? Whatever the case, this policy is leading not only to a political impasse, but also a legitimatisation of the role of NATO outside any framework of international control.
For this reason, we demand:
an immediate end to these bombings;
the organisation of a Balkans conference in which representatives of the states and all the national communities in these states would participate;
the defence of the principle of the right of peoples to self-determination, on the sole condition that this right is not obtained to the detriment of another people and through the ethnic cleansing of territory;
a debate in parliament on the future participation of France in NATO.