SUNS  4314 Monday 2 November 1998


UNITED NATIONS: DEBATE OVER USE OF NATO MILITARY THREATS

United Nations, Oct 29 (IPS/Farhan Haq) -- U.N. diplomats credit the threat by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to unleash its military might against Yugoslavia for the Yugoslav withdrawal from Kosovo, but they are divided over whether such threats should become more common.

U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke typified the ambivalence over NATO's involvement after he negotiated a new autonomy deal for Kosovo with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

On the one hand, Holbrooke told reporters here, the NATO action was "precedent-setting" - bringing the military force of the Western world to bear on what all sides agreed was an internal conflict within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On the other hand, he added, "the fact that it sets a precedent doesn't mean it sets an iron-clad rule for intervention."

Many U.N. member states would be unhappy if all internal conflicts were subject to the scrutiny and outside military intervention that has been attached to Kosovo, Holbrooke noted. But, from now on, many internal disputes may be approached similarly on a "case-by-case" basis, he added.

Other diplomats were not so sure. One Chinese official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, argued that the U.N. Security Council had refrained from giving a clear signal to authorise the use of force in Kosovo - and thus that there is no precedent for what he called "interference" in countries' sovereign affairs.

What is clear is that, while the United Nations and the governments of Yugoslavia, the United States and those of the European Union agree that Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia, NATO was able to make a credible threat to strike Yugoslav positions if there were no troop withdrawal from its Albanian-populated province. Under those threats, Belgrade began to pull troops out of Kosovo,
causing NATO to postpone indefinitely the threat of air strikes while keeping 400 warplanes on alert. The NATO allies also planned to send a small force to neighbouring Macedonia, in which U.S. troops, Holbrooke said, would have at most a small liaison role.

For Holbrooke, the important point is that, although Western democracies took considerable time to deal with Kosovo, they had learned from the 1991-95 conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina to offer a
credible threat of force when dealing with Belgrade.

"For more than a decade, the Yugoslav authorities in Belgrade have been taking away the rights of the Albanian people in Kosovo and saying it was an internal affair," Holbrooke said. Now, he contended, the new deal with Milosevic - paving the way for internationally-monitored elections in Kosovo and the return of some 300,000 displaced Kosovars - "will be a major step away from the tragedy of the past decade."

The question remained as to what extent such international oversight of an internal dispute is new - particularly given U.N. and other international involvement in internal conflicts in Sierra Leone, the
Kurdish zones in Iraq and similar hot spots in recent years.

In many ways, Milosevic - whose argument that the Croatia and Bosnia wars were internal conflicts faltered after both breakaway states became independent nations - is in the same boat as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

No nation favours independence for Iraqi Kurdistan or for Kosovo, yet Milosovic and Hussein have become international pariahs, to the point where few governments will allow their claims of national sovereignty to prevent efforts to improve the human rights of the Kurdish and Albanian minorities.

Kurdistan remains under a "no-fly" zone patrolled by U.S., British and French planes - yet Baghdad is still regarded as the government of all Iraq, even though Washington has openly sided with Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Masoud Barzani against Hussein. That may prove a grim precedent for Kosovo, where 2,000 members of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will monitor the Kosovo agreement.

The problem is acute since the deal Holbrooke crafted envisions a return to the autonomy Kosovo had in the 1980s, but does not envision any chance of independence - which both the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army and most Kosovars affected by this year's Yugoslav Army crackdown now favour.

Holbrooke and other officials conceded that one danger of the Serb pullout is that Kosovo Liberation Army forces could fill the void, and spark a new round of fighting. At the same time, Belgrade is likely to be suspicious of any initiatives that seem to weaken its hold on Kosovo.

Although Yugoslavia's U.N. ambassador, Vladimir Jovanovic, has argued that "general life in Kosovo is becoming more normal", he has taken umbrage at any comments that suggest that Kosovo's status is different from any other part of the republic.

When Louise Arbour, chief justice of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, was cited on a radio programme as saying Belgrade "should limit the Serb aggression in Kosovo", Jovanovic countered, "This is a political statement which has nothing to do with the tribunal" and added that it was normal for Yugoslav security forces to be within Yugoslavia.
Recent days may have seen an easing of tensions in Kosovo, but sensitivity over just such matters are expected to remain high - particularly if countries worry that the intervention indeed sets a
precedent.