[ot] [!nt] \n2+0\

[integer at www.god-emil.dk]

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 at iacenter.org
http://www.iacenter.org
phone: 212 633-6646
fax:   212 633-2889