Socialist Action /August 1999
Cuba's UN Ambassador Denounces NATO Occupation of Yugoslavia
Cuban Ambassador Bruno Rodriguez addressed the United Nations in late
June on the subject of the recently ended war in Yugoslavia.
Below we reprint the full text of Rodriguez's speech. It is followed
by a reply by the U.S. representative to the UN and then by Rodriguez's
rebuttal.
Translation from the Spanish is by the Cuban newspaper Granma.
Mr. President:
The Security Council is late. The resolution it has just adopted will
not change reality. This has been and will continue to be a US and NATO
invasion. The disregard for the United Nations and disobedience to the Security
Council are irreparable. The aggressors will never be impartial and will
never reestablish the principles they have trodden upon.
The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's sovereignty and territorial integrity-solemnly
and hypocritically proclaimed-is absolutely unfeasible after the imposed
conditions, and the forcible disintegration of a sovereign state is not
being disguised.
Seven days have gone after the acceptance by the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia's government and the Serbian parliament of the peace proposal
conveyed by the High Special Envoys.
In this time period, however, there have been 3684 NATO sorties and 996
strikes against a wide range of targets, including civilian targets, according
to the latest available information. After the Serbian acceptance, innocent
people continued to be killed or wounded, and the deliberate destruction
of the country went on.
This week, after the demands presented by NATO-added to the envoys' already
draconian proposal-it has become more apparent that the United States and
NATO were not seeking a political solution but rather the consolidation
of a new world power mechanism, the destruction of Serbia, the liquidation
of its government and the humiliation of its people. It is now confirmed
that negotiation is not possible under the bombs.
There is no doubt now-if ever there was one- about the real goal of this
disproportionate aggression. For 79 days, a colossal military, economic
and technological force attacked with impunity a small developing country,
carrying out 35,778 combat and support missions. The aggressors' combined
GDP is 1,163 times that of their victim: their population is 77-fold; their
territory 226-fold, and their regular troops are 43-fold. The Serbian people's
resistance has been heroic, at the cost of thousands of civilians dead or
wounded, enormous deprivation, the destruction of their country, the indelible
trauma of the bombardments in their children's minds. The aggressors deserve
no laurels.
The Security Council's silence will not erase the images of the bombed
Grdelica Jorge passenger train; of the Djakovica-Pec convoy of Albanian
refugees; of the civilian facilities in Belgrade and Novi Sad; of the Paracin,
Kralijevo, Sremska Mitrovica villages; the Serbian television station; the
Luzane bus; the Surdulica neighborhood; the Lucani factory; the power generators;
the potable water grids; the Valjevo hospital; the Greek convoy near Vlac;
the People's Republic of China's Embassy; the Nis marketplace and hospital
complex; the Kosovar-Albanian Korisa village; 18 diplomatic premises; the
Istok prison; tens of bridges, railways and roads.
It has been a genocide. The systematic actions to deprive millions of
people of food, heat, drinking water and medical services; the deliberate
and daily strikes on non-military targets where civilians were known to
be; and the use of internationally banned weapons like the uranium-coated
and cluster bombs; or the indiscriminate use of seismic bombs in urban areas
and graphite bombs against power grids-so as to paralyze every vital service-cannot
be described otherwise.
These acts are in violation of the Geneva Conventions, International
Humanitarian Law and War Practices and Customs. Those responsible must be
exemplarily punished. This war's environmental impact on the region is really
inestimable. The pretexts NATO politicians have stuffed their speeches with-lying
to their own nationals while ridiculously smiling-cannot withstand any analysis.
They argued that they wanted to prevent a massive exodus of refugees
and created a true and readily predictable humanitarian catastrophe: 860,000
refugees left their country after the bombings began. The main attacking
countries have received only 30,703 refugees, 3.6 percent of the number
they created by their bombings. The United States and the United Kingdom,
as a whole, have received 0.9 percent. Two-thirds of the Bosnia refugees
whose return had been planned for this year have not returned and nobody
is in charge.
They wanted to defend the Kosovar-Albanian people's human rights and
prevent the so-called "ethnic cleansing": those who are bombing
have too many old and current sins for anyone to believe in their sincerity.
They also have a double-standard tradition that morally disqualifies them.
The United States and some of its allies-breaching international sanctions-maintained
the apartheid regime, tolerated atrocities in Cambodia and Central America
and coexisted with the fascist military regimes in Latin America.
They remain impassive and silent to the crimes against the Arab peoples
and to those now being flagrantly committed against the Palestinian people.
Three hundred Muslims-half of them children under five-die every day in
Iraq as a result of sanctions and aggressions. They do not get upset about
or make any efforts to settle the conflicts in Africa, where 11 million
refugees are currently living in a true humanitarian emergency situation.
The United States currently maintains the segregation of its own indigenous
people in keeping with the best of traditions in ethnic cleansing formerly
used to exterminate them. Today, immigrants are brutally persecuted; there
are atrocious cases like those of Louima and Diallo; and there is a differential
ethnic pattern in society, justice, the penal system and the application
of the capital punishment.
Nor do the authors of dirty wars, extraterritorial laws and genocidal
blockades have the morality to teach humanitarian lessons. It is quite conspicuous
that NATO has not done or said anything about the horrible exodus of numberless
Serbs, among them 500,000 only from Krajina-according to United Nations
official figures-that unleashed the premeditated disintegration of the former
Yugoslavia, promoted by a part of Europe and unanimously supported by the
West.
Formerly, in 1941, the fascist government of Ante Pavelic, imposed on
Zagreb by Adolf Hitler and controlling Croatia, Bosnia, Hercegovina and
part of Voivodina up to the threshold of Belgrade, established the famous
"doctrine of the three thirds": one-third of the Serbs was to
be expelled; another third assimilated and forcibly converted to the official
religion; and the third, physically eliminated. Many of the converts were
eventually eliminated, and as deportation became difficult, extermination
became the general formula applied. Some 675,000 Serbian civilians, of every
age and sex, were murdered by Pavelic's ustachas, according to the British
Admiralty's well-documented archives.
That holocaust took place scarcely 7 years before NATO was founded. Is
Europe not ashamed over the thousands of terribly destructive bombs that
NATO has just launched upon the Serbian people?
The current genocidal war, rather than helping harmony, has stirred hatred
and exacerbated ethnic and religious wars in Kosovo and the Balkans. It
is also noteworthy that NATO's new "humanism" does not go as far
as NATO's pockets.
Battle-hardened leaders of the most solvent attacking powers have said
without a flush that they will allocate no funds until Serbia "becomes
democratic." The interpretation is self-evident. Apparently, "Phase
IV" of the operation, with less puritan goals, is being decreed. Nor
are there any concrete commitments to the damages, estimated at $100 billion.
Reconstruction is the international community's moral duty and should be
a legal obligation for the aggressors.
Cuba wishes to ratify its willingness to participate-to the extent of
its modest ability-in any project for the reconstruction of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, on humanitarian aid for the Kosovar-Albanians, and
renews the offer made as early as 5 April-12 days after the strikes began-to
cooperate by sending, free of charge, some 1000 doctors to take care of
refugees in their camps and after their return home, as well as of those
who might be in need in Kosovo, in the rest of Serbia and Montenegro.
The survival of Europe's stability has also been seen as an objective
of the unleashed war. However, it is obvious that the region's instability
has grown. The occupation of Kosovo cannot be forever, nor does the invaders'
command offer any guarantees whatsoever. The neighboring countries will
have to face the consequences of what has happened, at the cost of high
risk for new conflicts or the aggravation of those already underway.
In strongly condemning the crime committed against the Serbian people,
the Cuban government supports, also, the Kosovar-Albanian people's right
to be fully guaranteed their national, cultural and religious identity,
and to enjoy the widest autonomy and, even, independence, if-once a just
and lasting peace not imposed on Serbia by an atrocious war of aggression
has been reached-Kosovars of all ethnic groups and the Republic of Serbia
should peacefully and democratically come to that decision.
The path to peace goes through guaranteeing absolutely equal rights and
security for all national groups and through healing the hatred exacerbated
by aggression. A concrete program for reconstruction, peace, security and
stability in the region will be required. It is our sincere hope that the
neighboring countries will develop-with intelligence, tolerance and altruism-the
ability to avoid new conflicts on the grounds of respect for the rights
of all national groups.
Mr. President:
Europe, paradoxically, has also been a victim. Although the objective
was to consolidate and establish NATO's offensive capabilities against the
rest of the world, what has actually been consolidated and established,
in a humiliating and lessening way for the European sovereignty, is the
United States' hegemony over the old and cultured Europe. It has been treated
ostensibly as a minor partner. It is the United States that makes all the
decisions, lays out the strategy, exerts command, makes use of the necessary
military means and tests its new and criminal technology in the European
range.
The United States contributed 74% of the fighter planes, and 97% of the
airborne refueling planes. Ninety percent of the bombs were laser-guided,
all of them US-made. It used thousands of cruise missiles, deployed for
the first time its B-2s, and spent billions of dollars financing almost
the entirety of the operation.
It was an American war, although some allies contend for credits, or
attempts on an impossible leadership. However, it will be Europe that will
have to pay the consequences of the conflict, that will have to take on
the humanitarian problems created by the air strikes, that will probably
have to provide the eventual resources for reconstruction, and that will
especially suffer the more unstable conditions generated in the Balkans.
The currency of an integrated, politically independent, economically
powerful and cultured Europe has suffered a huge damage. The Euro is already
paying for these mistakes in the stock exchange market. Europe will have
to rethink its objectives now that its subordination has consolidated. It
has been proved that it hurts them as the Bremen Conference and now the
EU Summit have agreed to create a "European identity and defense capability."
On the other hand, NATO's "New Strategic Concept" and "Defense
Capability Initiative" consecrate its right to military intervention
at a world level. In Kosovo, the doctrine was put into practice before it
was even born. It turns out that NATO, whose only value was its defensive
nature and whose only virtue had been its inactivity, is now declaring itself
and acting like the world gendarme.
Without a Cold War or a real enemy, it becomes an offensive alliance,
announces that it will act beyond its Member States' borders, that it will
attack without being attacked, when it deems its interests at stake, and
that it will act outside the UN when the latter becomes indocile.
We are promised that, by cannon shots, it will cope with "global
threats" like terrorism, drug trafficking, the existence of weapons
of mass destruction and human rights violations (curiously enough, there
is no mention of hunger and AIDS), and it will reserve the right to decide
what a threat is, and where and when it would call for becoming a target
of its missiles.
The concept of the "diplomacy of force" is proliferating. The
new "NATO humanitarianism" is just the right to "humanitarian
intervention," which nobody has defined nor has the United Nations
agreed upon.
The developing countries must look at Kosovo as the place where we have
been made collectively weaker against the powers' hegemonism and military
threat. The frivolous rhetoric on the globalization "opportunities,"
the myth of the "new financial architecture" or the "United
Nations reform" mirage has been exposed in the Balkans.
Today, the risks and challenges are clearer. No one will give us anything
away. It is not a consolation that our creditors, passengers on the same
boat, will go down with us. Developing countries, together, will have to
forge by ourselves our common future in a globalized world.
Mr. President:
The Security Council's prolonged silence will not erase the images of
the bombardments. The Alliance owns the aircraft and the newspapers. The
war show is another commodity. The war and the information market have found
in Kosovo common interests and huge revenues. NATO's war has filled the
coffers of smart weapons manufacturers and producers of silly TV shows.
The epidemic violence of the societies that have bombed the FRY cannot be
detached from this war. Children are shooting in United States schools,
following, in essence, the same logic their parents have followed in Serbia.
Mr. President:
We are now witnessing the manipulation of the United Nations and the
Security Council. After 79 days of disobedience and contempt, they are being
used today to try to give the aggression an appearance of legality. The
UN Charter was ignored, and it is invoked now, even though it has been replaced,
in fact, with NATO's New Strategic Concept. The collective security mechanism
has been replaced-for the sake of the powerful-with the law of the jungle.
The International Court of Justice did not declare the bombings illegal,
thus rendering International Law helpless. It is not new or exceptional
for the Commission on Human Rights to be manipulated, but it is serious
that it did not say that the air campaign is a massive, flagrant, feverish
and systematic violation of human rights.
The developing world suffers unipolarism the most and takes the greatest
chances with the weakening of the United Nations. The only beneficiary is
the United States. The only choice is to struggle against these imperial
practices, defend the United Nations, restore respect for and implementation
of the Charter, preserve the principles of non-intervention, non-aggression,
no threat or use of force and respect for sovereignty.
The fact that NATO has had to come now to the Security Council signals
that this battle is still possible, and that if developing countries use
their strength, which is considerable when united, we will be able to save
the United Nations.
Thank you.
U.S. Representative Replies
Mr. President:
I am so astounded by the comments and observations of the Cuban representative
that I wish to make a brief point on it. Of course, as the representative
of the United States here, it would be hard not to be astounded by his comments.
However, although we are used to the tired rhetoric and the antiquated
analysis of the Cuban representatives here in the United Nations and normally
do not respond, this afternoon, I believe that a comment is important. I
was so astounded that he totally avoided any acknowledgment of the human
realities in Kosovo prior to the start of the NATO air campaign on March
24 that I wished to point this out in my reply.
It would appear that the well-documented phenomenon of massive ethnic
cleansing, the use of terror and brutality against the civilian population
is not allowed to register in the minds of Cuban officials. I believe that
the reason for this amazing intellectual incapacity is clear to everyone
in this room.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Rebuttal by Rodriguez
Thank you, Mr. President:
I have referred to irrefutable historical facts in an objective, exact
and respectful manner. I haven't had the least intention of blaming any
one country and far less any one people. I have solely referred to facts
that history has recorded in an indelible manner and which have been lamentably
omitted in this meeting.
For the benefit of the participants and the record, I should state that
the data I utilized in relation to the so-called exodus from Krajina are
contained in a recent report to this very same Security Council on June
2, by the assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs.
Mr. President: One cannot bomb innocent civilians in the name of human
rights. One cannot murder peoples in the name of international law. One
cannot avoid the exodus of refugees with warfare and the destruction of
the means of sustenance, of emergency medical services, of food and water
supplies to the population.
One cannot create hundreds of thousands of refugees with criminal and
irresponsible policies and then remain unconcerned about them. One cannot
launch a war in the name of peace and stability. One cannot commit acts
of genocide in the name of freedom.
The United States commits brutal acts and then its representatives fear
the words that describe them. Let the minutes confirm it and our all colleagues
hear it: the bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) is
an ongoing and deliberate act of genocide.
In the strictest legal sense, an act of genocide is systematic action
directed at depriving a defenseless population of its means of sustenance.
So is a campaign of air strikes on civilian targets, and prior knowledge
of the presence of innocent persons within such targets, which implies a
deliberate intent to cause their death because they are there.
It would seem that two distinct wars are being talked of here. That's
logical.
One is the "virtual" war launched from the technological superiority
of the United States, from its abundant money, opulence, superiority and
hegemonism. It's a "no-loss" war, a "television" war
which intoxicates people while it continues voraciously consuming as if
nothing was happening.
The other, of which I spoke, is the real war, where innocent civilians
die, where children are torn apart, where hospitals, schools and factories
are destroyed. Where people suffer from lack of water, energy, foodstuffs,
operating rooms. Where there is no radiotherapy or dialysis, where premature
babies die, where trains, buses, refugee convoys, prisons and diplomatic
missions are reduced to ashes.
Mr. President, how can the continuation of the bombardment and the deaths
and wounding of innocent civilians be explained in the wake of the FRY's
acceptance of the so-called peace conditions? Militarily it was unnecessary,
ethically it is unacceptable and, from the humane point of view, it is criminal.
History will never pardon the phrase "collateral damage," which
has been employed so much in recent months to refer to the destroyed bodies
of innocent children.
Stating the truth as it is now, we have to avoid the United States and
NATO filling us with military interventions and occupying our countries
in the South on any pretext whatsoever and whenever it takes their fancy,
just as in earlier centuries that nation filled our continents with misery
and calamity. We don't have anything to learn from the country of the war
in Viet Nam, police brutality, the buying and selling of politicians, and
where Lincoln's bedroom is rented out.
It was NATO, not Cuba, that flagrantly violated a member state's sovereignty
and territorial integrity.
It was NATO, not Cuba, that betrayed the UN Charter and usurped the Security
Council's faculties.
It was NATO, not Cuba, that violated all international conventions, destroyed
an embassy and damaged more than one dozen diplomatic missions. It was NATO,
not Cuba, that effected over 35,000 combat and support flights and launched
thousands of bombs and tons of explosives.
It is NATO, not Cuba, that is the author of the genocide and which bears
the responsibility for the death and wounding of thousands of innocent civilians.
Now, the United States and NATO have come to the Security Council. What
are they coming for, Mr. President? They are coming to manipulate it. The
United States isn't paying (its debt to) the United Nations and wants to
treat it as if it was its fief. When the Security Council, almost always
at its service, doesn't give in, then there's contempt and disrespect. When
the subjects fail to bow down it bombards them.
It ignores the Charter, by stating in this meeting that it is obsolete.
It has to be defended, Mr. President. It's not merely a bunch of papers.
It is the fundamental base of the UN, it is the raison d'être of this
organization. In order to forget it one would have to have forgotten the
bombardment of Rotterdam and the persecution of the Jews in Amsterdam.
Mr. President: I am not going to respond to the personal allusions of
the distinguished representative in reference to that "tiny little
country" as it was called in an unfortunate joke during a recent Group
of Eight press conference.
However, I should state that the Cuba can come here and state the truth,
with its head held high, because it has earned that right through its total
independence, its heroic resistance in the face of a dirty war, constant
aggression and a genocidal blockade mounted by the United States. Cuba can
do so because, at the time, it took the decision, ratified today, to defend
the Revolution it made for itself to the final consequences.
Thank you very much.
Socialist Action /August 1999 |