||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||| ||| ||| A N T I F A ||| ||| ||| ||| I N F O - B U L L E T I N ||| ||| _____ ||| ||| ||| ||| * News * Analysis * Research * Action * ||| ||| ||| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ***** ||/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\|/\||/\|| || * -- SPECIAL -- * April 06, 1999 * -- EDITION -- * || ||\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/||\/|| * SPECIAL EDITION * * * * _________________________________________________________________ U.S.-NATO ATTACKS ON YUGOSLAVIA _________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS ------ X. AFIB Editor's Introduction 1. (CP) COUNTERPUNCH: How the US State Dept. Recruited Human Rights Groups to Cheer On the Bombing Raids - Those Incubator Babies, Once More? 2. (NYT) THE NEW YORK TIMES: In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflicts [1987 background article] 3. (IAC) INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER: Radioactive Weapons Used by U.S. and NATO in Kosovo 4. (GLW) GREEN LEFT WEEKLY: Russia and Yugoslavia - Letting NATO Off the Hook * * * AFIB EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION US-NATO attacks on Yugoslavia are bitter confirmation of the "good intentions" of the world's only superpower: knuckle-under or else. Like a Mafia don, US president Clinton insists if Belgrade "comes back to the table" and signs the Rambouillet "agreements" (which would mean the effective dismemberment of what's left of Yugoslavia and conveniently, a forward base for NATO troops in the region) the bombing will stop. Newspeak translation: "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse." And if the Yugoslavs don't capitulate, there's always the "Iraqi scenario." Despite what one thinks of Milosevic, the United States is exploiting - some would argue (this writer among them) creating - the present humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo for crude geo- political leverage over the European competition. But at the end of the day, there's nothing "crude" about US intentions. For more than eighty years (since 1917 to be precise), US policy has been driven by one consideration: make the world "safe" for US investments. And if the deformed remnant of socialist Yugoslavia is destroyed in the process, with incalculable losses for all ethnic groups in the area, tough luck. "Human rights" rhetoric aside, current attacks are but another in a long line of "demonstration effects" to any and all who dare question the "good intentions" of the masters. But for struggling millions around the globe crushed beneath the wheels of "economic restructuring," the enemy isn't in Belgrade but in Washington, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Rome, etc. Imperialism by any other name...the "New World Order," perhaps? * * * * COUNTERPUNCH * Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair `Tells the Facts and Names the Names' 3220 N Street, NW, Suite 346 Washington, DC 20007 Tel: 1-800-840-3683 E-mail: counterpunch@counterpunch.org Web: http://www.counterpunch.org/ - 3 April 1999 - ----- `How the US State Dept. Recruited Human Rights Groups to Cheer On the Bombing Raids' _________________________________________________________________ THOSE INCUBATOR BABIES, ONCE MORE? _________________________________________________________________ * * * As the US stepped up its bombing raids against Yugoslavia, Harold Koh, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, called the leaders of several US human rights groups to a hastily arranged meeting at his offices in Foggy Bottom. Koh started the session by telling the groups' leaders, who included Amnesty International-USA's head Dr. William Schulz, that he was sorry that the administration could not support the extradition of Pinochet. He stressed that while Madeleine Albright cared deeply about human rights matters, the Defense Department had quashed the idea. But, Koh said, there was good news. Albright had convinced the Defense Department and Clinton that human rights concerns should be the driving force behind the bombing of the Serbs. Koh said he hoped the human rights groups would enthusiastically support the mission and promised that if they did, Albright might even meet with them in person in the near future. Amnesty International has obediently hopped to State's tune, saying in a press release "violations of human rights lie at the heart of the current conflict in Kosovo, and have done so ever since it developed during the 1980s. It is therefore essential that the effective protection and promotion of human rights should be the centerpiece of any agreement to be reached on Kosovo." On March 29, the group called for increases in military intelligence operations on the ground in Kosovo. Human Rights Watch has also pressed the cause of military intervention, using their Kosovo Human Rights Flash to draw attention to Serbian abuses. After a week of unrelenting missile attacks in Yugoslavia and Kosovo, none of the Human Rights Watch reports included any tallies of civilian casualties from the NATO bombings. Care Yugoslavia, an Australian humanitarian aide group, said that over the first week, NATO bombing raids had killed at least 15 ethnic Kosovars, when its bombs hit a refugee camp. A person who attended the meeting tells CounterPunch he was shocked that many of the leaders endorsed Koh's rationale. "Human rights is just another affinity cause to be used by Clinton and Albright when it suits them, rather than consistently and broadly," he said. "Indeed, human rights concerns could be used as an excuse for extra-legal military actions that bypass the security council and/or Congress." Readers may recall that one particularly successful propaganda campaign against Iraq saw US government operatives using Amnesty International to advance the false and easily disprovable story that Iraqis had murdered over 300 Kuwaiti babies in August, 1990, by tossing them out of their incubators and letting them die on the floor. It's not at issue here whether or not Iraqi or Serb forces are brutal. It's a matter of how human rights organizations willingly become instruments of state policy. Somalia offers a particularly vivid example of this. NATO, SIG HEIL! It's bracing to see the Germans taking part in NATO's bombing. It lends moral tone to an operation to have the grandsons of the Third Reich willing, able and eager, to drop high explosive again, in this instance on the Serbs. To add symmetry to the affair, the last time Serbs in Belgrade had high explosives dropped on them was in 1941 by the sons of the Third Reich. To bring even deeper symmetry, the German political party whose leader, Schroeder, ordered German participation in the bombing is that of the Social Democrats, whose great grand- fathers enthusiastically voted credits to wage war in 1914, to the enormous disgust of Lenin, who never felt quite the same way about social democrats ever after. Whether in Germany or England or France all social democratic parties in 1914 tossed aside previous pledges against war, thus helping produce the first great bloodletting of our century. Today, with social democrats leading governments across Europe -- Schroeder, Blair, Jospin, Prodi -- all fall in behind Clinton. This is, largely, a war most earnestly supported by liberals and many so-called leftists. There's been some patronizing talk here about the Serbs' deep sense of "grievance" at the way history has treated them, with the implication that the Serbs are irrational in this regard. But it's scarcely irrational to remember that Nazi Germany bombed Belgrade in the Second World War, or that Germany's prime ally in the region, Croatia, ran a concentration camp at Jasenovac where tens of thousands of Serbs -- along with Jews and gypsies -- were liquidated. Nor is it irrational to recall that Germany in more recent years has been an unrelenting assailant of the former Yugoslav federation, encouraging Slovenia to secede and lending determined support to Croatia, in gratitude for which Croatia adopted, on independence in 1991, the German hymn, "Danke Deutschland." So much for Serb feelings about Germany. Serbia has some reason to feel similar resentment towards the United States. The biggest single ethnic cleansing of the mid-1990s in the former Yugoslavia was conducted by Croatia under the supervision of the United States, whose military generals and CIA officers issued targeting instructions to Croatian artillery for the ethnic clearing. The targets were Serbs, living in Serbian territory, in the Krajina. Heading the Croatian cleansers was president Franjo Tudjman, who has rehabbed Nazi war criminals. Yet somehow it is Serbia's Milosevic who is demonized here as Hitler. In 1999 Bill Clinton more or less left the UN's secretary general, Kofi Annan, to find out from CNN about NATO's decision to bomb. The US game, abetted chiefly by Blair's UK, is to make NATO the arbiter of Europe's borders and "security", and to boycott the UN as a forum. The twentieth-century illusion of air power is once again being exposed. Now come demands for ground troops and a route march into deeper madness, wider killing and misery. The only chance is rising protest from Americans, from the world community, from dissident countries in NATO with calls for a cease-fire and a genuine, UN peace-keeping force in Kosovo with no troops from the contending parties and their allies. Absent that, why not a drive for impeachment of Bill Clinton, on serious grounds at last, for abusing Congress's war-making powers and also his sworn duty to uphold the international treaties to which the US has set its name. PICK THE WARMONGER A quiz: Which US rep said: "At this point I support the NATO sponsored air-strikes that are currently taking place." And which US rep said: "This is not a proud moment for America...as bad as the violence is towards the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, our ability to police and stop all ethnic fighting around the world is quite limited, and the efforts are quite simply not permitted under constitutional law." Yes, the first is from the brass- lunged armchair bomber of Vermont, Bernard Sanders and the second from Ron Paul, libertarian from Texas. How long will the long- suffering progressives of Vermont tolerate their hypocritical rep without rebuke? Copyright 1999. All rights reserved. Courtesy of William Blum, BBlum6@aol.com ***** * KOSOVO: IMPORTANT BACKGROUND INFORMATION * Introduction by William Blum, BBlum6@aol.com * * * In presenting the background to the Kosovo conflict, U.S. news outlets usually begin with Serbia's revocation of the Kosovo Albanians' autonomy in 1989. This was a crucial decision, one of the major reasons that the Kosovo Liberation Army was formed. It also destabilized the Yugoslavian system and contributed to the country's breakup. Yet media accounts have rarely explained why Serbia lifted Kosovo's autonomy. The attached article, from the New York Times in 1987, gives important background to this decision. Although the article is easily found in the Nexis database, little to none of this information has found its way into contemporary coverage of Kosovo, in the Times or anywhere else. If one read a similar history of Kosovo written today, one would likely dismiss it as pro-Serb propaganda. Yet this was written 12 years ago, when Kosovo was an obscure corner of the world, and the New York Times would not seem to have any particular interest in defending Serbs or attacking Albanians. It should be kept in mind that some of the charges in this article may be exaggerated or politically motivated. Of course, the same is true of atrocity reports that are being carried in the New York Times and other papers today. William Blum is the author of _Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II_, 1995, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine. * * * _________________________________________________________________ IN YUGOSLAVIA, RISING ETHNIC STRIFE BRINGS FEARS OF WORSE CIVIL CONFLICT _________________________________________________________________ THE NEW YORK TIMES November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1 By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II. The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants. A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others. The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided. VICIOUS INSULTS Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults. Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls. Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats. RADICALS' GOALS The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia. Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania. There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is giving them material assistance. The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins. WORST STRIFE IN YEARS As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo'' in all but name. The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the worst in the last seven years.'' Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today. Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000. ''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region. ATTACKS ON SLAVS Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe. In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party. As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years. Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces. `LEBANONIZING' OF YUGOSLAVIA High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland. Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the breakup of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.'' The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.'' CONCERNS OVER MILITARY Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi, had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start their mandatory year of military service. Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human timebombs. He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians said they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue. Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian authorities. REGION'S SLAVS LACK STRENGTH While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north. Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi. But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for ''the policy of the hard hand.'' ''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians. Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party. Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people without hope.'' But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948. Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an extraordinary party congress before March to address the country's grave problems. The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's mainstream. Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company ***** * INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER * 39 West 14th Street, #206 New York, NY 10011 Tel: 212-633-6646 Fax: 212-633-2889 Web: http://www.iacenter.org E-mail: iacenter@iacenter.org - Thursday, 1 April 1999 - ----- _________________________________________________________________ RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS USED BY U.S. AND NATO IN KOSOVO _________________________________________________________________ Attention: Assignment Editor Press Contact: Sara Flounders or John Catalinotto For Immediate Release, April 1, 1999 * * * The International Action Center, a group that opposes the use of depleted-uranium weapons, called the Pentagon's decision to use the A-10 "Warthog" jets against targets in Kosovo "a danger to the people and environment of the entire Balkans." The A-10s were the anti-tank weapon of choice in the 1991 war against Iraq. It carries a GAU-8/A Avenger 30 millimeter seven-barrel cannon capable of firing 4,200 rounds per minute. During that war it fired 30 mm rounds reinforced with depleted uranium, a radioactive weapon. There is solid scientific evidence that the depleted uranium residue left in Iraq is responsible for a large increase in stillbirths, children born with defects, and childhood leukemia and other cancers in the area of southern Iraq near Basra, where most of these shells were fired. Many U.S. veterans groups also say that DU residues contributed to the condition called "Gulf War Syndrome" that has affected close to 100,000 service people in the U.S. and Britain with chronic sickness. John Catalinotto, a spokesperson from the Depleted Uranium Education Project of the International Action Center and an editor of the 1997 book Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium, said the use of DU weapons in Yugoslavia "adds a new dimension to the crime NATO is perpetrating against the Yugoslav people -- including those in Kosovo." Catalinotto explained that the Pentagon uses DU, a waste product of the uranium enrichment process used for making atomic bombs and nuclear fuel, because it is extremely dense -- 1.7 times as dense as lead. "DU is used in alloy form in shells to make them penetrate targets better. As the shell hits its target, it burns and releases uranium oxide into the air. The poisonous and radioactive uranium is most dangerous when inhaled into the body, where it will release radiation during the life of the person who inhaled it," said Catalinotto. Sara Flounders, a contributing author of Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium and the Co-Director of the International Action Center, said, "Warthogs fired roughly 940,000 rounds of DU shells during the Gulf War. More than 600,000 pounds of radioactive waste was left in the Gulf Region after the war. And DU weapons in smaller number were already used by NATO troops during the bombing of Serbian areas of Bosnia in 1995. "The use of Warthogs with DU shells threatens to make a nuclear wasteland of Kosovo," Flounders said." The Pentagon is laying waste to the very people -- along with their children -- they claim to be saving; this is another reason for fighting to end NATO's attack on Yugoslavia. "Worldwide protests against these bombings are growing. The U.S. use of radioactive weapons must be linked to all the protests and opposition that is taking place internationally to the bombing. These protests must be joined by environmental activists, veterans groups, anti-nuclear groups, and all those who know the long-term destruction to the environment and to whole civilian populations that this type of warfare will cause." Flounders said that Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium, which has been translated and published in Arabic and Japanese, will be coming out soon with a second edition. Courtesy of Pan African News Wire, ac6123@wayne.edu ***** * GREEN LEFT WEEKLY * E-mail: greenleft@peg.apc.org Web: http://www.peg.apc.org/~greenleft - Number 355, 7 April 1999 - ----- _________________________________________________________________ RUSSIA AND YUGOSLAVIA: LETTING NATO OFF THE HOOK _________________________________________________________________ By Renfrey Clarke * * * MOSCOW - With a shower of paint bombs, rocks, eggs and bottles, thousands of demonstrators outside the US embassy here on March 25 expressed outrage at the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Next morning, an estimated 5000 people demonstrated outside the British embassy. The protesters included large numbers of students, as well as factory workers organised by the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions. As the day wore on, the US embassy again became the target of protest. As many as 7000 people gathered, chanting and flinging projectiles. Press reports noted the unusual range of people taking part - from skin and teenage football fans to office workers and pensioners. From around Russia came news of further demonstrations. ``Yesterday Iraq, Today Serbia, Tomorrow Russia'', read a placard in St Petersburg. Nationalist organisations signed up military veterans to defend Yugoslavia. According to survey findings, no fewer than 93% of Russians oppose NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, where the majority Serb population have traditional ties with Russia. Sensing the popular mood, Russia's state leaders have tuned in to it - at least rhetorically. As the first reports of the bombing came in, President Boris Yeltsin hinted that Russia might respond with measures ``of a military character.'' In an interview on March 27, foreign minister Igor Ivanov accused NATO of committing ``genocide'' against the Yugoslav people, and suggested that the alliance answer for its actions before the UN war crimes tribunal. For anyone who remembers the mood of Russian leaders - and of a good part of the population - in the early 1990s, the scenes of the past days and weeks have been brimful of irony. Seven or eight years ago, so far as Yeltsin and many of his followers were concerned, the Western powers could do no wrong. But faith in the West has slid steadily since. As the bombs rain on Yugoslavia, the last shreds of belief in Western good will are being replaced by cynicism. In the Russian press, the rationalisations offered by Western leaders to explain the bombing campaign are treated with open scorn. So the NATO powers claim to have gone to war from a commitment to defend the rights of the Kosovar population in Yugoslavia? ``There is an unquestionable double standard,'' the Moscow paper Novye Izvestia observed on March 26, ``if one recalls how harshly Turkey, a NATO member, deals with the Kurds.'' The mood of hostility to the West is especially marked in the military. ``Most Russian military personnel are expressing direct readiness for armed solidarity with the Serbs'', the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on March 27. ``The US and NATO are now associated exclusively with the image of the enemy.'' It is not only among military officers that suspicions of NATO have grown stronger in the past few years. Why, Russians often ask themselves, has the NATO alliance even been preserved, now that the Cold War has ended? For a decade, liberal ideologues have tried to suppress the instinct of many Russians to view political questions in terms of class. But as the bombs and missiles have pounded Yugoslavia, even Russian liberals have been admitting that NATO is a military club of the rich, an armed alliance for enforcing the interests of the ``haves'' of North America and Europe against the ``have- nots.'' As citizens of what is now the great ``have-not'' of Europe, Russians have been quick to note that the bombing of Yugoslavia also carries a powerful message for them. If the Russian state should dare to pursue its interests in ways not to the West's liking, the message says, the consequences for Russia could be devastating. These are valid reasons for the Russian masses to fling beer bottles, including full ones, at the windows of the US embassy. The Russian elite have been flinging epithets, but after years of implementing Western economic prescriptions, the Russian government can now come up with little in the way of concrete action to keep NATO in check. When news of the bombing broke, Russian representatives in the United Nations Security Council moved a resolution demanding an immediate halt to the air strikes. The resolution, predictably, was heavily defeated. Russian military collaboration with NATO has now been frozen, and ratification by Russia of the START-2 nuclear arms reduction treaty has been postponed. The effect of these moves on the NATO governments, however, has been undetectable. Meanwhile, calls for Russia to provide military aid to Yugoslavia have been quietly pushed aside by the authorities as impractical and dangerous. The failure of Russian leaders to make any impact on NATO is not, however, simply a reflection of Russia's drastically reduced influence in the world. The will is not there either. The leaders' expressions of outrage at the bombing of Yugoslavia have been accompanied by assurances that no big changes in Moscow's orientation to the West are desired or contemplated. In a dramatic gesture on March 23, Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov called off a trip to the US after being denied guarantees that air strikes would not begin while he was there. Other members of his delegation, however, made their way to Washington, and while bombs fell on Belgrade, most of the meetings planned for Primakov's trip took place. A meeting between Primakov and International Monetary Fund chief Michel Camdessus, which had been due to take place in the US, was quickly relocated to Moscow. The Russian government was seeking IMF credits of as much as US$4.8 billion, needed to forestall a default on foreign debt payments. Nothing the NATO powers might do in the Balkans, it became clear, would be allowed to prejudice these negotiations. It might be argued that in stating emphatic opposition to NATO's attacks on Yugoslavia, Primakov and the Russian elite have passed an important test. But given the popular mood, they could not have done otherwise. If their statements are analysed, it becomes clear that the Russian rulers have dealt with the imperialist bombers much more kindly than they might have done. A striking feature of the rhetoric issuing from Moscow - both from official spokespeople and major newspapers - is the whitewash of the Yugoslav government and its refusal to address the real history and dynamics of the situation in Kosova. According to Novye Izvestia on March 26, Yugoslavia has been under attack for ``solving strictly internal problems.'' To foreign minister Igor Ivanov, quoted in the Moscow press, the Kosova Liberation Army consists simply of ``Albanian terrorists'' and ``Muslim extremists.'' Meanwhile, all but a few dismissive references to Serbian atrocities against the Kosovars have been expunged from the Russian media. The Russian elite is quite happy to underline its various differences with the West by permitting and even encouraging chauvinist fervour. But promoting a serious understanding of national rights and self-determination - something which would really give NATO problems - is not its line. All rights reserved, Green Left Weekly. 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