His Excellency Vladislav Jovanovic
Ambassador to the United Nations, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

"Crisis in Kosovo: Prospects for a Peaceful Settlement"

Thank you very much. Let me first of all express my real pleasure to be here in your beautiful city and to enjoy your presence. From the short conversations I had with some of you, I realize that you are highly qualified and competent in world affairs, and I believe that this will be invaluable and beneficial.

I have prepared a paper, but I don’t believe much in papers. So for that reason I think it will be much better if I try to explain our views on the present situation in English. First of all, Yugoslavia has been subjected to brutal aggression for more than two months, nearly 70 days, and that aggression hasn’t been justified at all. There is no international legal or political ground which can justify such an action by nineteen countries against one small sovereign country, a member state of the UN and other organizations, which had only one problem to solve, the terrible problem of separatism and terrorism in one of its provinces. That aggression is as you know a flagrant violation of the Charter of the UN, a violation of the Paris Charter, and is a usurpation of the powers of the UN Security Council. As such, the action of NATO against Yugoslavia is action against the United Nations as well, and against the international legal system as such.

Of course, historians would discuss about the ramifications and consequences of that action on the whole range of international political and social and other issues, but what one can see now is the immediate and visible consequences of an all-out humanitarian catastrophe in Yugoslavia as a whole, in the Kosovo province in particular, and in the region as a whole as well. Even beyond the region, there are consequences of that action, as with the strong reaction of China protesting the destruction of its embassy in Belgrade. What is involved by the 19 countries for attacking Yugoslavia was the refusal of Yugoslavia to accept the so-called peace agreement in Paris, an agreement which was not negotiated and agreed, but was forged and prepared in advanced by the so-called mediators from these countries and submitted to the Yugoslavian delegation in the form of "take it or be killed." That kind of dictum hasn’t been seen in international relations since the time of Hitler when he submitted a similar ultimatum to the President of Czechoslovakia requesting from him to cede certain lands or be attacked. We know what happened to Czechoslovakia after that, but Yugoslavia, a sovereign country, had no other choice than to reject that kind of dictum with indignation and to prepare for defense against a possible attack. That attack was very soon in full operation.

As a result, we have a country which is practically totally destroyed and we have terrorists going there after more than nearly 6,000 wounded and more than 1,400 civilians killed in very tragic circumstances. In addition to that, according to the latest information, 1,800 soldiers were victims of the bombing of Yugoslavia as such. But the most important casualty is the harm done to the peace and stability in the region and to the reputation and authority of the United Nations, which is totally marginalized and is in a good situation to follow the destiny and fate of the League of Nations, the past organization which was set up immediately after the First World War. We know how and why that League of Nations disappeared from the scene and from the history--because of its incapacity to react to foreign aggression.

Yugoslavia is a victim of that aggression. We didn’t want the war. We don’t enjoy war, but we have to defend ourselves because the alternative is to accept being occupied, not only in Kosovo-Metohija, but altogether. As a matter of fact, the so-called peace agreement in Rambouillet had a secret part, secret provisions which haven’t been submitted to all delegations, [but are] now disclosed to the world. That secret part of the agreement [allows]NATO military forces once deployed in Kosovo -Metohijo to free access and sovereign rights in their movement throughout Yugoslavia. So to all those who are resentful or critical about our decision to refuse that kind of humiliating attack, [this] should not happen to any country who respects itself. [It] should not accept to be humiliated and occupied just because a number of powerful countries express that wish to be accepted.

The destruction of the country is total and universal. Civilian targets are the main objects to be destroyed. The country’s infrastructure, civilian industry, even electricity and water supply systems, were totally destroyed or out of use. The aim of that total form of war is to terrorize populations, to deprive it of its total necessities, and to turn it against its own government and bring it to its knees. That kind of total war was waged during the Second World War by Hitler, and, unfortunately, it has been reinvented by the democratic countries sixty years later.

The crux of the problem in our province, Kosovo-Metohija, is not what was publicly displayed and disseminated from mass media, but the human rights problem and violation of the basic rights of fundamental freedom of our Albanian citizens. Their main problem was, and still is, separatism and terrorism as a means of achieving separatist goals. That separatism hasn’t been [the result] of present-day government or of President Milosevic. It has been identified as aspiration of some extremists among our Albanians decades before Mr. Milosevic’s emergence as a political figure. The last time we had that separatism emerge in a crude and very aggressive form was ten months after Tito passed away, in March 1981, when Kosovo-Metohija enjoyed a high degree of political autonomy. When the President of Yugoslavia after Tito’s death was Albanian, when the President of the Communist party of Yugoslavia was an Albanian, when the speaker of the federal parliament to Yugoslavia was an Albanian-- in those circumstances when they enjoyed full rights and absolute rights in Kosovo-Metohija, they rejected that type of autonomy and requested the right which they are not entitled to by the constitution of Yugoslavia and by the international law. They requested the right to their own state, ethnically pure Kosovo for Albanians only, and the prospects of annexing Kosovo to the Republic of Albania. So, only seven years later after unsuccessful attempts to moderate their claims, not Milosevic, not Serbia, but all six Yugoslavian republics and the federal government decided to amend further the constitution in order to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia menaced by that separatist movement of the extremists Albanians.

Unfortunately, that progress has been wrongly interpreted and projected in the Western part of the world, and it has been presented as a human rights problem. As a matter of fact, Serbia and Yugoslavia are the only countries in the whole Balkans which in its own constitution is defined not as a nation-state but as a state of free citizens, irrespective of their nationality or religion. This is the only country in the whole Balkans which has granted territorial autonomy to two of its provinces inhabited, to a large extent, by national minorities--and we have twenty-six national minorities in Serbia. [With twenty-five,] we don’t have any problem. All of them enjoy the same amount of rights, which are not small at all, which consist of full cultural autonomy and equal rights in social, political and economic life. Only with one national minority, because of the activities of its extremists--the Albanian national minority--we have faced the problem, and not the problem of the human rights or of national minority rights, but the problem of separatism, because they didn’t want to enjoy the rights which we granted to them and which consisted of full cultural autonomy and territorial autonomy.

Irrespective of that, the case of Albanians in Kosovo-Metohija were used and misused in order to stage a situation conducive to organizing an aggression against Yugoslavia. As I mentioned, that aggression was not legally justified and is one very clear cut case of violation of the basic international documents. But that action of NATO is more than that. It is a mistake, because Yugoslavia, Serbs and others living in Yugoslavia are historical friends of the American people. They have never been opposed to American people throughout this century. Three times in this century we were on the same side: First World War, Second World War, and in our opposition to Stalin. Instead of valuing that consistency and friendship to the American people, present-day American policy has interpreted the situation in Kosovo and Yugoslavia in a very wrong way and made this terrible mistake, a mistake of turning friends and friendship into enmity. Even though we have been aggressed, we are not hostile to America and American people. We are only confused and dismayed, and we cannot understand why there is such alot of indifference and cruelty in the actions of the American war planes against our civilians, our cities and our villages.

The consequences of that action, as I mentioned in the beginning, are much broader. In addition to the marginalization of the UN, NATO itself was discredited and nobody knows whether NATO would get out from that situation as a respectable and acceptable military alliance. The Cold War which has been over ten years ago is now looming to come back, not because of the wish of some states to do that, but because of the real scare of many countries, not only Russia, India, China, but many smaller countries fear because, in part, of the very aggressive performance of NATO against one small sovereign country. [If a] number of countries would start to think about their defense tomorrow, they would probably realize that they only want protection from aggressive NATO or any other aggressive country they would be nuclear and not conventional armaments. If this situation and events take that course, then instead of seeing the end of proliferation of nuclear arms, we can see probably the beginning of the new race in that respect. After all, with Pakistan and India, in the last a month or so, there is enough [cause for] serious alarm that [one fears] much more important things are lurking behind that aggression itself.

In spite of everything, we don’t believe that the problems in Kosovo-Metohija, or in any other part of the world, can be solved by use of force. War was imposed on Yugoslavia. We don’t want it, and we want to see an end to bombing and to the war, unconditional and immediate. We’re open to the negotiated settlement. We are absolutely ready to provide to the Kosovo province and to each of its initial communities a substantial autonomy and democratic self- government. We have already submitted a document in that regard. It has been done in Paris at the end of the conference but, unfortunately, that document was entirely snubbed and probably never read, which was the part of the deception which the whole conference constituted in the eyes of Metohija and the international community as well. That document was really very advanced in many respects, and it is evidence that Yugoslavia is not an obstacle to the political settlement [of] maximum autonomy and maximum self-rule for all inhabitants of Kosovo-Metohija and that province as a whole. We are, in that respect, ready to resume talks with the high officials of the UN and others willing to [discuss] the document of the G-8 group. We are ready to enter discussions with Mr. Chernomykdin, the Special Envoy of the Russian president. We expect the Finnish president to join him soon. Today’s meeting between Mr. Chernomykdin and our, are still not known to us. It is a bit too early. Maybe tomorrow morning we can wrap something up, but one thing is certain: without the flexibility of mind and politics of NATO, no end of war and no peace can be achieved. As long as the U.S. Government insists on an ultimatum, on a dictat, on nonnegotiations of the conditions formulated by NATO, there is no possibility of seeing the end of that crisis. For any political process, two sides are needed, one side is not sufficient. Cessation of bombing is a precondition for any productive peace effort and peace process. It goes without saying that there is no coexistence between war and peace. War should withdraw in order to give chance to peace and if Mr.Chernomyrdin and the President of Finland were successful in convincing the NATO countries that they have to make their own contribution and not only to request the contribution of Yugoslavia, the chances for making a break-through and seeing the end of this very tragic situation will be really very, very slim. But the encouraging moment is that more and more people in the world, and in this country as well, are opposed to the continuation of war. More and more people are aware that it is an unnecessary war, and a war which only can create new problems without solving the existing ones. The United Nations has finally started to realize that if there is no involvement of the UN in the peace process, there will be no UN anymore. The recognition of UN should play a more and more important role, and the realization of the NATO countries as well that without involving the UN there is no real progress in the efforts of reaching a negotiating settlement. That element plays a positive role and probably would allow the peace effort to be pursued with more chances to be successful tomorrow than they are today. But we still believe that today’s talks were substantial and that all progress would lead to a further progress, if not immediately, then in the days to come.

Let me remind you, and repeat once again before giving you the floor and taking your questions, that what is basic for us is sovereignty, respect of sovereignty, our territorial integrity and our basic state and national interests. All other things are negotiable, but our sovereignty, our territorial integrity, is not negotiable. We find much comfort in the document of the G-8, which reaffirms sovereignty and territorial integrity of both Serbia and Yugoslavia, but we are worried that some NATO countries, although leading representatives signed this document of the group of 8, are again active in repeating their five points of NATO’s ultimatum, which disregards the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. So what we formulate as our basic interests are not in harmony with the international law, with the charter of the UN, and with the policy and practice of any other sovereign states. It is not a policy which can be labeled as a nonconstructive policy; just the opposite of that. Whoever wishes to see the end of crisis in Yugoslavia should support our proposals in regard to the autonomy and local safe government in Kosovo-Metohija. Requesting fromYugoslavia more than that would only lead to further complications and ambitions of other national communities or groups to request similar things from other states having the character of multinational states.

Thank you very much.