UN Stalemate Over Yugoslavia, But Islamic Nations Back NATO

by Thalif Deen

The 114-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the largest single political bloc for developing nations, remains divided on the Kosovo crisis, with Muslim nations backing U.S. and NATO aims in Kosovo and a handful of other states -- including NAM stalwarts like India and Cuba -- opposing the attacks on Belgrade.

The overwhelming majority of the 56 Islamic states at the United Nations is backing NATO primarily because the victims of Yugoslavia's ethnic cleansing in Kosovo are the province's ethnic Albanian Muslim majority, UN diplomats said.

In recent years, he said, the Pentagon had focused its military efforts on Islamic countries, including Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan. "This time around, the United States is bombing a country in order to protect a Muslim minority," he said.

While it continues to bomb Iraq on a regular basis, the U.S. Navy last year fired several Tomahawk Cruise missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan as a retaliation for their alleged involvement in international terrorism. (Osama bin Laden, a Saudi financier living in Afghanistan, has been named as a suspect in the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.)

A U.S. State Department "hit list" of countries designated "terrorist states" is also weighted heavily against Islamic nations. Of the seven, five are Muslim nations -- Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Libya -- and two are Communist states, Cuba and North Korea.

Yet Muslim nations have increasingly shown unity in their support for the NATO actions. Last week, the Contact Group of the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) issued a statement on Kosovo expressing "grave concern that the Belgrade regime under President Slobodan Milosevic has... conducted military operations and is continuing to do so against the civilian population in Kosovo."

The OIC, the largest group of Muslim countries, also accused the Milosevic government of "burning entire villages, committing the crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing, in contravention of the provisions of the relevant Security Council resolutions and international humanitarian law." The body called for decisive international action to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and to protect human rights in Kosovo.

On April 5, Secretary-General Annan said the foreign minister of Iran, Kamal Kharrazi, phoned him to convey the "strong concerns" of the OIC. Annan warned that the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo is growing, with nearly half a million civilians, mainly Muslims, estimated to have left the province since the beginning of March.

But since the beginning of air strikes on Mar 24, the NAM has spent nearly two weeks conducting a futile effort to produce a one-page statement on Kosovo that would reflect the political views of all 114 members. But the Movement is so badly split that it cannot reach consensus on an agreed text, diplomats told IPS.

The issue, they said, has boiled down to competing allegations: Muslims believe that NAM should condemn ethnic cleansing by Yugoslavia's Serbian majority, while NATO's critics call the air strikes a violation of Yugoslav's national sovereignty.

Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia, Kuwait and other Gulf want a statement that "condemns the perpetration of all acts of destruction, repression, abuses of human rights and other atrocities, specifically ethnic cleansing, carried out by the parties to the conflict, but caused mainly by the Yugoslav authorities." That text adds that Belgrade's actions led to "an escalation of fighting in Kosovo and the failure of the cease-fire agreement."

A second draft, favored by Cuba, Belarus and India, shifts the emphasis and instead "condemns the military force applied by NATO against the Federal Republic of Yugosavia without the authorization of the Security Council."

It stresses that "any humanitarian intervention under international law must not affect the political independence or territorial integrity of any state."

Some diplomats have called the deadlock in the NAM over Kosovo especially tragic because it concerns one of the Movement's founding members, Yugoslavia.

"The Secretary-General does not have an army of his own," said UN spokesman Fred Eckhard, pointing out that Annan feels he has done -- and is doing -- everything that is within his power. "At the moment, he doesn't see a role for himself."

When Annan took the initiative to visit Baghdad last year to break a deadlock on UN arms inspections, he not only had the implicit support of the Security Council but also received the right signals from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

In Kosovo, he does not have any support -- implicit or otherwise -- either from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic or from the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council: the U.S., France, Britain, China and Russia.

Eckhard said that Annan does not see an opening for himself at this time. "He personally does not see a way that he can help move this process forward towards a political solution."

Just after the initial NATO air strikes on Mar. 24, Annan walked a political tightrope -- but with a safety net under him.

As one Third World diplomat told IPS: "Annan kept the Americans happy by pointing out that there are times when the use of force may be legitimate in the pursuit of peace."

In the same breath, he kept the Russians and the Chinese equally happy by arguing that, although the UN Charter assigned an important role to regional organizations (i.e., NATO), the Security Council should be involved in any decision to use military force.

Although Annan remained helpless at the political level, he has been speaking out strongly on the evolving humanitarian crisis in Kosovo.

"The United Nations is doing everything possible to alleviate the suffering of displaced persons and refugees who are fleeing Kosovo by the thousands every day," he said.

Annan has designated the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as the lead agency to coordinate all UN relief activities in the region.

"Any solution to the conflict must allow these unfortunate people to return voluntarily to their homes in full security and dignity," Annan said.