By Judith Miller
. "This was a landmark debate for. the United Nations and an enormous triumph for NATO and the United States," said Fernando Enrique Petrella, Argentina's representative. "A large majority of nations have acted together to say that no longer will you be able to violate human rights massively over a long period of time without evoking a reaction." Mr. Petrella added that while the vote could not be described as a United Nations endorsement of the NATO attacks, given the staunch opposition of Russia and China, the Council's overwhelming defeat of the resolution could only bolster the "legitimacy of what NATO is doing."
Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian representative, refused to acknowledge the defeat. Many of those who voted against his resolution and with the United States were "embarrassed" to have done so, he said, and had made that vlear to him in private conversations. In his speech seeking support for the resolution, which was also sponsored by India and Belarus, Mr. Lavrov argued that the military action was a "flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter" because it disregarded Yugoslavia's sovereignty. Those who favored such action had placed themselves outside international law, he added.
A. Peter Burleigh, the American representative, said the allegation that the military action violated the United Nations Charter "turns the truth on its head." In at least two resolutions, he said, the Council had specified what Yugoslavia must do to end the crisis. But rather than agree to the political solution mediated by the so-called Contact Group, whose six members include Russia, the President of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, had chosen to "defy repeatedly the will of the international community." The charter, Mr. Burleigh said, "does not sanction armed assaults upon ethnic groups or imply that the international community should turn a blind eye to a growing humanitarian disaster."
Judging by their votes and their speeches, an overwhelming majority of Council members agreed with Mr. Burleigh that Yugoslavia, not NATO, had violated the charter and international law by killing civilians and repressing the people of Kosovo. Hasmy Agam of Malaysia said Yugoslavia bore "full responsibility" for the failure of the international mediation efforts which, in turn, had prompted the need for military action to protect the people of Kosovo.
One of the harshest attacks on the resolution's cosponsors came from Peter van Walsum, the recently appointed representative from the Netherlands, a NATO member. While the Dutch were initially "grateful" to Russia for having contributed to the pressure that the Contact Group brought on Yugoslavia, he said, "at every critical juncture" since then, "Russia has somehow succeeded in making the pressure less credible, so that - in the end NATO had no choice but to make good on its threat" to use force.
But Mr. Lavrov's arguments were warmly endorsed by Belarus, China and India. Its representative, Kamalesh Sharma, said the debate suggested that nations representing "half of humanity have said they do not agree" with the military campaign.
