March 22, 2000
Madrid - Several Spanish societies and associations published today, on the occasion of the anniversary of NATO aggression on FR Yugoslavia, a Manifesto in which it was stated that this was "the first war in accordance to the new strategic concept of NATO, whose aim was to make legal the interventionism outside the borders of member-states, which neither has a defensive character, nor demands the legalization by the international community, which represents a clear violation of the UN Charter".
Aside from this, it was evaluated in the Manifesto, "the intervention against FRY was a dramatic example of information manipulation in the service of war", "Reports and statements of genocide in Kosovo, which were released before and during the air-strikes, were refuted in the subsequent international investigations, committed until June 1999 on the territory occupied by NATO, including the extensive and documented reports of the UNCHR and the Spanish forensic experts", it was warned in the Manifesto.
In the document it was evaluated that, in spite of the Kumanovo agreement between NATO and the Yugoslav Army and the UN Security Council Resolution 1244, in Kosmet "neither safety, nor the joint life of different ethnic-groups were ensured". In the document it was also pointed to the fact that, in the last few months, the political government in the province "was handed over to the members of the former KLA, while the drug-dealing mafia is profoundly developing its activities". "In fact, the issue at stake is the redefining of neo-colonialism in the Balkans", i.e. the attempt of the US and NATO "to establish military, political and economic domination", it was stated in the Manifesto.
Additionally, it was pointed to the fact that "in this context, the economic sanctions, which are directed against a sovereign country, do not only represent the means of confronting the civilian population, but also intervention mechanism with the aid of which the social and economic structure of the region is to be destroyed in order to make the domination over it easier".
The authors of the Manifesto specially stress the fact that the "Spanish involvement in the action against a sovereign state", in the aggression which "not only violates the international law, but the Spanish Constitution as well". "We also wish to turn the attention on the militarization of the European Union, defined in the recent creating of the Euro-army and the Military Committee of the EU", stressed the authors of the Manifesto, who demand the cut in the military budget and expenses and the closing down of NATO bases in Spanish cities of Roti and Moronu.
