Speech by Socorro Gomes, president of the World Peace Council in the Political Act organized by the Belgrade Forum in the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the NATO bombings.

March, 2009

Dear comrades,

We are gathered here today to remember historical facts, interpret them under the light of experience and extract the necessary lessons to guide our efforts and our struggles for peace and a new world governed under the primacy of justice and solidarity. Ten years ago, this capital and this country, once a confederate, multi-ethnical and multi-national socialist state, fell victim to one of the most abject attacks on its sovereignty, unity, the lives of its people, its economy and the fundamental principles that inspired its very constitution.

During 78 days Yugoslavia fell victim to a monstrous military aggression. Italian writer and activist with the Movement for Peace Manlio Dinucci described in the following words the tragedy that befell the Yugoslavian people on March 24 1999:

"Taking off mostly from Italian bases, 1100 airplanes made 38000 flights, throwing 23000 bombs and missiles. 75 percent of airplanes and 90 percent of bombs and missiles were supplied by the United States. Also American were the communication networks, the command, the control and the intelligence by which the operations were conducted. The bombings systematically dismantled the infrastructure of Serbia and Kosovo, making casualties mostly among civilians. Among others, they destroyed 63 bridges, 14 electric centers, the Pancevo and Novi Sad refinery, the Zastava automobile factory and 40 other industries, 100 business centers, 13 airports, 23 railways and stations and 300 schools, with an estimate cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. The damages caused by those bombings to the health and environment are incommensurable."

We may add: the attacks caused irreparable damage. Thousands of human lives were lost and thousands more were wounded and mutilated. Monuments, archaeological sites, monasteries and churches can be added to the infrastructure facilities attacked. More than ten radio and television stations and more than twenty repeating television stations were attacked, apart from the Serbian state television, whose workers managed to put it back on air in a few hours, in a beautiful demonstration of the people's capacity to resist.

By remembering such painful facts, we pay homage to the Yugoslavian people, acclaiming the value of their heroes and bending our combat flags in reverence to the martyrs of the fight against aggression, the struggle for the independence and unity of Yugoslavia. Eternal glory to those who, defending their country, resisted also in the name of all humankind.

The war of the United States and NATO against Yugoslavia, such as all recent wars waged by American imperialism and its allies against peoples and nations, was started under false pretexts and aided and abetted by a gigantic and powerful machine of lies and diversion - the communication media, which prepared the terrain with the diffusion of texts and images on the "violation of human rights", "ethnic cleansing" and "insubordination to international treaties." The motive invoked to start the bombings on March 24 1999 was the refusal by president Milosevic in signing the infamous Ramboullet Peace Agreement. The problem is that it was not a peace agreement, but the death sentence to national sovereignty, since it implied the occupation of a significant portion of the country by NATO troops. Bill Clinton, President of the United States at the time, proposed the occupation of Kosovo by NATO for an indeterminate period, with 30 thousand soldiers. In fact, the bombings in 1999 were part of the American imperialism's global strategy in its efforts to impose its rule all over the planet by means of force and militarization.

As long as specifically Yugoslavia is concerned, it was a war of aggression premeditated for years, fitting a process of disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the trail of the counter-revolution that wiped out the socialist system from Europe in the end of the 1980s. The preparation for the events that took place ten years ago even counted on acts of espionage by the CIA and the financing and training of terrorist groups that the media has hypocritically presented as national liberation forces.

The aggression, later called the Kosovo War, was part of a chain of events that began in 1990 when imperialist powers decided to invest economic resources and employ their diplomatic and military power in supporting what was called "new democratic formations in Yugoslavia," thus stimulating secessionist movements. And then the domino effect started in Yugoslavia. First Croatia proclaimed its separation in the end of 1990. Then, in June 1991, Slovenia proclaimed its independence. Both processes resulted in military confrontations in both republics. In face of the civil war that started to spread, the imperialist powers decided to stir up the fire. In December 1991 Germany unilaterally recognized Croatia and Slovenia as independent states, being followed by the 12 members of the European Union two months later.

In April 1992 a new war front was opened when the United States and the European Union recognized Bosnia-Herzegovina as an independent State. I don't want to remind in details the bloodshed and the carnage that occurred during the Bosnia war. But it's necessary to stress that also in that conflict, as well as after the Kosovo War, NATO participated as an aggressive force. That participation entered history as the first action of war unmotivated by an attack against one of its members, taking place outside its geographical area. It was the first experience of the application of NATO's new strategic concept after the Cold War.

Under false pretexts, Yugoslavia fell victim to the application of plans of world domination in the new circumstances after the Cold War. And that country has not committed any crime whatsoever. It was a sovereign country, a full member of the UN, with all its institutions operating normally. A country that, despite difficulties and eventual mistakes in solving its internal conflicts, was making efforts to achieve economic and social progress and correct the imperfections of its political system so that the different nationalities forming the country could live together in harmony.

The new strategic concept was adopted on November 7 1991, when the chiefs of State and government of the 16 countries that were members of NATO in the occasion met in Rome in the Atlantic Council. The document approved by those leader said: "To the contrary of the prevailing threat from the past, the risks facing the safety of the Alliance have different forms and take different directions, making them difficult to prevent and evaluate. Tensions could lead to harmful crises affecting the European stability and to armed conflicts that may involve external powers or reach members of NATO." For that reason, concluded the chiefs of State and governments of NATO, "the military dimension of our Alliance remains an essential factor, but it is a new fact that that military dimension is more than ever at the service of a broad concept of security."

That new strategic concept would become official in the middle of the war against Yugoslavia in the NATO summit meeting held in Washington on April 23-25 1999, when the Atlantic Alliance took on broader dimensions, then enabled to carry out new missions, among which the active efforts in the management of crises and the capacity to answer to those crises. As Italian writer Manlio Dinucci pointed out, NATO underwent a "genetic mutation." Once an alliance that obliged its members to help, including with the use of armed forces, a member under attack in the North Atlantic region, it turned into an alliance that, under the new strategic concept, obliges its members also to conduct response operations to crises outside the territory of the Alliance.

About to celebrate its 60th anniversary, NATO exacerbates the aggressive trends that have characterized the organization from its inception on April 4 1949. One of the greatest lies divulged during those six decades is that NATO was created as a mechanism to neutralize the threat of a Soviet attack against Eastern Europe. In fact, NATO was created as part of the set of instruments of the United States' hegemonic policy in Europe immediately after World War II. During many years it represented the military subordination of Europe and its use as a tool in the Cold War. NATO was, as it still is, the armed hand of an imperialist policy. Since its inception it corresponded to the occasional need to resort to force in a moment when the United States emerged as a leading super power among capitalist countries and started to develop a world order according to its interests.

Now, in the summit to be held in a few days in Strasbourg, the new strategic concept takes on new forms. Within the scope of cooperation and inter-imperialist rivalries - always detrimental to peoples, peace and international security - a greater integration among the European Union, NATO and the United States is announced with an increase in intervention-ready forces, the modernization of their weapons and the broadening of its reach.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Comrades,

During this decade that separates us from the tragic and painful events that occurred in your country since March 24 1999, humankind has underwent new, hard and severe turbulences. During this period, since the Afghanistan war deflagrated in October 2001 and the Iraq war in 2003, the world has become less safe, conflicts are more intense and the rights and achievements of civilization resulting from so many efforts and struggles waged by the peoples were belittled. The United Nations Charter and the set of consensual norms of International Law were violated and turned into meaningless words. War, unilateralism and the imposition of the stronger one has become a distinctive character in the so-called international order, serving the primacy of interests of the United States' imperialism and its allies instead of the aspirations of peoples and nations.

In the name of those interests the United States make use of many different military tools, having NATO as its main one, with its profusion of military bases, hundreds of thousands of troops, missile-launching bases with nuclear weapons, its Immediate Response Force and its anti-missile shield in the heart of Europe. A stronger and bigger NATO, expanding towards East, maintains occupation and aggression troops in Afghanistan, makes interventions in the Caspian region conflicts and becomes another tools in the application of the policy of restructuring Middle East supporting Israel, with which it maintains a security agreement. In a situation of economic and social crisis in the capitalist world, NATO's expenditure amounts to 1 trillion dollars, making its already colossal war machine reach gigantic proportions. The World Peace Council, in the middle of a process of reaffirming its values and struggle commitments, reinforcing its identity as a pacifist, anti-imperialist and solidary organization with attacked countries, worries about the development of international events. The war is maintained in the agenda of US imperialism as a means to rule the world, despite the hopes that the people of the United States manifested in the last presidential election. Recent declarations made by United States President Barack Obama in a speech before military troops in the National Defense University, in Washington, sound as an alert to organizations that struggle for Peace - despite the appearances, imperialism's inclination towards war remains unchanged. Those were the words of President Obama: "Have no doubt, this country will maintain its military domain (…) We will have the strongest armed forces in history. We will do the necessary to maintain the advantage."

From our part, we have no illusions. When the leaders of the greatest imperialist powers meet in ten days to celebrate NATO's 60th anniversary they will be elaborating new aggression plans against the peoples. We, the World Peace Council, its national and regional organizations and fellow organizations and friends, meeting in the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the NATO bombings against Yugoslavia, renew or solidarity and point the way to the struggle against militarism and wars of aggression, for peace and solidarity among peoples.

Long live the Serbian people!
NATO and US imperialism go home!
Long live solidarity among peoples!
Thank you very much.