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Military

16.12.99

ON THE DECEMBER 15, 1999 STATEMENT BY THE NATO COUNCIL MINISTERIAL MEETING
UNOFFICIAL TRANSLATION

PRESS RELEASE
ON THE DECEMBER 15, 1999 STATEMENT BY THE NATO COUNCIL MINISTERIAL MEETING
One gets a strange feeling when reading the final communique of yesterday's meeting of the NATO Council in Brussels. As such the document is quite humdrum, does not contain anything new and didactically states that there should be no departure whatsoever from the decisions of the NATO summit in Washington and that an attempt should be undertaken to make all the processes taking place in Europe and in the world fall in line with the Washington directives on "Euro-Atlantic solidarity". But the section concerning the events in the Russian Northern Caucasus, the temptation to address which the NATO Council simply could not overcome, gives one a strong sense of irreality.

In it, too, there is nothing new -- the very same words by experts on information wars in the headquarters of the North Atlantic Alliance about some sort of an "ultimatum" to the peaceful inhabitants of Grozny, about a "disproportionate" use of force, and so on. There is no need to restate the known position of the Russian leadership on questions of the need of resolute struggle against bandits and terrorists in the Northern Caucasus, the more so that internal matters of the Russian Federation are not, cannot be and will not be a subject of our international dialogue, and the more so with NATO. As to the authorship of the new downpour of crocodile tears in Brussels on the theme of "human rights", its cynicism is simply amazing.

One could have understood it if the NATO military were speaking about "the need of selective use of high-precision weapons", as it was recently stated by the bloc's commander-in-chief Wesley Clark. Quite obviously, the authors of the term "collateral damage" want people to forget as quickly as possible about the stray cruise missiles that darted over the Balkans from the Adriatic Sea to Bulgaria, about "pinpoint" strikes at international television centers and foreign embassies. To make the result doubly sure, cassette bombs were used against columns of refugees returning to Kosovo. And bridges over the Danube were destroyed together with residents of Belgrade who had hoped that their "human shield" would deter NATO's "air aces".

But when the bloc's foreign ministers, who only recently stated that "international law has become obsolete", that the United Nations Charter and documents of European forums "are not mandatory", suddenly recall "rules of international behavior", it is logical to ask the following question: are they really hoping that the flagrant aggression against a sovereign European country will be forgotten? It will not be forgotten and do not pin any hopes on this. The statement by the NATO Council in Brussels is pointless in terms of content, unacceptable in terms of substance and deeply immoral in terms of its authorship.

Against this background the declarations contained in it about readiness to restore constructive relations with Russia cannot be taken seriously.
December 16, 1999



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