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• CNN gave live coverage to the continuation of Slobodan Milosevic’s address to the ICTY. Again, the former Yugoslav president went on the offensive against NATO, showing pictures of dead babies and adults blown to bits as the result of the 1999 NATO air campaign. Commenting on Milosevic’s tactics, the network’s chief international correspondent, Christian Amanpour, stressed that NATO has always admitted there had been accidental bombings. She also recalled that after the Kosovo conflict, human rights officials estimated that 500 civilians may have been accidentally killed during the NATO air campaign. And, back in 1999-2000, ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte herself started investigating claims that NATO should be charged, particularly due to the bombing of the Serb television, but came to the conclusion that there were no grounds for suing NATO. Remarking that at The Hague, Milosevic is in fact saying that NATO deliberately went after civilians, the correspondent acknowledged that in terms of their effect on the public, the pictures displayed by Milosevic would of course be troubling. She recalled, however, that Milosevic is charged with command responsibility for the deaths of more than 500 people and for the forced exodus of several hundred thousand.

Milosevic’s statement at the ICTY Thursday generated prominent coverage.

According to the New York Times, Court officials said they had expected Milosevic to focus on NATO, since that had been the underlying theme of earlier outbursts in the Court. The newspaper also notes that Milosevic achieved what had been his goal since his arrival at The Hague: the transformation of the courtroom into his political platform. The trial is being covered extensively in Yugoslavia, and even his opponents in Serbia may be pleased with his outrage against the widely resented NATO bombing, stresses the newspaper.

Court watchers agreed that Milosevic’s attempt to put NATO on trial for the bombing campaign could win him sympathy but asserted that in the end, he failed to address the charges made against him, says AFP. "There is a moral point to be made on this but Milosevic is not the one to make it," Richard Dicker, head of the international justice program of U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, is quoted saying.

The Times writes meanwhile that in a tribunal that has only a small body of case law upon which to draw, the bench will have to decide whether to admit such items as photographs of NATO bombing victims. It will also have to rule on Milosevic’s application to summon heads of state and government. Refusal would reinforce that he is the victim of a plot. Acceptance could push the case on highly political terrain, notes the newspaper.

Die Welt remarks that Milosevic reiterated his "well-known, old litany against NATO," but stresses that he lost all power. When he tries to speak in the name of the Serbs and their nations, he is only speaking in his own name. Milosevic is alone. This is his final blow, says the newspaper. Frankfurter Rundschau makes a similar observation.

Echoing previous remarks by correspondents at Milosevic’s trial, The Guardian recalls that the German television documentary that Milosevic made into the central plank of his defense Thursday prompted a roaring controversy after it was first televised in Germany in February 2002.

An editorial in the International Herald Tribune looks at the ICTY, noting that experts and officials from an assortment of states are present in The Hague, but they are not "international" in the usual sense of representing various governments. They represent the real idea of globalization—seeking, as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has put it, to establish a law of the world that holds basic human rights supreme above the sovereignty of states. And they represent the idea that this law holds responsible the people who have the authority to impose gross violations, whether or not the leaders bloodied their own two hands, says the newspaper, concluding: "A new, revolutionary field is being opened. It is called international law, but this is not just about relations among states. It is also about how states treat their own people."

BALKANS

• Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte arrived today in Republika Srpska to insist on the arrest and extradition of key suspects linked to former President Milosevic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his general, Ratko Mladic, AP writes. The report quotes del Ponte’s spokeswoman, Florence Hartmann, as stressing that the Chief Prosecutor is reportedly expected to tell the leaders of Republika Srpska that they must arrest the indicted people they have in their country and not wait for some term to pass. She reportedly urged Bosnian Serb authorities to hand over Karadzic and the Yugoslav leadership to extradite Mladic, who is "in Belgrade, under the protection of the Yugoslav army."

TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS

In a contribution to the Financial Times, EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten writes that military success in Afghanistan has encouraged the United States to ignore European doubts about confronting the "axis of evil" and warns that unilateralism will be self-defeating.

Patten makes a plea to the United States to abandon its "instinct" for unilateralism and instead use its leadership to promote international cooperation. He describes this instinct and that of projecting military power as "profoundly misguided." Stressing that "it is in the world’s interest, as it is in the interests of the world’s greatest power, that leadership should be exercised in partnership," Patten gives five reasons for this: First, every day makes us more aware of the interconnectedness of the modern world. Second, while globalization creates unparallel opportunities, it also has a dark side. The EU symbolizes the ability of countries to come together to tackle common problems. Third, the international institutional architecture is under threat. It lacks democratic legitimacy, which fuels the muddled movement against globalization. Fourth, Europe cannot hope to match U.S. military spending—nor should it even aspire to do so. "Like Lord Robertson, the secretary general of NATO, I feel strongly that European governments should increase their national military budgets, shouldering more of the burden for their own defense. But security is a wider concept. The EU … is a massive provider of development assistance… That too is a contribution to international security," Patten insists. Fifth, he concludes, as the world’s only superpower, the U.S. carries a particular responsibility to maintain moral authority for her leadership. Do your own thing and everything seems clear and purposeful, but there is a cost in terms of legitimacy and long-term effectiveness. That cost accumulates over time.

Under the title, "dissent stirs over Bush’s foreign policy," another article in the Financial Times reports that for the first time since Sept. 11, Democrats are criticizing what they see as unilateralism. On Monday, Tom Daschle, the Democrats’ de facto standard bearer as the party’s leader in the Senate, offered the first real criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy since the terrorist attacks. In an interview with a television network, Daschle sharply criticized Bush for his State of the Union assault on the "axis of evil," chiding the administration for its incautious rhetoric and warning against alienating U.S. allies and friends around the world, stresses the newspaper. It considers that Daschle’s tentative steps into a foreign policy debate represented the first faint stirrings of serious domestic dissent over Bush’s post-Sept. 11 foreign policy.

Speaking before the Congress yesterday, the SACEUR, General Ralston, said that "it was not uncommon for a unit to deploy from its permanent installation in the heart of Europe for a tour of duty in the Balkans and have better working conditions in the temporary facilities," Army Times reported. "This dichotomy is unacceptable," he reportedly stressed, adding that the working spaces have taken a backseat to improvements in housing, but there were problems there as well because, despite some progress, "family housing throughout Europe remains old…in need of extensive repair and modernization."

In a contribution to the Wall Street Journal, Vladimir Socor, a senior analyst for the Jamestown Foundations, publishers of the daily Monitor on post-Soviet states, looks at the Russian presence in Moldova and Georgia, stressing that the UN and the OSCE are facing credibility tests over these countries.

Socor writes: "In these two enfeebled countries, Russian troops continue unlawfully to hold strategic chunks of territory that Soviet troops never fully left. Moscow bills some of these troops as peacekeepers…. Flattering resolution language aside, the relevant set of challenges before the OSCE and the UN include: ruling out any ‘special peacekeeping role’ for Russia stemming from the Soviet past; zeroing in on situations where one and the same country plays litigant, judge and policeman; and internationalizing the discredited operations that drag on through inertia in Georgia and Moldova. And, if these two organizations are unable to overcome their veto and consensus rules, then it is time for the EU and NATO to consider filling this vacuum."

 FINAL ITEM