SIGHTINGS


 
NATO Bombs Destroying
New World Order - Gorbachev
From JaredI@aol.com <JaredI@aol.com>
5-12-99
 
 
MOSCOW (CP) -- Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev says NATO's war against Yugoslavia is a sign of collapsing global order, and it never would have been allowed to happen if the Soviet Union still existed.
 
"Russia has lost its former position and ability to influence events, and therefore was unable to prevent this war from occurring in the first place," Gorbachev said Tuesday in an interview while attending a signing ceremony for a joint Russian-Canadian research project in Moscow.
 
"This war is a disgrace to all of us who tried to build a new world order based on political methods and a strong role for the United Nations Security Council," he said. "Instead we see NATO imposing itself as supreme arbiter, using military power alone".
 
He said that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is to blame for taking away the autonomy of the troubled region of Kosovo and persecuting its ethnic Albanian majority. "But the situation only became dramatic when NATO set aside the political process and turned to bombing," he said. "This in turn gave the Yugoslav forces the green light to strike hard against the Albanians, and turned Kosovo into a ruin. "Nothing good has been accomplished, only destruction and chaos".
 
Gorbachev, who led the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991, is credited with ending his country's participation in the Cold War and moving to integrate it into the world community.
 
He says that as the Cold War was winding down 10 years ago he and western leaders discussed a new global security order that would be founded on law and supervised by the UN Security Council.
 
But the Soviet Union fell apart and the West tried to unilaterally impose its own writ upon the world, he said. "At the root of this is the United States' ambitions to dominate the world," he said. "Two-thirds of the world's raw power, concentrated in NATO, is attacking one tiny country."
 
Last weekend's accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade shows the situation is spinning out of control, he said. "NATO is hitting everywhere, not only the Chinese Embassy. Their missiles are even falling on neighbouring countries like Bulgaria," he said.
 
"It is pure lawlessness and I strongly condemn it."





SIGHTINGS HOMEPAGE