MOSCOW, March 13. /TASS/. The Russian Federation Council (upper house of parliament) approved a statement at a plenary meeting on Wednesday calling on national parliaments, the UN and the European Parliament to condemn NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia and take all necessary steps to overcome its consequences. The senators noted that the alliance is becoming an increasing threat to European and global security.
The statement is dedicated to the 20th anniversary since the beginning of NATO’s military assault against then Yugoslavia.
"The Federation Council of the Russian Federation’s Federal Assembly is calling on parliaments in other countries, the UN, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the CIS Member-States, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Parliament to condemn NATO’s aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and take all necessary actions to deal with its aftermath," the statement reads.
The senators noted that the NATO military operation against Yugoslavia, which began on March 24, 1999, "was an act of outright aggression against a sovereign state in Europe creating an imminent threat to global peace and security, and had an adverse effect on relations between European countries and undermined their trust in each other."
"Unfortunately, the lessons from the tragic events in 1999 have never been learned, and NATO continues to bank on military power in resolving international conflicts. Subsequently, a number of NATO member-countries used military force against other sovereign nations, specifically, Iraq, Libya and Syria, under trumped-up pretexts and without UN authorization. Today, threats can be heard about the possibility of committing similar acts against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua," the document stresses.
Dangerous precedent and double standards
The legislators are certain that the recognition of Kosovo’s independence by Western countries in 2008 "was a continuation of NATO’s overall line aimed at stirring up separatism in the conflicts on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and forcibly partitioning the republic." The de facto secession of part of Yugoslavia’s territory, the Kosovo and Metohija Autonomous Province, from the country "set a dangerous precedent in international relations and complicated the resolution of existing conflicts involving unrecognized states."
"On the other hand, Western nations’ stance on similar conflicts in Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine is diametrically opposite, with peoples’ right to self-determination vehemently rejected," the statement reads.
The senators are confident that NATO’s military actions taken in violation of the UN Charter without the Security Council’s authorization "inflicted enormous damage on the international security system." "The fact that those responsible for these criminal acts never got the punishment they deserved, led to more acts of aggression against other sovereign nations by NATO member-states. After the 1999 missile and bombing raids, NATO became the principal threat to global and regional security," they stressed.
Russia’s position outlined in a statement made in March 1999, "according to which NATO member-states’ actions in Yugoslavia are labeled as an act of aggression against a sovereign nation, while those who initiated it are to be brought to justice," has remained unchanged, they pointed out.
Russia’s stance brushed aside
According to Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko who backed the upper house’s statement, the situation with Yugoslavia is quite telling. "Sometimes we can hear statements here in Russia that we should probably toe the US line, then we will be friends and we will be loved. The example with the bombing of Yugoslavia shows that in those years Russia had been ‘obedient’, doing its utmost to cooperate with the US and European countries, but no one took our interests into consideration," she recalled.
Matviyenko stressed that then Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov did the best he could to persuade the Americans to prevent that tragedy. "No one listened to him. Moreover, Primakov was flying to America for negotiations to agree on a peaceful diplomatic solution to the crisis in Yugoslavia. And lo and behold such cynicism! While he was on his way [to the US], the Yugoslavia bombing raids began. His well-known order to turn his plane around paved the way for our independent foreign policy," the speaker pointed out.
She drew an analogy with the situation in Syria, which occurred several years later. "The situation in Syria when, at the invitation of the country’s official authorities, Russia protected the independence of the Syrian state is entirely different. We were able to uphold the principle of the inadmissibility of interfering in other countries’ sovereign affairs," she stressed.