MICHAEL SIMMONS
Director of European Programs for the American Friends Service Committee, Simmons said: “The conflict in Kosovo should have been anticipated and need not have happened…. On the one hand, in Iraq, the U.S. is calling for [internal] opposition to Saddam Hussein. But in Yugoslavia, there has been all kinds of opposition, but the U.S. has treated them with contempt.”
MATT ROTHSCHILD
Editor of The Progressive magazine, Rothschild said: “What gives the United States and NATO the right to conduct this warfare? If the United States is going to engage in so-called humanitarian interventions, it is incumbent upon it to abide both by U.S. law and international law. It is doing neither here. Slobodan Milosevic is a brutal and fascistic ruler, and his army has been waging a merciless war on the Kosovars. And yet I wonder whether force and violence will solve this problem, or whether it will exacerbate it by emboldening the Serbs to wage evermore merciless war against Kosovo and to throw everything they have into the project of ethnic cleansing. Bombings are no sure-fire solution. And they tend to inflame the most militaristic on both sides.”
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DAVID HARTSOUGH
Executive director of the Peaceworkers organization, Hartsough has gone to Kosovo several times in support of nonviolent resistance and conflict-resolution efforts. Last March, he was detained by Serbian authorities, who jailed him and later expelled him from the country.
STEPHEN ZUNES
An associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, Zunes has closely followed the Kosovo crisis.
MICHAEL RATNER
A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights who has written a number of articles on war powers, Ratner said on Wednesday afternoon: “Clinton still has not gotten the authorization he needs for bombing from either Congress or the United Nations.”
MICHAEL KLARE
Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts and author of “Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws,” Klare said: “The U.S. has essentially replaced the UN Security Council, and that’s disastrous.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; Loren Sears, (541) 484-9167
