News Releases

  • New Attention to Unpublicized Provisions of Rambouillet

    WASHINGTON — New questions are continuing to emerge about the actual terms of the Rambouillet text. Milosevic’s refusal to sign Rambouillet was the cited reason that NATO began the bombing of Yugoslavia. Today, the Washington Post published an exchange between NATO spokesman Jamie Shea and a representative of the Institute for Public Accuracy: [The Washington Post, “For the Record,” Wednesday, April 28, 1999:] From a NATO press conference at the National Press Club Monday with spokesman Jamie Shea: Q: The Rambouillet Accords, appendix B in particular…called for the occupation of all of Yugoslavia…. Unrestricted passage throughout [its] air space, territorial…


  • Despite Denials from NATO Official, Questions Emerging

    Did Allies Demand Right to Occupy All of Yugoslavia? WASHINGTON — New questions are emerging about the actual terms of the Rambouillet accords prior to the initiation of NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia. When NATO spokesman Jamie Shea appeared at the National Press Club in Washington yesterday, a representative of the Institute for Public Accuracy asked him to clarify provisions in the Rambouillet text that some analysts say allowed for the military occupation of all of Yugoslavia by NATO troops. Although Shea replied that “there was no intention whatsoever of having any kind of NATO occupation regime in Yugoslavia itself,” Appendix…


  • Is Prominent Think Tank a Bastion of Racist Theory?

    One of the most influential think tanks in the United States also houses several of the nation’s most controversial pundits on race issues. In a new analysis, researcher Deborah Toler scrutinizes what she calls the “race desk” at the American Enterprise Institute. Toler, a policy analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, contends that mainstream AEI conservatives and racist hate groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens share a preoccupation with managing the emerging majority of people of color in the United States. According to AEI fellows, African Americans in particular constitute a major threat to Western civilization. In…


  • NATO: Critical Analysis

    BASIC (British American Security Information Council) BASIC can arrange interviews with Admiral Sir James Eberle, former NATO commander-in-chief; Otfried Nassauer of the Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security; and other NATO experts. More Information HUSSEIN IBISH Foreign policy analyst at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Ibish said: “The Clinton administration has made it perfectly clear that it regards ethnic cleansing as a legitimate tool of statecraft. The U.S. backed ethnic cleansing when the Croatians did it to the Serbs [in 1995], Turkey to the Kurds [throughout the 1990s] and Israel to the Palestinians [in 1948]. In fact, what this war is…


  • Colorado and Kosovo: What is NATO Teaching Our Children?

    President Clinton on the school shootings: “We must do more to reach out to our children and teach them to express their anger and to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.” MARY JOAN PARK A peace educator and director of Little Friends for Peace, a peace camp for young people, Park contrasted Clinton’s statement on the Colorado shootings with his bombing of Yugoslavia. When Clinton said children should “resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons,” Park’s son asked: “Why doesn’t he do it?” Park said today: “Violence unleashes more violence. Yes, Mr. Clinton, let’s talk about it, not fight…


  • Earth Day and Rambouillet

    ROBERT HAYDEN Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Hayden said: “The administration’s Rambouillet plan was a public relations fraud rather than a diplomatic compromise. It provided for the independence of Kosovo in all but name and the military occupation by NATO of all of Yugoslavia — not just Kosovo. This was plainly a proposal that no government could accept… NATO’s bombing of the petrochemical plant at Baric only a few miles from Belgrade risked the life, health and safety of the civilian population of 2 million in the city of Belgrade.…


  • Troubling Questions About Rambouillet

    The Clinton administration has repeatedly claimed that bombing is necessary because Milosevic would not agree to negotiations, citing his refusal to accept the Rambouillet text. But did Rambouillet represent real negotiations or an ultimatum? Some have said that the Serbian parliament “voted to be bombed” because it refused NATO troops as outlined in Rambouillet. But the New York Times has reported (April 8) that “just before the bombing, when [the Serbian parliament] rejected NATO troops in Kosovo, it also supported the idea of a United Nations force to monitor a political settlement there.” Did the administration start bombing because it…


  • Results of NATO Bombing

    WILLIAM HARTUNG Senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute and author of Military-Industrial Complex Revisited, Hartung said: “The bombings may or may not ‘degrade’ Milosevic’s forces, as the Pentagon intends; but they have certainly degraded the standing of the United States as a world leader. The air war in Kosovo underscores the weakness of the ‘Clinton Doctrine,’ which involves calling in the cruise missiles to deal with any and every problem. During this decade, the United States has degenerated from the world’s sole superpower to its designated bomber. The use of NATO forces to intervene in an internal conflict…


  • Balkan Fallout From NATO Bombing

    VIVIAN STROMBERG Executive director of MADRE (a group which has been working with multi-ethnic, democratic women’s organizations in the Balkans since 1993), Stromberg said: “We must move beyond a yearning for ‘good guys’ in the Yugoslav conflict and remember that behind the various political formations and armed groups are communities of people. In Kosovo, whole towns and villages are being burned out and butchered. In Serbia, people are being terrorized by NATO bombing… Both must stop; instead, the United Nations must do its job.” More Information MICHAEL SIMMONS Director of European Programs for the American Friends Service Committee, which has…


  • International Perspectives on the NATO Bombing

    ROBERT GREENBERG Assistant professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the forthcoming “Language and Ethnic Identity in the Former Yugoslavia,” Greenberg said today: “Milosevic is looking for an exit strategy, with the cease-fire proposal and the possibility of the U.S. soldiers being released. We just don’t seem to want to deal with him. I don’t see the benefit of continuing to risk killing Yugoslav civilians and to risk losing any of our pilots. We should have some sort of resumption of negotiations; it’s an opportunity to cooperate with the…


  • High-Profile Summits Will Take On

    For several days beginning Jan. 31, two global summits — one in Manhattan, one in Porto Alegre, Brazil — will offer dramatically different visions for the future of the world economy. The World Economic Forum in New York City: According to its website (www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content/Annual+Meeting+2002%5CAbout+the+Annual+Meeting), the WEF was established in 1971 as a “member-based institution comprised…

  • Dr. King: Beyond the Dreamer

    Quotes from speeches and sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. (full texts available at www.stanford.edu/group/King) From “The Drum Major Instinct”: Nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. “I must be first.” “I must be supreme.” “Our nation must rule the world.” And I am sad to say that the nation in which we…

  • Enron: Interviews Available

    WENONAH HAUTER Director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program and co-author of the report “Blind Faith: How Deregulation and Enron’s Influence Over Government Looted Billions from Americans,” Hauter said today: “The Bush administration should immediately release all communications it has had with Enron because its selective disclosure of Enron contacts so far…

  • * Colombia * Haiti * Turkey

    SANDRA ALVAREZ, via Jason Mark The peace talks in Colombia, which seemed on the verge of collapse, have been extended until Jan. 20. Today the Washington Post reports that, according to administration officials, the “Bush administration is considering expanding U.S. counternarcotics assistance to Colombia to give more aid to that country’s counterinsurgency war against leftist…

  • * U.S. vs. Iran? * Otto Reich

    KAVEH EHSANI A contributing editor for Middle East Report and for Goft-o-Gu (“Dialogue” in Farsi), Ehsani — who is writing a book on Iran — said today: “A stable Afghanistan is in Iran’s interest. Obviously, Iran is concerned about undue influence that other powers like the U.S., Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Russians, may exercise over…

  • Too Early to Declare Hunger Crisis Averted in Afghanistan

    The Associated Press reported yesterday that Afghan villagers in Bonavash are starving while attempting to survive by eating grass. The following statement, released today (Jan. 9) by the Institute for Public Accuracy, is from James Jennings, president of the humanitarian aid organization Conscience International. Jennings will return to Afghanistan on Jan. 16 for the group’s…

  • The Economy: Bush vs. Daschle?

    DOUG HENWOOD Author of Wall Street, Henwood said today: “It’s nice to see the Democrats doing something other than rolling over. It’s too bad, though, that Daschle is spending so much time on the importance of fiscal discipline — an obsession of Wall Street, but not any broader constituency — when 2.6 million workers have…

  • * India-Pakistan * Israel-Palestine * Argentina

    ANITA WEISS Co-editor of Power and Civil Society in Pakistan (Oxford University Press, 2001) and professor of international studies at the University of Oregon, Weiss said today: “If this situation is not diffused and tensions escalate further between India and Pakistan, it will play into the hands of extremist and sectarian groups in Pakistan. Many…

  • * Just Back from Afghanistan * Legal Status of Walker * Otto Reich: Backer of Terrorist? * Argentina Meltdown

    JIM JENNINGS President of Conscience International, a humanitarian aid organization, Jennings has just returned from his third trip to Afghanistan. He said today: “The public is being shielded from the extent of civilian casualties; if people saw the war close up, they would not be so enthusiastic about it. I witnessed this ‘collateral damage’ in…

  • Dissenting Voices At a Time of War and Faith

    SISTER EVELYN MATTERN Program associate at the North Carolina Council of Churches, Mattern said today: “Christians have a ‘just war’ teaching that in theory can be used to judge any war. In practice, the teaching serves to bless rather than judge wars. For example, the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops recently invoked the ‘just war’ teaching…

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