UKRAINE WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL CONDEMNS WASHINGTON, NATO

KIEV, Ukraine--President Clinton and other NATO leaders were found guilty of
crimes against peace by an International Peoples Tribunal on NATO War Crimes
Against Yugoslavia (English translation) that met Jan. 23 in the parliament
building of this beautiful ancient capital. The hearing was held in defiance
of the U.S.-backed regime of President Leonid Kuchma, who wants to bring
Ukraine into NATO.

Delegates from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic,
Poland, Germany and the United States took part in the hearing. The U.S. was
represented by Larissa Kritskaya and Bill Doares of the International Action
Center. Kritskaya and Doares were shown on the front page of the major daily
Kievsky Vedomosty under the headline "Americans Who Dream of Destroying
NATO."

The Kiev tribunal was the second in a series of hearings organized by the
International Peoples Tribunal, which was initiated in Russia by All- Slavic
Assembly. The first was held in the Russian city of Yaroslavl Dec. 14.
Others are planned for Belgrade (March 27), Warsaw and Minsk. The Kiev
tribunal focused on charges of crimes against peace- conspiracy to cause a
war. IPT organizers plan to coordinate their efforts with the Commission of
Inquiry on U.S./NATO War Crimes Against Yugoslavia organized by the
International Action Center and former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark.

The Ukraine hearing, which was chaired by Prof. Mikhail Kuznetsov of Moscow,
got considerable support from the Socialist, Communist and other Ukrainian
opposition parties. Socialist Party deputy Vil Nikolayich Romashenko was
vice president of the tribunal.

The judges and participants heard eyewitness testimony from Yugoslav
delegates who told of the death and destruction inflicted by NATO bombs and
missiles, which took 2,000 civilian lives. They also heard several
parliamentarians who had visited Yugoslavia during the war.

Deputy Sergei Kaszian of the Belarus parliament told of his meetings with
ethnic Albanian Kosovar leaders who condemned the NATO bombing and held the
U.S. responsible for the destruction of their country. Kaszian said that
NATO forces used had brutalized Kosovar refugees, separating children from
mothers and sending them to different countries. He also testified to the
large number of children killed or wounded by NATO bombs and missiles.

Ukrainian Communist deputy Vladimir Moiseenko represents the Donbass
coal-mining region and chairs the Ukraine Association to Restore the Soviet
Union. He pointed out that NATO was from its inception an aggressive
alliance aimed against East Europe and the Soviet Union and compared the
U.S.-NATO strategy used to break up Yugoslavia with its current strategy
toward Ukraine. He quoted U.S. strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski's description
of Ukraine as a "military platform" for NATO's expansion to the east. A NATO
Ukraine would become a base to invade Belarus and later Russia, Moiseenko
said. He condemned Ukraine's U.S.-backed president Leonid Kuchma for
facilitating NATO's expansion but said, "The Ukrainian people are waking up
to resist Ukraine's colonization." He also called on the rest of the world
to apply economic sanctions against the U.S. and other NATO states if NATO
is not dissolved. "But the world is not insane yet and has the strength to
stop NATO and its 'spiritual leader' the United States."

Retired Soviet admiral Anatoli Yurkovsky, now a member of Ukrainian
parliament, testified that NATO was also aimed at the Albanian people. He
told of the 1996 mass uprising in southern Albania against the U.S.-backed
Berisha regime. The insurgents "formed committees of national salvation that
were like the workers' councils in Russia in 1917. But they were smothered
by the massive intervention of NATO troops."

Larissa Kritskaya, a member of the International Action Center, said that
"corporate America has dominated Ukraine long enough to deliver the country
to the point of total destruction. But there is another America inside the
land of giant corporations, and that is conscious people in the U.S. We are
happy to be here today representing these people as your friends and
supporters in your struggle against the coming colonization planned by
U.S.-led NATO."

IAC spokesperson Bill Doares condemned the war against Yugoslavia "as a
cynical maneuver carried out to enrich giant U.S. corporations that profit
off death and destruction." He said that "bombs and missiles are not the
only agency of destruction. When the International Monetary Fund orders
Ukraine to close down its coal mines and steel plants, reducing workers to
starvation, is that not an act of war?" He denounced NATO as "the strike
force of the International Monetary Fund."

Yugoslav ambassador to Ukraine Goiko Dapcevic said, "the fact that the war
crimes tribunal took place here in Ukraine and the fact that there were many
representatives of your country willing to testify in the name of truth
about the horrible crimes committed during this unlawful war that brought a
human tragedy to Yugoslavia speaks to our unity. Yet the war in Yugoslavia
is still far from its end," he continued. "Though there are no missiles and
bombs falling from the sky right now, there is also no peace for us at this
time. And the most difficult thing now is our incapacity to break the
blockade on information. Therefore an event like the war crimes tribunal has
special value in our struggle to tell the world the truth about this war and
the present condition of my country."

International Action Center 39 West 14th Street, Room 206 New York, NY 10011
email: [log in to unmask] http://www.iacenter.org phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889

According to the May-June 99 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, excluding
the Nazi Holocaust, "Sanctions [on Iraq] have contributed to more deaths
than all weapons of mass destruction throughout history."