POLITICS-UN: U.N. Ready to Re-Impose Sanctions on Yugoslavia

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 30 1998 (IPS) - The U.N. Security Council is ready to re-impose an arms embargo this week against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in response to the growing conflict in the southern province of Kosovo.

U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson, who supports the sanctions, said that the Council could vote to approve the embargo as early as Tuesday, although he acknowledged that some countries were still discussing the wording of a draft resolution. The U.S. and British governments have stuck by plans to vote on arms sanctions by Mar. 31, a deadline set by a six-nation ‘Contact Group’ dealing with Kosovo.

However, two veto-holding permanent members of the 15-nation Security Council – Russia and China – rermain opposed to some parts of the sanctions resolution, and may make any vote on an arms embargo an uphill fight.

Russia, Belgrade’s ally, has asked for a time limit for the embargo’s expiration, in an effort to prevent the drawn-out sanctions process which Yugoslavia – now comprising Serbia and Montenegro – as well as the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina – faced in recent years. China, meanwhile, opposes most U.N. sanctions, although sources say it is unlikely to use its veto for now.

The draft resolution backed by the United States would compel all nations to “prevent the sale or supply to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, including Kosovo…of arms and related materials of all types, such as weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment and spare parts.”

The sanctions could be lifted by the Council, the draft text says, if the Belgrade government conducts a dialogue on the political status of Kosovo, withdraws special police units from the region and allows human rights monitors to visit the conflict zone.

The Council’s sanctions threatmarked the first time that the body has vowed to re-impose penalties on Belgrade since a substantial embargo that affected both Yugoslavia and its Bosnian Serb allies was lifted last year. The sanctions, imposed in May 1992 following the increasing war over Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina, were lifted in part at the end of 1995 and ended completely by 1997.

The push for a resolution comes just one week after Washington failed to win agreement on further penalties during a meeting of the six-nation Contact Group – which also includes France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia – in Bonn.

The Contact Group opted to give Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic four weeks to meet demands for dialogue with pro- independence Kosovar groups and to pull out forces linked with a recent crackdown in the province, which has left at least 85 people dead. Milosevic is unlikely to meet all those demands within the next few weeks, or even try to do so, since Belgrade is adamant that the Kosovo dispute is an internal affair of Yugoslavia.

“This is an internal, rather than an international issue, and there are no grounds for mediation,” argued Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic last week. “Kosovo…is an integral part of Serbia. It had been a part of it for centuries before Yugoslavia even came into being…and there are no reasons to separate it on the threshold of the third millenium.”

The Belgrade authorities blame the recent killings in Kosovo on Kosovar terrorist groups, who have been frustrated by the continuing dominance of Serb forces in the Albanian-majority province. The province’s leader, Ibrahim Rugova, has criticised the terrorist attacks even as he has stepped up his own calls for regional autonomy, which was rescinded by Milosevic in 1989.

For some, Kosovo is a crucial test case over whether the United Nations will push Milosevic, formerly president of Serbia, to allow the populations of Yugoslavia to determine their own status freely.

It was in Kosovo where Milosevic first vowed to combat the break-up of Yugoslavia, making the case for Serb dominance over a province that boasts two million people – 90 percent of them ethnic Albanians. In the early 1990s, Belgrade showed how far it would go to prevent different ethnic groups from declaring independence by aiding Serb proxy forces in Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina.

The United States contends that it does not support the cause of the pro-independence Kosovars. But U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has argued that “we will hold President Milosevic responsible” for any further violence in the province.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson has asked the Yugoslav president to allow the travel of an increased number of human-rights officials – including Bacre Waly Ndiaye, a special rapporteur on executions – to the province. “I believe that sustained violations of a wide range of human rights have been at the heart of the conflict and continuing tension in the former Yugoslavia,” she said recently.

With little sign of progress in Kosovo, both the Contact Group and the Security Council are considering other measures – including a freezing of Belgrade’s overseas assets – to pressure Milosevic. Russia is concerned that the new sanctions could drag out without a definite time limit in the way that the previous embargo – and others imposed on Iraq and Libya – lingered for years.

Other U.N. delegates, however, remained uncertain as to what a new arms embargo on Yugoslavia would accomplish.

Serbia and Montenegro also faced arms sanctions during the Bosnian war, yet large-scale flouting of the U.N. embargo ensured that the assorted Serb forces – unlike those of the Bosnian government – remained well-armed throughout the main fighting between 1992 and 1995.