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| EX-DIPLOMAT RAILS AGAINST BALKAN WAR |
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| For Winnipeg Free Press by Ross Romaniuk |
| May 29, 1999. |
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| Canada's former ambassador to Yugoslavia has returned to
his home province of Manitoba to protest NATO's bombing campaign in the Balkans. James
Bissett is trying to get Manitobans to rally against Canada's involvement in the military
action that he calls a "policy of failure." |
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| "There's been so much NATO
propaganda that Canadians feel the war is justified," said Bissett, 67, who served as
ambassador to Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria. |
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| "If there had been any
real attempt to negotiate with the Yugoslavian government in a positive way, we would have
had an end to the conflict." Bissett arrived in Winnipeg yesterday from Ottawa to add
his voice to a public forum on the Balkan conflict. The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m.
today at the University of Winnipeg's Bulman Student Centre. The panel discussion will
involve three other speakers, including Roland Keith, a retired Canadian military officer
who has served in Kosovo. |
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| Bissett said NATO, unlike the United Nations, has no
authority to attack a sovereign state. He claimed the two-month-old bombing campaign has
violated both UN and NATO charters, and said the negotiations that took place before the
war in Rambouillet, France, were simply a NATO ultimatum to Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic. |
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| He said he wants Canadians to realize that
while hundreds of Kosovars have been killed and thousands have been driven out of the
Serbian province, NATO should have dealt with Milosevic through diplomacy. "I'm not
defending (Milosevic), and that's not humane, but neither is dropping cluster bombs on
people. "I felt obliged to come away from tending my garden and speak out," said
Bissett, who was born in Deloraine. |
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| However, Thompson resident Rame Hoti said today's
anti-war forum, organized by Peace Alliance Winriipeg and the U of W Students'
Association, is another in series of protests that are sending the wrong message to
Canadians.. Hoti, whose family recently-took in 16 homeless relatives from Kosovo, said
peace activists don't understand the harsh realities of the Balkan conflict. "It's
easy to protest if you're just watching the violence on TV, but it's different if you have
family members being killed" he said. |
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| Slobodan Simonovic, chairman of the
committee organizing today's forum, said the event was arranged to coincide with other
large anti-war demonstrations planned for this weekend in Ottawa and Toronto. "Canada
is losing a lot - the role it had in peacekeeping is now in the deep shadow of its
participation in Kosovo," Simonovic said. Peace Alliance Winnipeg is using the forum
as a kickoff for other protests in coming weeks.
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