Amnesty International s allegations rebuffed

In response to allegations made in an Amnesty International report released on 7 June that NATO violated the laws of war in the conduct of the Kosovo air campaign, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson firmly stated that they were baseless and ill-founded. He pointed out that the Chief Prosecutor of the UN s International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla del Ponte, had told the UN Security Council last week that she was very satisfied there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets by NATO during the bombing campaign and that, based on an assessment of complaints made, her team judged there is no basis for opening an investigation.

Every effort was made to minimise civilian casualties during the air campaign, when over ten thousand bombing missions were flown. But NATO has always acknowledged that in a few cases mistakes were made or weapons malfunctioned, leading to civilian casualties. (Human Rights Watch, the independent human rights group, estimates that between 488 and 527 civilians lost their lives.) Lord Robertson said that NATO deeply regrets these incidents but stressed that they must be weighed against the atrocities that NATO s action stopped.