TRANSNATIONAL FAX #37
Information bulletin on the campaigns of the Transnational Radical Party
Issue #37 - 6 November, 1999
* Published in Italian, French, Russian, and Spanish *
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Editor's Office: Mihai Romanciuc, Marco Perduca - Via di Torre Argentina 76, 00186 Rome (IT)
Tel :+39-06-689.791
Fax :+39-06-6880.5396
E-Mail:radical.party@agora.stm.it
URL :http://www.radicalparty.org
Telnet:agora.stm.it
Printing and Distribution: Alberto Novi
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THE Mailing List ARCHIVE [and where Subscribe or Unsubscribe]
http://www.radicalparty.org/elist/main_en.htm
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In this issue:
- Death penalty: the vote draws near
- Tibet: reality versus fiction
- Drugs: Radicals contest Arlacchi
- Albania: Majko resigns
- ICC: no reference to Milosevic in UN debate
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Dear friends,
During the first week in November the third Commission of the United Nations will discuss the resolution on the question of the death penalty presented by Finland on behalf of the European Union. As the vote draws near a vast group of countries, led by Singapore, has presented amendments that could reduce the efficacy of the initiative and weaken the main part of the text. Together with representatives of Hands Off Cain, the international league against the death penalty, and led by former European Union Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Emma Bonino, we will continue our lobbying work in the United Nations and capitals around the world to ensure that the text of the resolution is not modified and that any amendments that might weaken it are rejected. The full text of the resolution can be consulted at www.radicalparty.org
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THE REAL TIBET VERSUS THE VIRTUAL TIBET: RADICAL ACTIVISTS DEMONSTRATE IN PIAZZA CAPRANICA IN ROME TO WELCOME THE DALAI LAMA AND TO DENOUNCE THE DOUBLE STANDARDS OF THE WEST, ACCOMPLICES OF THE OPPRESSORS AND FRIENDS OF THE OPPRESSED
On 27 October, Radical Party activists gathered in Piazza Capranica in Rome to welcome the Dalai Lama, the political leader of the Tibetan people and a longstanding friend of the Radical Party, and to denounce the growing hypocrisy of the United States, the European Union and Italy, which lend their support to violent regimes such as the Communist dictatorship in China, at the same time having friendly chats with the victims of the same regimes. The Radical activists drew the public's attention to the fact that behind the pictures of Tibet we see in Hollywood films and holiday brochures, or the Tibet which has become a spiritual mecca, there is another Tibet - the reality which has now been almost supplanted by the fiction. A country that has been systematically colonised and destroyed, with concentration camps, torture, and repression. The Radicals also reminded Italian politicians that China, seen as a growing paradise for Italian exports and investment, is a country of 1.2 billion people deprived of all r
ights, the victims of the Communist regime. Photos of the demonstration can be seen at www.radicalparty.org
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DRUGS: SPEECH BY UNDCP HEAD PINO ARLACCHI AT THE SAN PATRIGNANO CONFERENCE. ITALY CONFIRMS ITS MORALISTIC DRUGS POLICY
Speaking on the occasion of the conference organised by San Patrignano, UN Vice Secretary General Pino Arlacchi stepped up the appeal for an increase in funds for UNDCP and its programmes, and also announced the commitment by Great Britain and the United States to reduce their demand for drugs by 50% in the next ten years, only half of the target proposed by Arlacchi at the conference on drugs held last December in New York. Marco Cappato, a member of the European Parliament and formerly representative of the Transnational Radical Party at the United Nations, and Maurizio Turco, a Radical Party member of the European Parliament, pointed out that Italy is already providing much of the funding to Arlacchi's agency and that this money, as official UN reports confirm, is spent on the implementation of policies that are completely ineffective, and also incapable of realising the solemn Declaration of the Extraordinary General Assembly of the United Nations in which the member states committed themselves to creati
ng a drugs-free world by 2008. In reality the production of all drugs is increasing. Cappato and Turco also asked Pino Arlacchi to indicate the value added to drugs in a prohibitionist context in which 8% of world trade is linked to drugs. No reply has so far been given by Arlacchi's office.
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ALBANIA: THE RESIGNATION OF PRIME MINISTER MAJKO IS PROOF OF EUROPE'S SUICIDAL POLICY IN ALBANIA
Olivier Dupuis, member of the European Parliament and Secretary of the Radical Party, issued a statement on the resignation of the Albanian Prime Minister Pandeli Majko, pointing out that Majko's decision represents "a political development of extreme gravity, the responsibility for which lies not only with the obscure interests of sectors of the Albanian Socialist Party, but above all with the whole European Union, in particular with the Commission and certain countries, beginning with Italy. There is no doubt, in fact, that the systematic tenacity with which the Union has excluded Albania (and not only Albania) from the true processes of European integration has ended up undermining the man who had championed this cause, and who had shown during the Kosovo crisis that he has the mettle: the Prime Minister Pandeli Majko. It is equally true that the substitutes for European integration proposed with such great Phariseen generosity by the Union, such as the so-called stability pact - are nothing but a repetit
ion of the suicidal and politically criminal policy pursued by the EU during the 1980s with respect to the former Yugoslavia: the de facto encouragement of the mechanisms of misgovernment and corruption, and therefore of those political forces that practise and profit by such tactics.
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INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT: THE SIXTH COMMISSION DISCUSSES THE RAPID CREATION OF THE COURT. LITTLE ATTENTION GIVEN TO THE INDICTMENT OF MILOSEVIC
From 20 to 22 October, the Sixth Commission of the General Assembly of the United Nations discussed the question of the ICC and initiated consultations on the convocation of the Preparatory Commission in the 2000 session. Around 40 states took the floor, expressing their general support for the rapid implementation of the International Criminal Court. The European and Latin American countries, and also a growing number of African states, also declared their full support for the effective commencement of the court's activity by the start of the new millennium. The positions of Israel and the United States were characterised by scepticism. The two countries stated that their governments will not be able to sign or ratify the Treaty of Rome for the ICC if substantial changes are not made to several important parts of the Statute. The position of China, which limited itself to expressing doubts about the possibility of concluding the attachments to the statute by the June 2000 deadline set by the final statement
of the Rome conference, was more difficult to interpret. Very little attention was given to the indictment of the Yugoslav President Milosevic. Only the Croatian Ambassador, in fact, mentioned the first indictment of a serving head of state. The debate in New York was followed by a powerful statement by the Chief Public Prosecutor of the Court in the Hague, Del Ponte, during his visit to Macedonia. Del Ponte said that his main priority is the arrest of Karadzic, of the former Serbian military commander Ratko Mladic, and of the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, whom he is planning to indict for the acts of genocide committed in Bosnia and Croatia.
