ABSTRACT: Emma Bonino warns that another crime against an entire population, the population of Kosovo, is in the making. The Serbian repression in Kosovo is becoming increasingly heavy, yet no one seems to pay attention to the appeals to intervention that come from Prishtina. The parliamentarians members of the radical party will instead discuss this situation in Sofia. The propoals for the disavowal of the federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro) and for the concession to Kosovo of a form of United Nations "protectorate". The urgency to face the crisis of the UN, which must assume a new democratic framework whence it can draw the legitimacy and necessary strength to impose "erga omnes" the respect of the international law.

(IL GIORNALE, July 13th, 1993)

The eyes of the world are pointed on the "foreseeable" end of Sarajevo, which will be taken "by thirst" - as in ancient wars - despite the UN having declared it a "protected zone".

This crime paves the way to and "announces" a new one: the overflow of the Serbian aggression to Kosovo with immediate repercussions on Albania, Macedonia - where a consistent "Albanian minority" lives - and as a consequence on Greece and Bulgaria.

But for Kosovo the international community will not be able to use the alibi with which it has justified its impotence in Bosnia. It will be up to its sense of responsibility or its impudence to decide whether or not to allow Milosevic's regime to carry out this second operation of "ethnic cleansing", exterminating the population of Kosovo after that of Bosnia.

Perhaps it is already too late. Perhaps even more revolting alibis are being sought, for there are many ill omens: the Serbian repression in Kosovo is getting heavier and heavier; recently the last Albanian-speaking newspaper has been closed, and despite the hunger strike started by the Sacharov Prize winner Demaqi and dozens more Albanians of Kosovo, the provocations of the Serbian police, the searches without warrants, the unjustified arrests, are very common. We are in close contact with those populations: desperate appeals are coming daily from Prishtina to urge the international community, the UN and the CSCE to do something.

Everyone pretends not to see. We, instead, insist on not closing our eyes, and this is why in a few days' time the parliamentarians members of the transnational radical party (over 600, mostly from east European countries) will meet in Sofia, a few kilometres from totalitarian countries such as Serbia or countries that have just come out of communism. Among others, 17 members of the dissolved parliament of Kosovo (precisely!), 25 parliamentarians from Macedonia, 40 MPs from Bulgaria, 12 Croatians, 8 Serbs, 3 representatives of Vojvodina, 10 MPs from Albania: in other words, the ones most directly concerned by the problem. There are already many proposals for urgent initiatives for Kosovo, on which the radical party will test its capacity to raise public awareness and especially to exert pressure on national parliaments and international institutions: from the "disavowal" of the federal republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro) to the request to send UN forces in the region, as suggested by the American con

gresswoman Molinari, to the concession to Kosovo itself of a sort of UN "protectorate" as requested by the President of Kosovo Rugova, to the six-point plan of the Albanian President Berisha, who suggests linking the cessation of the embargo against Serbia to the solution, among other things, of the question of Kosovo.

But ultimately the core of the debate will be the powerlessness of the international community in the face of the new responsibilities which a world no longer divided into blocs assigns to the supranational institutions. After the initial hope of attributing a "government" role to the UN in the context of a new international order based on the rule of law, on legality and the capacity to enforce them, we have been forced to bitterly acknowledge, with the failure of the mission in Yugoslavia and the growing difficulties in Somalia, that the path is long and difficult. Of one thing we are sure: that without the radical party, without other transnational parties capable of imposing the priority and urgency of a new democratic structure for the UN, whence this institution can draw legitimacy and the necessary force to impose "erga omnes" the respect of the international law, new tragedies and new injustices are in the making. And not far from us, but only a handful of kilometres away.

Will this once again be judged to be an excessive ambition and challenge for the small radical party?