The radical party has organized an international pressure campaign on the United Nations and Member States

ABSTRACT: An account of the radical party's initiative to obtain the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 827, which establishes the ad hoc tribunal on the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. The text describes the steps taken, the international adhesions gathered, etc.

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 25 October 1993)

On May 25th this year the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 827 with a unanimous vote. The act formally established the ad hoc tribunal for the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.

Four months have gone by since then, but nothing seems to be moving at the UN headquarters in New York. After the approval there has been no concrete action.

On 10 September, in the face of the omissions of traditional diplomacy, the radical party launched an appeal to formally request the United Nations to apply its own Resolution. A logistic location needs to be found; the eleven judges of the Court and the Prosecutor General need to be appointed; the necessary financial resources need to be allocated; the technical staff needs to be formed; the gathering of evidence and testimonies needs to be started, i.e. the actual activity of starting the proceedings.

The campaign was launched in September. A sufficient number of adhesions on the petition need to be gathered to urge the international institutions and the old diplomacies to implement the Security Council's Resolution. The appointment is for November 1st. That day, a delegation of the Radical Party will present the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, with the package of signatures.

Prestigious personalities began to endorse the initiative already on September 11: three Nobel prize winners, Vassily Leontief, Nobel prize for economics in 1973, George Wald, Nobel prize for medicine in 1967 and Nevil Mott, Nobel prize for physics in 1977. Next came Bernard Kouchner, former French health minister and president of Humanitarian Action, founder of the international organization "Médécins Sans Frontières". The following day another prime scientist, Ilya Prigogine, Nobel prize for chemistry in 1977, decided to join in. And once again, personalities in the field of culture, show business and journalism also decided to support the campaign: Vincino, Giancarlo Sbragia, Vittorio Gassman...

But above all the campaign was endorsed by non-Italian MPs. The political campaign in fact meant to be transnational: the list of adhesions opens with 9 Euro-MPs and four exponents of the Croatian political world. Then come Marek Edelmann, who survived the revolt of the Warsaw ghetto against the Nazis, Predrag Matvejevic, a Croatian writer, Alain Elkmann, a French writer.

A month and a half later, thirty Nobel prize winners, 102 Euro-Mps (from all groups), 2 MPs from Austria, 70 from Albania, 8 from Armenia, 2 from Argentina, two from Azerbaijan, 3 from Belgium, 28 from Burkina Faso, 21 from Bulgaria, 7 from Belorussia, 5 from Bosnia, 2 from Canada, 1 from Bolivia, one from the Ivory Coast, 68 from Croatia, 2 from Germany, 2 from Spain, six from Great Britain, 33 from Georgia, 7 from Hungary, 178 from Italy, one from Israel, 1 from Kazakhstan, 3 from Lithuania, 22 from Macedonia, 19 from Moldavia, 2 from Norway, two from Slovenia, 24 from Ukraine, 1 from Egypt, one from the U.S., two from Serbia, 6 from Montenegro and 50 from Kossovo endorsed the petition promoted by the Radical Party. Several other preminent personalities also supported the campaign: playwright Eugène Ionesco, physicist Antonino Zichichi, writer and journalist Fernando Savater, biologist Henri Laborit, writer Claudio Magris, Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff, sociologist Ralph Dahrendorf.