The report on the Statute of the Permanent Court has already been written up by Rapporteur Crawford (Australia), and has been submitted for approval at the Plenary Session held by the International Law Commission, the subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly appointed to draft the Statute for said Permanent Court, where it will be discussed from 23/24 June onwards.

The structure of the Statute has been simplified greatly. The draft, in fact, puts Genocide, Aggression, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity under the Court's jurisdiction. Furthermore, provision has been made for an accompanying document, which will be an integral part of the Statute itself, covering all the crimes and offences dealt with in International Conventions; therefore, including the one on torture and the 1988 Convention on Drugs.

It is possible that the draft Statute will be approved at the Plenary Session, while giving States the possibility of entering reservations. We must remember that States can accede to the Treaty with which the Court will be instituted by generally accepting its jurisdiction, but also have the right to specify certain crimes that will not come under its authority.

This important news item introduces the fifth issue of "Transnational", which is dedicated, for the most part, to a summary of the Bassiouni Report on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia; a summary Prof. Bassiouni himself made during a "tele-conference" held in Rome. The report, which has been officially approved by the UN Secretary General, is available through Agorà Telematica, and obtainable in English from Radical Party offices upon request.

The Dalai Lama's visit to Rome had a special political significance. It is reported in this issue of "Transnational", compiled only a few hours after the nonviolent Tibetan leader's departure.

Signatories of parliamentary motions promoted by the Radical Party will be listed in the next issue, which will also bring you up to date on Radical Party members who were elected, from different countries and on various tickets, to the European Parliament, which reassembled just a few days ago.

ITALY WELCOMES THE DALAI LAMA

It took a visit to Italy for His Holiness the Dalai Lama to be received by the Head of State and Prime Minister of a country, for the first time.

And it was also the first time that he was the guest of a political party: the Radical Party that organized all the political meetings he attended during his visit to Italy.

At 6.00p.m. on 16 June the President of the Italian Republic Oscar Luigi Scalfaro received His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Right Honourable Emma Bonino at the Quirinal. During the meeting, Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama who won the Nobel Peace Prize in '89, explained how he had been seeking to establish a dialogue with Chinese authorities for years.

He acknowledged that this was still a difficult task, adding that he firmly believed totalitarian regimes were destined to perish and this gave him hope for a better future.

The Dalai Lama pointed out that the political basis on which he is trying to reach an understanding with China does not focus on Tibet's independence. "I have not used the word 'independence' for fourteen years." he declared.

He is simply asking that the Chinese respect the autonomy, human rights and religious, linguistic and cultural freedom of the six million Tibetans whom he represents. In the opinion of His Holiness, the ideal political solution would be a single nation comprising two States.

The meeting ended on a warm note and President Scalfaro declared that the Tibetan cause was also one that he himself embraced.

At 2.00p.m. on 17 June, it was the turn of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to receive the Dalai Lama and Emma Bonino at Palazzo Chigi. Mr. Tashi Wangdi, Minister of Information and International Relations of the Tibetan Government in exile, was also present. Prime Minister Berlusconi reminded everyone that whenever the question of Tibet is raised the international community finds itself having to choose between maintaining good trade relations with China or upholding human rights. However, he was pleased to sum up by acknowledging that his meeting with the Dalai Lama underscored Italy's important commitment to the defence of human rights, tolerance and dialogue.

The Dalai Lama's next stop was the Radical Party Headquarters where he was greeted by many celebrities from the world of culture and entertainment, as well as a large crowd of journalists and supporters.Emma Bonino opened the press conference by warmly welcoming the Dalai Lama, whom she sees as a political and spiritual symbol of nonviolence. She then recalled the many acts of friendship which, in the past, had bound the Radical Party to the Tibetan cause; friendship that she declared was made possible by the Preamble of the Statute of the Radical Party, which draws its inspiration from nonviolent methods; and by the transnational nature of the Party's political campaigns.

Bonino, Secretary of the Radical Party, also declared that the Dalai Lama's fear that Tibet could become the new Yugoslavia caused her great concern. Regarding this, she confirmed her commitment to the instituion by the UN of the International Court for crimes against humanity that would exclude the death penalty in any case.

The Dalai Lama also met with Marco Pannella, to whom he presented a long white scarf symbolizing friendship, and also the desire that their friendship might last for a very long time.

SERB ARMY VIOLATES MACEDONIAN BORDER

According to the Macedonian mass media, the Serb army has penetrated 250 yds into Macedonian territory where it has occupied important strategic positions, and is presently entrenching itself.

Although the Macedonian Government has not yet issued an official statement, the news was confirmed by the UNPROFOR's information service representative, who stated that Serb patrols have crossed the Macedonian border at different points.

The mass media also reported that the Macedonian people, particularly those living in the border zone, are experiencing high anxiety because it is a scenario with which they are all too familiar: that of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

As soon as Olivier Dupuis, President of the General Council of the Radical Party, heard the above news, he declared: "The one thing that remains to be seen is how many other acts of aggression, violations of the law, of people's rights and of international legality, will it take for Europe to change its cowardly and shameful attitude, literally of the 1930s, and to recognize the Belgrade regime for what it is, i.e., a "nationalist-Communist", Fascist and racist regime, dealing with it accordingly."

AD HOC TRIBUNAL FOR EX-JUGOSLAVIA: THE COMMISSION'S REPORT

On 10 June, and on the occasion of the preview of Bernard Henry Levi's film "Bosna!" in Italy during a meeting organized by the "There's No Peace without Justice" Committee in which Emma Bonino also took part, a "tele-conference" was held by Prof. Cherif Bassiouni, Chairman of the UN Commission of Experts investigating crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, and a member of the Radical Party.

Prof. Bassiouni explained the main points in the report written up by the Commission, thus anticipating the publication of the report itself, which has actually just been approved by the UN Secretary General.

We feel that it is not only our duty to publish Prof. Bassiouni's important speech, but that it will be extremely useful to everyone. Yet another work instrument.We are quoting widely from Prof. Bassiouni's speech, in order to show readers that months of mobilization have resulted in the Radical Party obtaining its goals.

The concretization of such an effort further convinces us - as if this were necessary! - that we must do our utmost to see the Permanent International Court instituted. Here's the gist of Prof. Bassiouni's report:

(...) We have overcome a number of financial difficulties with a fund created by voluntary contributions from Member States, amounting to the tiny sum of US$1,300,000 that is obviously insufficient for investigating about 200-250,000 killings, 50,000 cases of torture and 20,000 cases of rape, carried out in a context of violence that has existed for about two-and-a-half years in an extremely large territory - principally Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia - in which we have discovered the existence of 715 detention and concentration camps, and more than 150 mass graves in which anything from five to three hundred corpses have been interned. The ferocity of these crimes and the violent context in which they have been perpetrated is incredible. They are the kind of things you read about in mediaeval history, and you can't believe they're true. But they have been committed.

The Commission had to find different methods and ways of doing its work. One of these was the study we carried out on rape victims, also because it met with considerable opposition. We investigated 1,600 cases. It was the biggest inquiry every carried out in the history of rape. Out of 1600 cases, we interviewed - working in the field for two months with a team led by me - 223 rape victims. Naturally we were told some unbelievable stories, which confirmed what we had heard in the past but were unable to document. The study was carried out by eleven teams comprising thirty-five women, almost all of them volunteers.

Each team consisted of three women: a prosecutor, a mental-health specialist and an interpreter. They spoke to victims in five cities, in order to gather the evidence. We also received help from a certain number of governments, for example, those of Austria, Germany, Sweden and Norway, who used their own investigators, prosecutors, police officials, etc., to interview - according to a questionnaire prepared by me - a certain number of victims.

It is precisely on the basis of this that we will be able to arrive at a scientifically-valid projection of the acts of violence that have been committed.

This zone, in fact, has been a hotbed of violence since the second Balkan war in 1912. Violence that continued through World War II and, in a certain sense, gained substance in the psychological, political and economic violence carried out by the Communist regime for fifty years. It is as if it had all been put in a pressure cooker, and left unattended. And when the pressure cooker exploded, the worst forms of aggression that human beings are capable of exploded with it.

This demonstrates something very important: warring parties can never make peace without justice or truth.

When they tried to put the lid on this situation in 1912, and also after World War I and II, it soon blew off: the situation was still on the boil. This should help us to understand that in the present situation there can be no lasting peace without justice.

The second explanation for this violence is that there was a Serb politico-military strategy to create a "Greater Serbia"; a strategy that was exploited by those politicians who played on the nationalism of the Serbian people and on their feelings of having been victimised in the past, to incite them to act in a way that would have been unacceptable in any other circumstances. For this strategy to succeed, all non-Serb elements had to be eliminated. It is reflected in the large "U" that runs along the River Drijna and the River Csava, connecting the Serb communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia with Serbia itself. It is in the zones inhabitated by the most peace-loving, ethnically mixed groups that the most atrocious acts of violence have been perpetrated. The most extreme methods were used not only to drive people from those areas, but also to make sure that they would never return. This explains why the acts of rape were so violent, so public and so humiliating: the Serbs wanted to be sure that t

he Muslim family in question would be completely destroyed, and would never dare return to that place.

Many of these acts of violence were part of the powerful "ethnic cleansing" strategy that was consequential to the politico-military strategy applied to gain control of the territory. It was not possible to use the regular army to implement the former strategy, and so special units were employed, like the Arkan, Seselj and Dragan.The Serbs, Croats and Muslims fielded 45, 18 and 12 of these groups, respectively. They all operated as they saw fit - independently of the military - and were responsible to local or national political power. These units were responsible for the most horrific massacres, particularly in Serb-controlled zones where "ethnic cleansing" was in progress. They were joined by a civilian group, armed by the police and controlled by the Ministry of the Interior (when it still existed, upon its re-constitution, and after 1992). These were native groups.

It is a little like going into a slum area and arming both the criminals and the dregs of society, on condition that they will go unpunished; permitting them to keep whatever they plunder, and to fight under the "national flag of patriotism" so that they can be treated like heroes.

It is very important to remember, however, that one must not accuse the Serbs or the Serb ethnic group as such. What has happened is unfortunately the result of a failed political system that has brought together a number of people who are incapable of governing and controlling the situation; that has created the right circumstances for these people to grow more powerful, by using propaganda and creating this terrible situation.

(...) We have identified over 700 people who have committed the above acts. It is therefore unacceptable for people to carry on insisting that such acts were not carried out and that it is impossible to find out who committed the crimes. In spite of the small amount of money and resources available, I was able to identify more than 700 criminals, including a large number of commanders and soldiers in the concentration camps who have been identified as torturers by witnesses. So there is no lack of justification or defendants.

Three things must be taken into account if we are to capture these criminals.

Number one. They may be in another country.

This has happened in Germany, Denmark, France and Switzerland, and there are several cases in Austria. Many of the criminals have left the combat zones: however, it must be acknowledged that many perpetrators of these crimes came from other European countries.

The "wekkendash": those who came to the Ex-Yugoslavia for a short time, to fight, kill, and steal, and then went back to their own countries. Five hundred arrived from Australia. Countless individuals descended from Germany, and more came from Austria and Switzerland. These people have returned to live in their own countries and it won't be difficult to track them down.

Number two.

Certain countries must cooperate. It is important, therefore, to immediately secure proof and prevent it from being tampered with, without waiting until it becomes difficult to demonstrate. This is why the Commission has completed its investigation rapidly, or rather, ahead of time. The fact of the matter is that once we have the proof, we can even wait ten years. In recent months there was the Touvier case: 50 years after the event. Now there is the Priebke case in Italy.

Number three.Possessing the evidence, a tribunal and the political will, it is only a question of time before these cases are heard.

(...) In legal terms, aggression means that a country has violated the territorial integrity of another. So this differs a little from the usual meaning of a harmful action committed against another person.

The mandate we received from the UN Security Council does not apply to aggression in these terms, but merely authorizes us to investigate violations of the Geneva Conventions and of international humanitarian law. For this reason, we have investigated specific cases, as well as common policy.

This being the case, it must be borne in mind that there have been three conflicts one after the other: the conflict with Slovenia, with Croatia, and then with Bosnia. Each conflict has its particular characteristics: the conflict with Slovenia ended quickly, with relatively little violence, because a politicoeconomic deal was reached between Slovenia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The violence escalated in Croatia, particularly during the fighting in the Kraijna and Slavonia arias, where the Croats undoubtedly committed a number of serious violations against the Serbs. The war against Bosnia has produced the greatest number of victims so far. For this reason, we find ourselves dealing with three conflicts that have seen different parties siding with each other. For example, in Bosnia there are certain zones where Croats and Muslims have fought side by side against the Serbs, while in other areas we find that Croats and Serbs have thrown in their lot together against Muslims.When faced with a

conflict in which so many factions have participated it is difficult to determine who has done what, when and how. One ecounters the same problem when seeking to determine who is responsible for creating the strategy.

In addition to this there were the groups - 45 military or organized units formed by the Serbs, 18 by the Croats and 12 by the Muslims - plus each ethnic group had an army and employed local armed police in the towns; therefore, it is very hard to get a clear picture and to reach a conclusion like: "This person was the leader and these three, four or five other people were directly responsible for certain crimes." What this picture shows us is that the general policy was to set a machine in motion and just let it keep turning. For instance, when the same actions are carried out repeatedly in an extremely vast territory in the space of two years - especially when this territory is not integral - and the army never intervenes, clearly a policy of nonintervention is being followed; in spite of the fact that both international law and the military code state an obligation to intervene and take preventive action. It is like a police officer looking the other way when a crime is being committed. If it happens

once it could be mere chance, twice and it may be a coincidence, but when it occurs repeatedly, someone has obviously given the order to turn a blind eye. The conclusions reached in our report indicate that a policy of systematic violence was applied, flanked by one of nonintervention.

(...) It is extremely difficult to take a situation like the one referred to by Wiesel (where a distinction is made between detention camps and concentration or extermination camps, Editor's note), and to place it in another context. The Yugoslavian context is completely different to the German one: there is a lot of improvisation at a local level while the organization and centralization that existed in Germany are completely lacking, which has produced more brutal results. For example in this conflict we see that the camps in general are agglomerates and not specialized like they were in Germany. One finds that these camps are usually clustered in the combat zones, and housed for the most part in various premises, in factories, mines and schools.

Members of the other ethnic groups were imprisoned in these camps, whether they were Bosnians, Muslims or Croats. And the triage principle was applied in the following manner. First of all, people who were too old to fight were sent to one camp, while young people went to those where extermination and torture were carried out; still more people were split up according to their economic situation, so that either they or their families could later pay a ransom. This was a known practice in certain zones of Prijedor, Banja Luka, Brcko and Foja, where children and young girls, the daughters of well-off families, were taken and put in houses, where they were also raped, to extort a ransom from their parents. (...)

So there was this form of triage, this practice of grouping certain individuals together in the different camps. Humiliation was widespread. Torture was inflicted everywhere, although per se it was practised minimally in the camps housing old people - who were deprived of food, medicine, etc., which was simply another form of torture - and then there were the camps where women were taken for the specific purpose of being raped and degraded, after which they would either be freed or kept for the soldiers' or militiamen's pleasure.

(...) We did not investigate the behaviour of UN personnel because this was not included in our mandate. However, according to my experience, UN personnel behaved extremely well in the course of one year and a half - except for the now famous case of General Mackenzie in the vicinity of Sarajevo.

There were countless manifestations of human warmth on the part of the soldiers. They were responsible for so many humane actions. Here's just one example: it was the month in which Ramadan is celebrated and I was a guest of the Egyptian battalion. They told me that during the period in which their battalion was operating in Sarajevo, they took the food out of their own mouths and distributed it to one hundred people: it was a decision that officers and men made together. This is an extraordinary gesture of soldarity.

When I was with the Jordanian battalion I saw the western sector of Croatia: a zone where the Croats razed eight villages, leaving not one house standing.

There was an old woman of eighty who had been locked in her house. She was the only one who had survived and had not fled. The Jordanian soldiers found her and they rebuilt her house. The old lady has been living there for two years now, under the protection of the soldiers who bring her food every day. They have told the Croats that no one is to go near her. A 12-man patrol was camped near by, guarding the house. It has nothing to do with any official UN procedure. So there are numerous manifestations of solidarity.

Regarding the verification of data, we have registered over 1,600 cases, specifying names and surnames and the scene of the crime. We have interviewed 223 individuals (to which we must add the 34 interviewed by the Swedish authorities, the 7 interviewed by the Austrian authorities and others who have been questioned by the authorities in other countries). We have in our possession more than 800 written statements from victims. Therefore, the documentation on these 1,600 cases is considerable; moreover, each of the women told us that they saw other women being raped. The resulting number would appear to be quite credible: approximately 4,500 cases. If we have 1,600 specified cases, with the victims testifying to 4,500 more, and even if we only multiply this number by four - which from a sociological and criminological aspect is the lowest possible estimate - we arrive at a total of over 20,000 cases of rape.