Harold Pinter's contribution in written publications on Nato's bombing of Serbia:
   
 
   
 
   
  Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, (Pluto Press, London 2000).
   
 
   
  Masters of the Universe? Nato's Balkan Crusade, edited by Tariq Ali (Verso, London 2000).
   
  Speech given at Conference of Analytic Psychotherapists, June 25 1999 , "Nato's Bombing of Serbia"
   
  Speech given at Balkans Conference, Conway Hall, June 10 2000 "One Woman's War"
 
Nato Bombing of Serbia and the war in Kosovo
     
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Click the above envelope to view the letter to The Guardian 8th April 1999
 
 
Counterblast May 4 1999 - Television programme (Download will be available very soon)
 
 
National Demonstration against the War, London June 5 1999
 
       
     
 
The Guardian Monday 7 June 1999
 
Audrey Gillan
 
The playwright Harold Pinter told an anti-war demonstration that he was ashamed to be British because of Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia. At the gathering of more than 6,000 marchers in a park next to the Imperial War Museum in London on Saturday, he described the current peace talks as a sham, and claimed that the war had been totally unwarranted. Standing in the shadow of the two l5 inch naval guns that sit at the entrance to the mu-seum, the playwright threw his words out like stones, each of them aimed at the Labour government. 'I am sure those people here today who voted the Labour party into power share the same feeling - a deep sense of shame, the shame of being British. 'Little did we think two years ago that we had elected a government which would take a leading role in what is essentially a criminal act, showing total contempt for the United Nations and international law." Pinter said Britain's leaders had been engaging in despicable hypocrisy, and he contrasted Tony Blair's calling the nail bombing of a bar in Old Compton Street, Soho, "barbaric", with his defending the cluster bombs dropped on Yugoslavia as "civilization against barbarism". These clusterbombs cut children to pieces and this is an act which takes place 15,000ft 'under 'those brave bombers. An act which Mr Blair, with his moralistic Christianity applauds," Pinter said. "Let us face the truth. The. truth is that neither Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the Kosovar Albanians. This action has been yet another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using Nato as its missile. It set out to consolidate one thing - American domination of Europe. This must be fully recognised and it must be resisted." The march, which began at the Embankment, had been organised by the Committee for Peace in the Balkans before the peace talks began. The organisers went ahead with the protest because they said. it was 'obscene" that the bombing was continuing. Carrying anti-Nato flags, target placards and crosses with the name of the civilian dead in Serbia and Kosovo, as well as trade unions, banners, the marchers chanted anti-war slogans and demanded that money be spent on welfare rather than warfare. The march coincided with a number of other anti-war marches around the world, including one outside the Pentagon in Washington, which sent messages of support. A rally in Glasgow was addressed by the Labour MP for Linlithgow Tam Dalyell, Alice Mahon the Labour MP for Halifax, told the London crowd that the real US objective in the war was the occupation of Yugoslavia, a country which had "resisted 72 days of criminal bombardment". She said that what she had learned was that Nato could now destroy any country from l0,000ft in the air and the only way smaller countries could defend themselves would be to obtain nuclear weapons. The Committee for Peace in the Balkans intends to continue its work when the bomb-ing has stopped," she said. "We are not going to stop until justice is done.
 
 
Comment in Socialist Review
 
 

When the bomb went off in Old Compton Street, Mr Blair described it as a barbaric act. When cluster bombs go off in Serbian marketplaces, cutting children into pieces, we are told that such an act is being taken on behalf of 'civilisation against barbarism'. Mr Blair is clearly having a wonderful time. But if Britain remains America's poodle, she is now a vicious and demented poodle. The Nato action is in breach of its own charter and outside all recognised parameters of international law. Nato is destroying the infrastructure of a sovereign state, murdering hundreds of civilians, creating widespread misery and desolation, and doing immeasurable damage to the environment. Underneath the demonisation and the hysteria, there is an agenda. What is it? It is certainly not what it purports to be. Neither Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the Kosovan Albanians, despite their tears. This action is yet another brutal and blatant assertion of US power, using Nato as its missile. This "new aggressive" Nato is helping to fulfil one thing and one thing only-American domination of Europe. The true danger to world peace is not former Yugoslavia, but the United States.

Socialist Review June 1999

 
For present status of KFOR in the region please follow these links:
 
Campaigning for peace in the Balkans: Committee for Peace in the Balkans.www.balkanpeace.org
 
For information about KFOR in Kosovo: World Socialist Web Site: www.wsws.orgBack to Politics main page
                         
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