Robinson meets the human face of conflict

"Have you seen the coverage," asked Jose Diaz, the High Commissioner's press secretary. "Oh, I've seen it all right," Mary Robinson replied with a sigh, nodding towards the television in her Belgrade hotel suite. "I didn't sleep well."

There was no more discussion at that moment on the topic of her controversial visit and the condemnation it has received from some human rights quarters. Now, at 7 a.m. yesterday, Ireland's former president was dressed and ready to begin touring areas of bomb damage in the city, including the mostly destroyed Chinese embassy, and to meet President Slobodan Milosevic.

Her understanding was that, although the meeting with Mr Milosevic was not confirmed, it would most likely occur just after her meeting with the Foreign Minister, Mr Zivadin Jovanovic.

It was not to be. In a snub to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr Milosevic refused to meet Mrs Robinson. A government source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mr Milosevic was angry, among other things, about the Irish Government's request to the football association to cancel its game against Yugoslavia, scheduled for June.

Despite the difficult circumstances of her visit here - a snub by the president, condemnation of her proposed meeting with Mr Milosevic by Human Rights Watch, and a visit to the city of Nis moments after a severe air attack - Mrs Robinson was resolute that human rights violations of all kinds remained the focus of her trip.

During her visit to the region, which began on May 2nd, Mrs Robinson toured Albanian refugee camps in Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, and called on the Yugoslav government to halt its "vicious abuses" against human rights in Kosovo. During her time in Belgrade and Nis, she said she wanted to see at first hand how the NATO air strikes were affecting the Serbian people.

She got more of an opportunity than expected when her car was stopped and she was informed moments before arrival in Nis that the city was under attack with cluster bombs - anti-personnel weapons filled with shrapnel. Dropped unexploded, they can lie idle until detonated by noise or movement.

Accompanying Mrs Robinson on her tour of Nis, it was impossible to not be struck by her determination and seeming fearlessness. She walked through areas where unexploded bombs lay freshly dropped, and climbed a darkened staircase in a high-rise building to talk with people huddled in their apartments, their terraces shielded from shrapnel by blankets and towels. Some members of her delegation, concerned for safety, did not join her, and instead waited downstairs amid a heap of still-burning cars.

The mayor of Nis, a member of an opposition party, was eager to talk to her and describe the weeks of bombardment that city had been undergoing. When a policeman told Mrs Robinson that she would have to cease her conversation with him, and then attempted to physically intervene as a crowd of residents accustomed to such tactics looked on, she rigidly stood there, calmly talking with the mayor, unblinking, and asked him to elaborate further.

Asked later about her impressions of Nis, Mrs Robinson told The Irish Times: "There is a major concern that the bombing campaign has not only brought about a high number of civilian casualties, deaths and injuries and a cutting off of, in some cases, life-saving apparatus, but also that there is a wide range of targets and a higher degree of risk of bombs falling in civilian areas.

"I'm not a military strategist, but it seems that, because it's a purely air bombing campaign, this is almost inevitable and puts civilians at risk. One of the major concerns of modern warfare is that civilians are in the front line. We don't hear much about military targets or casualties. It's civilians who die. That in itself is a very big moral question."

Mrs Robinson said that, after hearing the tales of torture and deportation experienced by the refugees in Albania and Macedonia, she wanted to discuss human rights with Mr Milosevic.

"After hearing these harrowing accounts, I believe it is appropriate that I should come to the place where many of these stories lead and bring the issues to those directly concerned," she said.

While she was denied the opportunity to meet Mr Milosevic, Mrs Robinson did meet Serbian human rights groups.

"They are very beleaguered, partly because of the rule of law issue. The problem for them is that they do not believe there is legality behind the bombing campaign because of the failure to get a UN Security Council resolution," she said. "They believe the wider targeting and the effect on the civilian population has made their role as civil rights defenders who are basing their whole approach on the rule of law much more difficult."

The absence of sufficient support for human rights from the international community contrasted sharply with the resources being put into war, Mrs Robinson noted.

"If you look at the cost of this military operation, and the cost of human lives, it is staggering and appalling."

Mrs Robinson said she decided not to attempt to visit Kosovo on this trip because it was urgent that she return to Geneva for a two-day meeting of United Nations agencies concerning the conflict in Kosovo.

Today, she will also present her findings to the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, who approved of her trip.