Bianca Jagger came to Strasbourg this month to call for EU action to halt the military operations being carried out in Kosovo by the Yugoslav government. She painted a graphic picture of the grim situation in the province where 400,000 people had been displaced, 50,000 were living in the open, and thousands had been killed.
She evoked images of "empty towns and villages, haunted by the lingering ghosts of women, children and the elderly running from homes gutted by fire; entire villages racked and burned. Newly-born babies reportedly dying from lack of food and medical supplies. While policy makers from the international community waste precious time innocent civilians are being massacred." Backing for the Kosovo Liberation Army had grown from only 200 to 300 supporters in February, to between 30,000 and 50,000 at present as a result of these atrocities.
The West had failed to learn the lessons of Bosnia and the situation was being repeated. The perpetrators were the same, only the victims were different. She was deeply shocked by the attitude of the international community towards President Milosevic - the "Butcher of the Balkans"- and believed that the West was asking the victims to negotiate with the perpetrators to achieve a "stability based on war crimes and death". Mrs Jagger wanted the international community to demand that President Milosevic's government immediately cease all military operations in Kosovo and withdraw from the province. She called for all those responsible for human rights atrocities to be brought before the International War Crimes Tribunal and for unrestricted freedom of movement in Kosovo to be allowed to humanitarian organisations. In her view, autonomy for Kosovo was no longer a solution, as the international community had allowed Yugoslavia to remove the province's autonomy in 1989 and might well stand aside again if the situation were repeated.
Mrs Jagger's visit followed Parliament's debate on the situation when, on behalf of the Council, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the Austrian Minister for European Affairs, condemned the Yugoslav response to the crisis as "excessive and unforgivable". She believed that there could be no winner in military terms and that there needed to be a political solution based on an end to the Serb offensive, a decisive improvement in the humanitarian situation and the start of reasonable negotiations.
As part of its response to the situation, she said, Yugoslav investments and bank accounts in the EU had been frozen and flights to Yugoslavia from the EU had been banned. She cautioned that military intervention was unlikely, as it would require UN agreement. Commissioner Hans Van Den Broek however, did not rule out this option, as he believed that it was the only way to bring the different political factions together. He argued that the experience of Bosnia showed that only a firm stance could produce results.
MEPs echoed these concerns and called for a robust response from the EU to the crisis. They were split over whether military intervention was an appropriate response: the socialists opposed this option. This division was highlighted when the House failed to agree on a resolution calling for EU action, being unable to agree whether to back force.