NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia last year came under renewed criticism yesterday. Amnesty International said it had violated international law and a group of British politicians also questioned its legality.
Amnesty, the London-based human rights group, said NATO's campaign had violated international law by bombing targets, such as key bridges and the Serbian state broadcaster, where it knew civilians would be killed.
"The [April 23rd, 1999] bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television, which left 16 civilians dead, was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime," Amnesty said.
NATO, however, rejected Amnesty's allegations and said it would release its own report next week on why there is no basis for further investigation.
"The allegations are without foundation and are baseless, and we reject them completely," the NATO Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, told CNN.
Amnesty International "doesn't have the capability or indeed the depth of knowledge to be an international court", he added.
The legality of NATO's 11-week bombing campaign was also questioned by British MPs, who nonetheless said the campaign was justified on moral grounds. The cross-party foreign affairs committee said there was nothing explicit in NATO's powers that allowed it to conduct a war on humanitarian grounds without the full backing of the United Nations.
"We conclude that NATO's military action, if of dubious legality in the current state of international law, was justified on moral grounds," the committee said in a report.
Mr Robin Cook, Britain's Foreign Secretary, rejected the MPs' comments on the legality of the campaign.
"If NATO had not acted, Serbian repression would have continued unhindered," Mr Cook said in a statement.
Amnesty's hopes for an investigation into NATO's actions appeared to have been dashed last week when chief UN war crimes tribunal prosecutor, Ms Carla del Ponte, told the Security Council there was no basis for opening an investigation.
Ms del Ponte said that although "some mistakes were made by NATO", she was "very satisfied that there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets".
Lord Robertson defended the bombing of the television studios on the grounds that they were "pumping out propaganda that was feeding the ethnic cleansing".
Amnesty said NATO member-states must bring to justice any of their nationals suspected of being responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law.
But Mr Graham Blewitt, UN deputy prosecutor, said Amnesty's allegations had already been taken into account by Ms del Ponte when she concluded there was no basis for an investigation. He said the prosecution would probably release its report into NATO/Kosovo next week, the first time details of such an investigation have been made public.
Yugoslavia demanded yesterday that the NATO-led peacekeeping force and UN mission pull out of Kosovo, saying they had failed to protect Serbs and other non-Albanians. The Yugoslav Prime Minister, Mr Momir Bulatovic, read the document listing demands to the UN Security Council during a session of the Yugoslav government aired on state television.