 |
US Joins Nations Seeking End to Belgrade Arms Ban
The United States joined France, Russia and China on Tuesday in calling for an end to a United Nations arms embargo against Yugoslavia, the last of the UN sanctions against Belgrade still in place.
"I would like to note my government's full support for the lifting of the arms embargo at this time," US representative Cameron Hume told the UN Security Council during a public debate on Kosovo.
France's Foreign Ministry last week announced it would push for the council to lift the arms ban. Russia has been advocating the move since last November and China's UN envoy, Shen Guofang, said he believed conditions had been met to lift the embargo.
Yugoslavia's UN ambassador, Dejan Sahovic, expressed his gratitude to those council members ready to rescind the weapons ban. "It is a very important step in normalizing our relations with the international community," he told the council.
The United States and European Union nations have moved to normalize relations by lifting other sanctions imposed outside of the United Nations system.
The prohibition against weapons sales to the Belgrade government, imposed in 1998, is the last of the UN sanctions against Yugoslavia after the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
An arms embargo had been in place throughout most of the 1990s against Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia. But it was gradually lifted with provisos in the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war.
The Security Council then reimposed the weapons ban against Belgrade in 1998. A year later US-led NATO forces bombed Yugoslavia.
British officials said London had not "made a determination yet" on whether to support the other four permanent Security Council members, who have veto power. But the diplomat said a decision was expected shortly.
Russia's UN ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, told the council on Tuesday: "We have repeatedly stated that we are in favor of lifting the arms embargo" against Yugoslavia. He noted the "appeal made by Ambassador Hume to resolve this question as soon as possible."
In This Section
|