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	CRISIS IN KOSOVO Specialists question legal authority for attack	www.IRAQWAR.org

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By Colum Lynch, Globe Correspondent, 03/29/99

UNITED NATIONS - Some scholars and diplomats question the legality of NATO's war against the former Yugoslavia, but many said that they were willing to dispense with the legal niceties to halt another Balkan bloodbath.

''I would concede that this is legally innovative,'' said Ruth Wedgwood, an international legal scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. ''But hard facts make new law.''

In launching the broadest offensive operation in NATO's history, the United States and its allies pointedly bypassed the Security Council, where Russia and China could use their veto power to stop the attacks against Belgrade.

But critics said the American-led air campaign has sharply undermined the UN role as the world's primary legal authority behind the use of military action.

The move is just the latest time the United States has ignored the 15-member Security Council, where it faces increasing opposition to its policies on such nations as Iraq and Libya. It also underscores the growing tendency of military intervention in civil wars to prevent humanitarian disasters.

''There is no legal justification'' for NATO's air campaign, said Ivo Daalder, a former Balkans expert with the US National Security Council. ''But that doesn't make it illegitimate.''

While the United States has sought explicit authorization for US-led coalitions from the Korean War to the Persian Gulf War, Washington has declined even to consult the council before bombing suspected terrorist targets in the Sudan and Afghanistan.

The United States has caused considerable anxiety among international legal scholars and UN officials who argue that the use of force by states is governed by the UN Security Council under the terms of the UN Charter.

''Can we really afford to let each state or group of states be the judge of its own right, or duty, to intervene in another's internal conflict?'' asked Louise Frechette, deputy secretary general of the United Nations.

Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a legal scholar at the Brookings Institution, said the administration's rationale for military action is a ''stretch of the law.''

''It's somewhat dicey legal territory if you are a legal purist,'' said Sonnenfeldt, who advised the administration on its legal strategy. But he added that paralysis in the Security Council and the changing nature of threats to international security have required more creative legal approaches.

''Threats nowadays can be more amorphous than armed forces marching across your border,'' he said.

US officials insist the council has implicitly authorized its action. US National Security Adviser Samuel R. ''Sandy'' Berger cited two Security Council resolutions - 1190 and 1203 - as the legal basis for the air campaign. The resolutions invoke Chapter VII of the UN Charter, typically invoked to approve armed action.

But the resolutions do not explicitly authorize force. ''When we faced potential humanitarian disaster last October the United Nations passed these resolutions clearly indicating that if force were necessary to prevent this that it would be justified,'' said National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer.

Russia's UN ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, said NATO action, conducted without UN approval, is illegal. He added that it is the latest manifestation of ''unilateral virus,'' the propensity of Washington to bomb its enemies at will.

Dutch Ambassador Peter Van Walsun has accused Russia of repeatedly undermining the council's effort to persuade Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his military offensive against ethnic Albanian separatists in the breakaway province of Kosovo.