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Security Council

Fifty-fourth year

The meeting was called to order at 5.50 p.m.

Adoption of the agenda

The agenda was adopted.

Letter dated 24 March 1999 from the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/1999/320)

The President (spoke in Chinese): I should like to inform the Council that I have received letters from the representatives of Belarus, Germany and India, in which they request to be invited to participate in the discussion of the item on the Council's agenda. In conformity with the usual practice, I propose, with the consent of the Council, to invite those representatives to participate in the discussion, without the right to vote, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Charter and rule 37 of the Council's provisional rules of procedure.

There being no objection, it is so decided.

At the invitation of the President, Mr. Martynov (Belarus), Mr. Kastrup (Germany) and Mr. Sharma (India) took the seats reserved for them at the side of the Council Chamber.

The President (spoke in Chinese): I have received a request dated 24 March 1999 from Mr. Vladislav Jovanović to address the Security Council. With the consent of the Council, I would propose to invite him to address the Council in the course of its discussion of the item before it.

There being no objection, it is so decided.

At the invitation of the President, Mr. Jovanović took a seat at the Council table.

The President (spoke in Chinese): The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. The Council is meeting in response to the request contained in a letter dated 24 March 1999 from the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council, document S/1999/320.

I should like to recall Security Council resolutions 1160 (1998), 1199 (1998) and 1203 (1998).

I should also like to draw the attention of the members of the Council to letters dated 24 March 1999 from the Chargé d'affaires ad interim of the Permanent Mission of Yugoslavia to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council and from the Permanent Representative of Belarus to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council, documents. S/1999/322 and S/1999/323 respectively.

Mr. Lavrov (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): The Russian Federation is profoundly outraged at the use by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of military force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In recent weeks, when we were constantly hearing threats — detrimental to the negotiating process — that there would be missile strikes against Serbian positions in Kosovo and other parts of Serbia, the Russian Goverment strongly proclaimed its categorical rejection of the use of force in contravention of decisions of the Security Council and issued repeated warnings about the long-term harmful consequences of this action not only for the prospects of a settlement of the Kosovo situation and for safeguarding security in the Balkans, but also for the stability of the entire modern multi-polar system of international relations.

Those who are involved in this unilateral use of force against the sovereign Federal Republic of Yugoslavia — carried out in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and without the authorization of the Security Council — must realize the heavy responsibility they bear for subverting the Charter and other norms of international law and for attempting to establish in the world, de facto, the primacy of force and unilateral diktat.

The members of NATO are not entitled to decide the fate of other sovereign and independent States. They must not forget that they are not only members of their alliance, but also Members the United Nations, and that it is their obligation to be guided by the United Nations Charter, in particular its Article 103, which clearly establishes the absolute priority for Members of the Organization of Charter obligations over any other international obligations.

Attempts to justify the NATO strikes with arguments about preventing a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo are completely untenable. Not only are these attempts in no way based on the Charter or other generally recognized rules of international law, but the unilateral use of force will lead precisely to a situation with truly 2