c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ The Vatican says its diplomats are working behind the scenes in an effort to halt the NATO military campaign against the former Yugoslavia as well as Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic’s”ethnic cleansing”of Kosovo, and religious groups across Europe stepped up calls for an end to the fighting.

On Monday (March 29), Pope John Paul II, for a second straight day, addressed the crisis in the Balkans, arguing violence”is never the way of out a crisis”and Geneva-based international religious groups appealed to the United Nations to impose a moratorium on the military campaign.”The NATO-led intervention in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia manifests the failure of the international community to achieve a credible negotiated solution,”the leaders of the World Council of Churches, the Conference of European Churches, the Lutheran World Federation and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches said in a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.”Each day of bombing makes the solution more distant, and increases the risk of regionalization of the conflict,”the leaders said.”It also enhances the danger of a renewed divide within Rome.” Separately, in Istanbul, Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew II, invoking the current and imminent religious holidays of Islam (the feast at the end of the Hajj), Judaism (Passover) and Christianity (Easter, the Pascha of the Orthodox) said that he”on bended knee, fervently appeal from the tormented depths of my heart to all world government leaders … that they cease fire immediately and permanently.” And in Athens, the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church condemned the NATO strikes and said it will appeal to the United Nations, NATO and the European Union for an immediate end to the air strikes.

In a joint statement issued late Friday night, the Scottish churches were more critical than churches in England of NATO’s bombardment of Serbia.”It is with great distress that we witness the unfolding war in Kosovo,”said a joint statement issued by the Church of Scotland’s Church and Nation Committee, the Scottish Roman Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, and the ecumenical Action of Churches Together in Scotland, which links all the mainstream Scottish Protestant churches.

The statement said NATO’s campaign posed”particular moral difficulties”because of the dissociation of military action from its consequences through reliance on military technology.”The long-term consequences of this profligate use of superior force, in the absence of a clear, achievable political objective, are profoundly serious,”it said.

In his Monday plea, John Paul called for an agreement that respects both Serbs and ethnic Albanians.”I ask insistently that every force be used to institute peace in the region and that all the civil populations be able to live fraternally in their land,”John Paul said in an address to members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.”In response to violence, more violence is never a solution for a way out of a crisis.” The pope made a similar appeal following the Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at which he blessed the olive branches that Italians carry in place of palms to recall Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.”May these branches be the symbol of that peace for which the populations of the Balkan region long,”he said.”On this day, we pray fervently that the ‘Prince of Peace,’ who comes to us unarmed, inspire all those who hold a weapon. Let fraternity and comprehension prevail, also in that part of Europe, over the force of hate.” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a brief interview on Italian television Saturday that Vatican diplomats have begun working behind the scenes to try to convince all sides to halt their attacks and resume negotiations.”Naturally, I cannot explain in detail because diplomatic action is by its nature confidential,”he said,”but this activity of the Holy See is very intense. I think that it will bear some fruit and it should be able to do this quickly.” The Italian news agency AND Kronos (cq) reported Monday that Archbishop Renato Martino, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations, has delivered a message from Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, to Annan, calling for immediate intervention by the world body.”The Holy See is in close contact with the United Nations and with all the countries involved in the conflict,”the news agency quoted Sodano as saying.

He said the purpose is to find some common ground enabling NATO to stop the bombing and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to cease the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovars and resume peace talks.

In his address to Council of Europe parliamentarians, the pope said the conflict over Kosovo”wounds all of Europe.””It is advisable, therefore, to silence the arms and acts of revenge in order to engage in negotiations that force on all sides the necessity of arriving as soon as possible at an accord that respects the different peoples and the diverse cultures, who are called to build a common society that respects fundamental liberties,”he said.

In the United States, relief groups expressed concern about what they called a mounting humanitarian crisis inside Kosovo and along the borders of Macedonia and Montenegro.”People are concerned about refugees who have fled Kosovo,”said Kevin Cook, officer-in-charge of the work of the evangelical aid agency World Vision in Macedonia.”The real needs are with at least 300,000 people inside Kosovo, and there is no way for foreign aid to reach them now.” Cook, who left Kosovo on Sunday, said that under current conditions,”relief agencies can’t deliver aid. Without that assistance _ and a peaceful resolution to the crisis _ there will be tremendous loss of life.” Other relief agencies reported efforts to begin work along Kosovo’s borders as the flow of ethnic Albanian refugees reportedly forced from their homes by Serbian security forces increased to a flood.”At last reports, local aid workers were still on station Kosovo,”said Lutheran World Relief, which is working with the international coalition, Action by Churches Together,”but they had withdrawn from exposed locations just before the upsurge in fighting over the weekend.” ACT, which includes the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation, is seeking $2 million from its member churches to cope with the rising number of refugees.

President Clinton and the NATO campaign, meanwhile, won the support of one more Jewish organization _ the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations in America said it”strongly supports”NATO airstrikes to end what it called the”horrific slaughter”being carried out by Milosevic in Kosovo.”We reiterate our call upon the prosecutor of the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to warn Milosevic and his followers that they will be held responsible for genocide and any other crimes against humanity committed by their forces in Kosovo,”the group said.

But the Rev. Thom White Wolf Fassett, general secretary of the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society, sharply criticized the bombing.”Although President Clinton says peace is the final goal of these air strikes, we question a policy that brings further suffering on thousands of innocent people in Kosovo.”

DEA END POLK