The Jewish Peace Fellowship, committed to non-violent resolution of conflict, condemns Serbia's ethnic cleansing and violence against the Kosovar people NATO's bombing raids and all talk urging a ground wa. We believe that past mutual outrages and injustices in the Balkans have too often led to repeated displays of rage and revenge. Negotiated agreements grounded on the basis of international law are the only way to bring an end to today's widespread suffering and devastation.

While the NATO intervention was rooted in the Biblical injunction "Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor..." (Leviticus 19:16) the bombing is turnin that commandment on its head when our response causeseven more bloodshed. The problem is a lack of creative vision for nonviolent alternatives. The source for those visions must come from the peace and democratic forces within the region whose voices have been muted by the extremists.

We are disturbed that the United States did not take the issue to the international community, instead of acting through NATO, initiating an aerial war against the Balkan peoples. As our teacher, te late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said in calling on ews to seek a bombing halt during the Vietnam War: "we must not remain silent while children cannot sleep at night because of the bombing." Biblical laws of war in Deuteronomy forbid "destroying the trees of a city" and causing suffering to non-combatants. A bombing campaign against a country, its infrastructure and its economy, is a violation of Jewish law, as we in the Jewish Peace Fellowship interpret it.

The moral callenge is not whether to intervene, but how. Because ou tradition teaches us "How great is peace! Even in time of war peace must be sought," (Sifrei, a Midrashic work on Deuteronomy 20:10), the Jewish Peace Fellowship urges that:

1. NATO halt its bombing campaign and commence immediately with negotiations involving the international community--the United Nations and the European Union--with NATO, Russia, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania and other Balkan states, to begin with an aim of grantig self governance for Kosovo. In return, Kosovo would be emilitarized. Trained international peacekeepers, from the UN, the European Union plus a cadre of NATO and neutral nation armed forces would monitor the agreement and assure that all

Kosovars are allowed to return home safely. Serbia, in turn, would then be given an opportunity and help to build a civil society committed to multiculturalism and pluralism.

2. Immediate and substantial aid should be sent to all Balkan refugeeswherever they may be. The West should begin a new MarshallPlan to help rebuild all of former Yugoslavia and Kosovo, focused on renewing the infrastructure of these societies. International Peace Corps volunteers could play an important role in this rebuilding.

3. Kosovar refugees should, if they wish, be granted havens elsewhere until able to return home. The wealthy NATO nations should be encouraged to accept at least 100,000 refugees each.

4. All war criminals regardless of natinality should be indicted and tried

by an intenational war crimes court and punished if found guilty. In addition, to heal the wounds and build a stable peace, the international community should convene a national "truth and reconciliation" commission for each region, on the models already successful in South Africa and Guatemala. Non-governmental organizations skilled in postwar reconciliation could be supportive. Some are already proving themselves in other parts of former Yugoslava, emphasizing interregional healing and working with young eople to build their common future.

5. The western nations should offer massive support for the nonviolent, democratic forces in the entire Balkan region. We call on them to convene two highly visible peace conferences--one in the U.S. and another in Europe-- where Balkan peace views can be heard. The world must hear again the views of the 1.5 million Serbs, who demonstrated against Milosevic in the winter of 1996 and 1997, to learn aout their vision of a future that works for the good of all. e should legitimize Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the ten-year Albanian passive resistance movement, as a genuine voice. We must not allow the authoritarian leaders and zealots to control the solutions reached at the negotiating table.

JPF believes the people of the Balkan region need a safe space to reconsider how self-determination for each ethnic group may be achieved in a political framework that best safeguards each groups' rights, s part of the construction of a democratic Europe. War became n instrument for displacing people in order to change the ethnic composition of territories. The bloody dismemberment of formerly multicultural Bosnia was set into stone in the Dayton accords. We reject the zealots who claim these aspirations can only be achieved in a state based on exclusive ethno-national principles. We also need to hear the views and experience, in the peace conference, of Aleksandar Singer, President of the Jewish Federationin Belgrade, an Auschwitz survivor (who spent three years in a abor camp under communism) regarding restructuring of the region along ethnic lines. As fellow Jews, whose citizenship in western countries must be protected by constitutional safeguards, we need to hear from his community as well.

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The Jewish Peace Fellowship (JPF), founded in 1941, is an interdenominational, international Jewish organization, which supports conscientious objectors and maintains that nonviolence and conscientious objection stem directly from the mandates and teachings of Judaism. JPF unites those who believe that Jewish ideals and experience provide inspiration for a nonviolent commitment to life and the remaking of society. We recognize that while Jdaism is not monolithic in its approach to carrying out the obliga