The NATO bombings in Yugoslavia taking place in the wake of a possible peace settlement provide further evidence of the dangerous and irrational motives for the NATO actions.

When peace talks collapsed yesterday, NATO was all too eager to resume bombing. Not that the bombings had ever stopped. According to the Associated Press, even when peace talks were going well, NATO missions were numbering around 500 per day.

These peace talks could be a stall tactic by Milosevic to cut back NATO bombings. But even if that’s the case, it’s difficult to see our continued airborne rape of Yugoslavia as anything but tyranny.

Air strikes have destroyed so much of the country, it’s questionable what Milosevic could have to gain by stalling. If NATO is on a peace-keeping mission, these actions are questionable.

One of the major sticking points of the peace talks involves the conditions that will exist in Kosovo after the conflict. Milosevic wants the number of Yugoslav troops in Kosovo to remain at a peace-time level, around 15,000.

NATO officials are calling for a complete pull-out and that a NATO lead peace-keeping force should remain in the area to supervise and police the relocation of refugees into the area.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who pressed Milosevic to the peace table, has pointed out that peace-keeping activities are the responsibility of the United Nations.

Ivanov makes a good point. Since when has NATO become responsible for world peace-keeping? Such action can only be carried out justly by the United Nations. NATO is a military special interest group, and there is no reason to think its actions are in the best interests of the world.

NATO should never have taken it upon itself to settle the conflict in the Balkans. By most accounts, the airborne terrorism has done little to create a solution.

By refusing to halt the bombings as even a gesture of good will, NATO is further making it clear that it is in fact the aggressor in the region.