The UN Charter is the foundational legal document of the United Nations (UN) and is the cornerstone of the public international law governing the use of force between States.
[7] UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan supported intervention in principle, saying "there are times when the use of force may be legitimate in the pursuit of peace", but was critical of unilateral action by NATO.
"[8][9][10] On the day the bombing started, Russia called for the UN Security Council to meet to consider "an extremely dangerous situation caused by the unilateral military action of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia".
However, a draft resolution, tabled jointly by Russia, Belarus and India, to demand "an immediate cessation of the use of force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" was defeated.
After the war ended with the Kumanovo Treaty and the bombing stopped, some argued that the creation on 10 June 1999 of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), by Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999), constituted a legal ratification post festum (after the event).
This friendship between Libya and Yugoslavia dates back to before the fall of the latter, as Gaddafi maintained a close relationship with Josip Broz Tito.
[17][18] Part of NATO's justification for the bombing was to end the humanitarian crisis involving the large outflow of Kosovar Albanian refugees caused by Yugoslav forces.
[22][23][24] Some journalists have argued that the humanitarian situation worsened after the bombing campaign was launched, thereby questioning the stated objective as laid out by NATO.
[25] Alexander Cockburn of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "an alternative assessment was that NATO’s bombing was largely to blame for the expulsions and killings" of Kosovars as prior to it the Yugoslav Army was "behaving with the brutality typical of security forces".
[26] On the 10th anniversary of the bombing campaign, Ian Bancroft wrote in The Guardian: "Though justified by apparently humanitarian considerations, NATO's bombing of Serbia succeeded only in escalating the Kosovo crisis into a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe"; citing a post-war report released by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe he concluded that it is "widely acknowledged that the bulk of the ethnic cleansing and war crimes occurred after the start of [NATO]'s campaign".