PRESS OFFICE DIRECTOR SPELLS OUT HOLY SEE POSITION ON KOSOVO

VATICAN CITY, MAY 8, 1999 (VIS) - In an article which appeared on the editorial pages of today's New York Times, Holy See Press Office Director Joaquin Navarro-Valls outlined the position of the Holy See and explained the Vatican's numerous initiatives vis-a-vis the war in Kosovo.

He said that Pope Pius XII's "words - 'Nothing is lost with peace, all can be lost with war" - represent the position of the Holy See and explain the Vatican's numerous initiatives (regarding the war in Kosovo), to which the American news media has given very little coverage. Such initiatives have the aim of stopping the suffering, massacre and destruction, and of encouraging the start of new negotiations to guarantee a just solution."

"The position of the Vatican comes from the conviction that sooner or later the Serbs, the Kosovars and the countries of NATO would meet around the negotiating table.

"Why not gather sooner, before destruction and death inevitably increase the hatreds and destroy reciprocal faith?"

Navarro-Valls then listed some of the Holy See's numerous initiatives for "eventual solutions which may contribute to bring peace to Yugoslavia": March 30, meeting in the Vatican with ambassadors accredited to the Holy See from NATO countries; April 1, Vatican Secretary for Relations with States is sent to Belgrade with papal messages for Slobodan Milosevic and Patriarch Pavle, and Holy See asks for cease-fire during Catholic and Orthodox Easter feasts; April 4, Pope asks for "humanitarian corridor" for refugees, for suspension of ethnic cleansing and for end to NATO bombings; April 18, papal message to Orthodox patriarch of Moscow; April 27, papal message to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

In conclusion, the press office director wrote: "The Holy See from the very first day of bombings, as it always has done on similar occasions, has prompted Catholic charitable organizations to aid all refugees, whatever their ethnic group.

"A day does not pass in which the Pope does not express publicly his wish for a lasting peace which respects the rights of all peoples."

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