There are many questions which have not yet been answered about the motivations and objectives of the NATO attack on Yugoslavia.

An explanation is required from the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, and his French counterpart, Hubert Vedrine, as to why the Rambouillet draft peace agreement provided for the deployment of NATO, and not of UN, troops in Kosovo to supervise its implementation. It was this troop deployment section of the agreement that was rejected by Serbia, which has accepted the political plan for Kosovan autonomy.

The exclusion of the United Nations from the Kosovo situation could be motivated by a desire to exclude Russia, a UN Security Council member, from having any say in what happened. If that was the motive, it was not wise. Russia may be crippled economically, but it is still a vitally-important European nation which possesses 40,000 nuclear warheads, huge reserves of oil and coal, and a highly-educated elite. It is not in the interests of western Europe to isolate Russia politically, strategically, economically or militarily.

The UN Charter bans the use of force unless it is explicitly authorised by the Security Council, or is in self-defence. The NATO attack was not authorised by the Security Council, and it was not in self-defence of any NATO member.

NATO has justified its departure from the UN Charter on humanitarian grounds. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights guarantees the rights of individuals against oppressive states. NATO could indeed claim, with justice, that Yugoslavia was breaking the declaration in its treatment of the Kosovans. But war launched by a third party is not included among the remedies authorised under the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

NATO might respond that the safety of people is the first law, and that the fact that it may be breaching international law is of secondary importance to the humanitarian emergency. That argument would have pragmatic validity if, in practice, the NATO action had alleviated suffering. In fact, the NATO action made it worse. As predicted, it accelerated both the ethnic cleansing and the flow of refugees.

The question must also be put: given that there are so many emergencies in the world, resulting from wars, why have the Western allies chosen to go to war over this particular one? Colombia, Turkey, Laos, Sudan, Rwanda are all examples of disastrous humanitarian situations resulting from civil wars, but on which no similar action was taken. Why is the West treating the Yugoslav situation differently?

Moreover, it is a truism of military theory that war aims should be clear, limited, unchanging and achievable. The NATO war aims are now far from clear, and seem to change every time a leading NATO statesman is interviewed.

Initially, it seemed NATO was going to war just to force Serbia to accept the one aspect of the Rambouillet peace accord it had so far rejected, namely NATO forces on the ground in the province of Kosovo.

Now it seems the removal of [Serbian President] Slobodan Milosevic from power is becoming a NATO war aim, and there seems to be increasing Western backing for the KLA objective of total independence for Kosovo, as against autonomy as agreed by both Serbs and Kosovans at Rambouillet. Redrawing international boundaries in the Balkans is a dangerous undertaking.

There are, thus, three special aspects of the NATO action which deserve deeper reflection:

The exclusion of the UN (and of Russia) from the decision.

The selection of this one particular humanitarian disaster, and not others, as a cause for war.

The changing and imprecise nature of NATO's war aims.

An article in Le Monde by Predas Avramovic, on April 8th, has suggested there may be unstated reasons of Realpolitik to explain these special aspects of the NATO action.

The author argues that the United States was concerned that too close a relationship might develop between Russia and Yugoslavia, and that Russia, at some future point, might obtain use of a Yugoslav naval base on the Adriatic. On the positive side, he contended that the NATO action in support of Albanian Muslims was designed to secure continued support for the West from the oil-rich Muslim countries of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, by implicating the EU in the NATO operation against Yugoslavia he argued that the US saw too close a relationship developing between the EU and Russia. The underlying strategic objective was thus one of keeping Russia encircled.

Like Serbia, Russia has a highly developed sensitivity to encirclement and a taste for conspiracy theories. This theory would have appealed to many Russian nationalists.

Indeed, they hark back to the sort of Western thinking that led to the Crimean and other wars in the mid-19th century, and which underpinned the Cold War in the second half of the 20th century. This would be a dangerous development.

I believe it is now a matter of urgency that Russia be actively involved in finding a solution to the war in Yugoslavia. The isolation of Russia, and the creation of a gulf between the states of the Orthodox and the Western Christian traditions in Europe, is not in the best security interests of the European Union or of the Republic. The enforced redrawing of international boundaries in the Balkans would create a precedent that would cause big problems for states such as Greece, Romania and Macedonia.

The European Union must do its own strategic thinking as a matter of urgency. The decision cannot be left to Washington alone.

John Bruton TD is leader of Fine Gael