From The Editor

In March, Science for Peace convened a scholarly international conference for three days at the University of Toronto entitled "The Lessons of Yugoslavia," with financial support from the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development and the Association of Universities and Colleges. Participants included academics, peace and human rights activists, peacekeepers, government officials, and journalists. The papers commissioned for this conference will be published this winter by JAIPress.

What was most encouraging about the conference was perhaps the fact that it was generally possible for the participants to discuss their differences in a constructive way. It is not certain that this war is finally over, but in some places there is at least a search for solutions going on in a spirit of civility. Some of our readers will already have seen accounts of the conference which were published by NOW Magazine in Toronto. In this issue we will present an even more extensive report. See the review articles by Timothy Donais and Ken Simons. Also in this section is an interview of Mitja Zagar, a Slovenian specialist in constitutional and international law who explains the break up of Yugoslavia.

Although Peace Magazine has been publishing since 1985, we did not print any articles on Cuba until January of this year, and then we published two pieces in succession by Holly Ackerman, a professor at Tulane University. Those two articles were the most controversial of any we have ever published in the magazine. Moreover, some readers disliked the January editorial's suggestion that Canada should apply universalistic standards when judging how to treat other societies, according to the degree of their commitment to human rights. We promised the critics that we would publish all of their comments on the Ackerman article and the editorial. And there are plenty! Almost half the content of this issue is taken up by the debate about Cuba. We hope that after conducting this important discussion everyone will want to give the topic a rest for a while and go on to other matters.

Although our space has been taken up almost entirely by Cuba and Yugoslavia this time, we do have substantial newsworthy coverage and also an article about the influence of Canadian businesses in the Chilean economy.

Finally, we want to encourage every reader to check out our new web site on the internet: <www.peacemagazine.org>