Sir, - Resumption of sporting ties between Ireland and Yugoslavia should not obscure the many issues outstanding which guarantee Serbia's continued status as a pariah state, whatever about Montenegro's justified claims to reintegration into the international community.
Chief among these issues are the demonstrably criminal nature of the Serbian regime, together with the continued incarceration of over 2,000 Kosovar Albanians within Serbia in the aftermath of the war. The International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague has ensured that the first issue continues to inform the political agendas of the democracies, and it is to be hoped that this will continue to be the case.
Unfortunately, the second issue has received very scant attention in the newsmedia. To date the International Red Cross has documented 2,200 such cases of imprisonment; Kosovar sources put the figure at at least 2,800. In addition, an estimated 4,000 are still unaccounted for. Among those documented to be in detention is Flora Brovina, a physician and poet, whose case has recently been taken up by the US chapter of PEN. She is imprisoned in the town of Pozarevac, is in ill-health and reportedly paralysed as a result of her ill-treatment.
Regarding the 4,000 missing it is widely believed in Kosova that many of these are still alive and in Serbian prisons. It is undoubtedly also true that many are among those "disappeared" into the notorious disposal centre at the Trepca Mines complex. Curiously, Kfor has to date failed to secure this in order to allow access for war crimes investigators, and the complex continues under joint Serbian and Greek ownership and management. It is increasingly feared among the Kosovar community that the reason for the failure of Kfor to fulfil its mandate in this case is that the mine - hugely important to the Serbian economy and always the primary interest in the province for Belgrade - will, together with nearby Mitrovica, form the nucleus of a Serbian enclave as moves towards the cantonisation of Kosovo gather pace. Depriving an autonomous or independent Kosovo of its outstanding primary resource in this manner would be a recipe for disaster. - Yours, etc.,
Peter Walsh, Irish Kosova Solidarity, Upper Camden Street, Dublin 2.