Sir, - Is it any wonder that the world looks upon the suffering of the people of Kosovo with hearts of stone? Your Editorial "Kosovo Choices" (September 26th) is a textbook model of the "on the one hand/ on the other hand" school of journalism which ends up recommending a safe seat on the fence. It is an extraordinary piece, whose effect, if not purpose, is to defuse any resolve to put a halt to Slobodan Milosevic's brutal plan.
It is ludicrous to suggest that reports are only now "emerging" from Kosovo of systematic ethnic cleansing on a massive scale by Serb forces. This has been known about since the Serb crackdown on Drenica last March. Since then Milosevic's scorched-earth policy has left over 300,000 people homeless and forced some 50,000 into hiding in forests. More terrifying still are reports, relayed amongst others by John Shattuck, US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, of "hundreds of Albanian men being rounded up at gunpoint by Serb forces and taken away" (The Guardian, September 7th). Your own reporter Mark Brennock cited similar reports on September 10th. It is not "the previous Balkan wars" that are brought to mind here, but Srebrenica just three years ago.
The suggestion that "terrorist operations launched by the KLA. . .undoubtedly warranted a response from Yugoslavia" is also misleading. What of the nine years of passive resistance to Serbia by the 90 per cent ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo whose autonomy had been unilaterally removed in 1989? What of the predictions, repeated Cassandralike by Kosovars during the destruction of Bosnia-Herzegovina, that Kosovo was next on Milosevic's list? What support did Ibrahim Rugova's Gandhian tactics receive from the West?
Finally, the notion that international agencies are free to come and go in Kosovo and tell the rest of us whether or not the time for military action has come is mistaken. One of Milosevic's strengths in this conflict has been his ability to seal off whole areas of Kosovo from international monitoring and, significantly, from television cameras and media coverage in general. - Yours, etc., Geraldine Mitchell,
Rathgar,
Dublin 6.