Sir - It would seem that Mary Robinson's direct contact with the victims of Serb ethnic cleansing has inspired the UN Commissioner for Human Rights to clarify her earlier implicit equivalence between the violence of all the parties to the conflict in former Yugoslavia. It is difficult to envisage what criteria of "international humanitarian law" she was using during her closing speech at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva when she appeared to equate the actions of the Serb forces cleansing Kosovo, the Kosovar guerillas attempting to defend the remaining Kosovar population, and the NATO forces acting to impede the cleansing.
Likewise, I would query her bizarre description of the origins of the present conflict: "The internal conflict in Kosovo had resulted in the disproportionate use of force on the part of the Yugoslav authorities which caused widespread loss of life and displacement of the population." Does she not recognise that the true origins of the conflict lie in the vicious repression of the Kosovar Albanians over many years by the Serb government - a reality which is in no way described by the phrase, "internal conflict"? It is now widely known that the Milosevic government had long-term plans to ethnically cleanse the Albanian population from Kosovo.
If war-making is to end, those entirely responsible for the origin of the present war - Milosevic and his paramilitaries - must be defeated. Another false "settlement" of the kind envisaged by the Rambouillet Agreement would, in the present circumstances of Milosevic's underlying intentions, only lead to further conflict sooner rather than later.
As a victim of Milkosevic's ethnic cleansing, with my family now scattered throughout Europe, I would appeal to high-minded liberal commentators to focus their concerns less on principles of international jurisdiction and more on the limitless levels of human tragedy endured by my people. - Yours, etc., Hamide Latifi,
Harringay, London N4.