Sir, - Peter Walsh (October 12th) lauds Milosevic's downfall, but then he slants the facts and arguments to suit the usual KLA propaganda.
Thus, according to him, the striking Albanian miners in Trepca mine, in 1989 were "seeking only the restoration of autonomy". Conveniently, he forgets that, even in 1981, immediately after Tito's death and at the time when Albanians ruled the roost in Kosovo and Metohija, rioters in Pristina were demanding a "Kosovo Republic", a shortcut to an independent Kosovo.
Milosevic's rise to power did begin in Kosovo, not as the result of "Serbian nationalist instincts", but because the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija saw in him a saviour from decades of Albanian repression: the threats, intimidation, arson, rapes and murders. That in the end, he was to betray them, as he betrayed the Serbs in Krajina and Bosnia-Herzegovina, was something they had not bargained for.
As for an independent Kosovo, this is, and will remain, a pipedream for the KLA and their supporters. Apart from the other Balkan countries, the Western powers would not countenance the creation of "Greater Albania", which would be the result. In any case, Peter Walsh's reference to "80 years of Serbian occupation" is nonsense. Even he should know that to accuse someone of "occupying" their own territory is a contradiction in terms. - Yours, etc.,
Zivko Jaksic, Serbian Information Bureau, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.