Sir, - Vincent Browne asserts in his criticism of the NATO intervention in Kosovo (Opinion, December 20th) that "it is now known that fewer than 1,000 Kosovars were killed by the Serbs." By coincidence, on the same day the chief prosecutor at the Hague Tribunal released a press statement in the course of which she notes: "In Kosovo you will not see further exhumations next year on the scale of the last two years. . .over the two years of our exhumation program we have found the remains of some 4,000 victims."
In other words, while the exhumations are nearing completion, This number is still not a final tally of those solely recovered from mass graves.
To avoid any possibility of misunderstanding the circumstances of these deaths it must be emphasised that - particularly in an area with such close-knit family ties as former Yugoslavia - mass burials are carried out with one purpose in mind: that of concealment. These burials - precisely mirroring the Bosnian experience where exhumations continue to this day - were carried out by the perpetrators of the murders: Serb military and paramilitary units.
While no accurate estimate of total casualties exists yet, Bernard Kouchner, the administrator of Kosovo, stated two weeks ago that "6,000 are missing who I think unfortunately are not alive". Earlier in the month Human Rights Watch stated that "more than 3,000 remain unaccounted for, most of them ethnic Albanians". The number of total casualties is generally agreed to be considerably in excess of the numbers quoted, which relate only to mass interments and those still missing.
On the broader front, the question of the degree to which national sovereignty is to be considered as absolutely superseding the rights of persecuted minorities to protection from genocidal policies raises more questions than can be addressed in a single letter. Suffice to say that obedience to the law regardless of questions of morality is an area that has been tried at every level of society at various times in history, and always with disastrous results. - Yours, etc.,
Peter Walsh, Kosovo Ireland Solidarity, Upper Camden Street, Dublin 2.