Sir, - As an Albanian from Kosovo living in Ireland, I strongly object to your Editorial of September 26th describing the Kosovo Liberation Army as engaging in "terrorist operations". That was the description that Mrs Thatcher used in relation to Mr Mandela's ANC. When the Irish War of Independence launched a military response to British misrule in Ireland, would your writer agree that the nature of its response could be fairly described as a "terrorist operation"?
Military action began in my country only after many years of savage repression of its 90 per cent Albanian majority and the total failure of the international community to respond to our claim for justice.
I am also outraged by your concluding sentence: "If the judgment of those on the ground is to be accepted, the time for military action may be approaching but has not yet arrived." Overwhelmingly, those on the ground are my own terrified and traumatised compatriots - a quarter of whom have lost their homes and great numbers of whom are in serious danger of dying of exposure and disease as winter approaches.
As in the case of Srebrenica, the Serb Special Police are now systematically separating men and boys from the rest of the population. How many of those men have to be massacred before "those on the ground" feel that military intervention by NATO is appropriate? Your writer cites the opinion of UNICEF and UNHCR as not yet favouring military action, but it is essential to stress that these bodies have not been given direct and free access to the daily horror of life in Kosovo at this time, as has been recognised by many commentators.
In any case, is it not high time to respect the primary authority of the people of Kosovo? Overwhelmingly, they have been calling for immediate military intervention of a kind sufficient to call a halt to the systematic destruction of my country and its people. It was only after such intervention in 1995 that Milosevic called for a ceasefire in Bosnia.
For four years in Bosnia so-called international experts told the Bosnian people what was best for them. This "best" resulted in the deaths of a quarter-of-a-million people and vastly more injured and made homeless.
Token military strikes cannot be an end in themselves. If the West wishes to avoid a situation of permanent instability in Europe, it must take immediate and effective action to compel Milosevic to restore the Kosovar people to their burnt-out homes and if, after the Bosnian and Kosovar experience, this is not done, it would seem obvious that the West is proclaiming that genocide and ethnic cleansing are permissible forms of international behaviour in Europe today. - Yours, etc., Ismet Bajgora,
Lucan, Co Dublin.