Sir, - Concerning my letter of November 18th about Serbian violence, I would like to correct the figure I ascribed to the War Crimes Tribunal prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte. In fact, the prosecutor stated that 2,108 bodies had been exhumed. The figure of 4,266 bodies which I quoted was "reported to be buried" in the grave sites which have been examined. (As Mme Del Ponte explained, only a third of the 529 grave sites designated by the tribunal have been examined so far. The rest will not be dug up until next spring, as exhumations cannot be done when the ground is frozen.)
With reference to my previous statement that approximately 10,000 bodies had already been discovered, I now understand that this total has not been finally established, though there is compelling evidence to substantiate it according to KMDLNJ, the Committee for the Protection of Human rights, based in Prishtina.
Mme Del Ponte has said that a full "census of the dead" might never be established as "we have discovered evidence of tampering with graves. Many bodies have been burned to hide evidence of the war crimes involved." (UN Security Council meeting, New York, November 10th).
I regret the mistakes in my first letter which were caused by my difficulty in translating correctly into English information which was first received in my own language. However, as John Sweeney of the Observer (November 7th) said of the killings of 106 men and boys in the village of Krusha e Madhe, though the bodies have not been found: "one day down a mineshaft, on a river bed, wherever we will find them. And we'll count them, every last one." - Yours, etc.,
Merita Ferizi, Rathcoran House, Baltinglass Co Wicklow.