Madam, - As TV pictures of the Srebrenica women finally burying 600 victims (a tiny fraction of the overall total) of Serb murder gangs are shown, we learn, coincidentally, of the Council of Europe's decision to approve the accession of Serbia and Montenegro into the organisation.
The International Crisis Group, in its latest report, Serbia After Djindjic (March 18th, expressly warned against "Any softening of the international community's terms of conditionality on economic assistance to Serbia or its admission to international institutions."
The ICG has highlighted Belgrade's ongoing opposition to the goals of the international community in Bosnia and Kosovo with "even the more enlightened of Belgrade politicians" wanting to partition and annex portions of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. "Until Belgrade changes its policies on Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, it cannot be viewed as a guarantor of regional stability." (ICG, March 2003).
Despite the welcome action against the alleged killers of former Serbian Prime Minister and former President Stambolic, and the disbanding of the Red Beret Special Operations Unit that once surrounded Milosevic, there is ample evidence of the unwillingness of the Serb government to arrest the most notorious of the indicted war criminals, General Mladic, charged with the main responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre.
The failure of the Serb political establishment to address the enormous extent of the war crimes against its neighbouring communities strongly indicates that it does not yet deserve admission to the Council of Europe.
It is deplorable that the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe should have so ill-advisedly admitted Serbia as a member when the democratic vlaues of the council itself are still so evidently lacking in that country. Have the women of Srebrenica been forgotten? - Yours, etc.,
VALERIE HUGHES, Cabra, Dublin 7.