From Dr John Laughland Sir: Noel Malcolm misleads your readers
yet again when he claims that he encouraged Nato to arm the KLA for reasons of military logic alone (Letters, 18/25 December). In fact, he wrote that Nato should have no qualms about arming the KLA because its `radicalism' was 'hugely overrated'. I wonder what the hundreds of ordinary Albanian civilians and the Bosnian Muslim cleric from Novi Pazar who have been murdered in Kosovo since June would think of Dr Mal- colm's mild assessment of their new leaders. I also wonder whether he still holds this view, or whether he is now prepared to admit that his error of judgment in defend- ing terrorists has had horrible consequences for Albanians as well as for Serbs.
You shall go to the Dome.' Dr Malcolm may be a whizz at parsing Albanian sentences but he seems incapable of understanding the plain English in which William Cohen said that 100,000 'may have been murdered'. It is also difficult to see how a statement that 'absolutely nothing' has been found at Trepca can be anything other than categorical. But all this is of little consequence now. Dr Malcolm is rapidly being deserted by the very people for whom he is so bravely trying to do battle. Having compared Kosovo to Cambodia during the Nato attacks, even Jamie Shea, the exuber- ant Nato spokesman, has now said (on Radio Four, 20 December) that the highest number for murdered Albanians which he is prepared to claim is about one third of that for which Dr Malcolm argued in his Specta- tor article of 4 December.
John Laughland
JLAUGHIAND@aol.com
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