Ad nauseum Sir: Simon Jenkins refers to me as part
of an 'intervention lobby' over Bosnia (Centre point, 14 May), and implies that I wrote my history of Bosnia in order to persuade the West to intervene there. No such sugges- tion is made in my book, which I wrote mainly to dispel the myths and fallacies which one finds repeated ad nauseam by writers such as Mr Jenkins.
I have argued consistently against send- ing British soldiers into Bosnia. I believe that the Bosnian government would have been quite capable of defending its own people had we not prevented it from obtaining weapons. The arms embargo, actively enforced by western naval units and thoroughly one-sided in its effects, is by far the most important form of western interven- tion in the Bosnian war. I am against it. Mr Jenkins, so far as one can tell, is in favour of it. But although he has written many articles decrying the idea of intervention in Bosnia (or rather, the same article many times), he has never bothered to examine this glaring inconsistency in his argument.
Noel Malcolm
The Daisy Telegraph,
Canary Wharf, London E14
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