Nato's Balkan duties
From Mr G.N.W. Locke Sir: In his article ('What's wrong with mission creep?', 8 September) Bruce Anderson declares that all the surrounding states, including Serbia, 'dispute Macedonia's right to exist'. Since the Macedonian republic seceded perfectly peacefully from the original Yugoslav federation a bare ten years ago (when the warmonger' Milosevic was president) and has enjoyed normal relations with Serbia ever since, one wonders where Mr Anderson gets his ideas from.
He goes on to dismiss the democratically elected principal ministers of the Macedonian government collectively as 'plonkers', and, respectively, as 'of limited ability', 'a depressive', and (by implication) 'a criminal', and the legitimate soldiers of that sovereign state as 'scruffy, sullen conscripts', while eulogising the self-styled 'political commander' of an insurgent force with a spurious title (Albania is an independent state; it has no need of 'liberation).
Mr Anderson declares that 'the Albanians [in Macedonia] are quite prepared to return to war: it would take them about a fortnight to bring in heavy weaponry from Kosovo', but he apparently fails to see the implications of this. Having in 1999 ousted the legitimate Yugoslav authority, Nato made itself the de facto government of the Kosovo province, and, as such, is now legally and politically responsible for all its internal and external affairs, without exception.
It would be a criminal dereliction of those responsibilities — and potential grist for The Hague mill — to allow armed insurgency in Macedonia to be conducted or supported from Kosovo. To prevent it will undoubtedly require military action (in plain language, killing people, specifically Albanians), but such are the inevitable and entirely predictable consequences of Nato's recent activities, and it must live with them.
G. Locke
Poole, Dorset
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