Sir: Noel Malcolm's exposé of the officially sponsored pro-Serb information
campaign in this country omitted one interesting sideshow in this propaganda war. The Serbs have been very generous in paying for British MPs to visit them and our represen- tatives have been only too happy to accept their hospitality.
The last declaration of members' inter- ests available to the general public makes clear the scale of this new type of fellow- travelling. In 1992-93, apart from two of Paddy Ashdown's forays, all declared visits to ex-Yugoslavia were made at the expense of the Serbs.
Ashdown's fellow Liberal Democrat, Don Foster (Bath), managed to de-recog- nise Bosnia by travelling at the expense of the so-called 'Bosnian Serb republic', which suggests that Mr Foster has more in com- mon with another Liberal Democrat fellow- traveller of Pale, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, than his own leader!
The Labour defence front-bencher, Dr John Reid, also claims to have visited Bosnia at the expense of federal Yugoslavia, but it is a Tory who takes the biscuit for do-it-your- self de-recognition of Bosnia: David Faber (Conservative, Westbury) claimed to visit Sarajevo itself as well as Belgrade at the end of August 1993, 'as a guest of the Yugoslav government'! Dancing on Bosnia's grave has been a bipartisan vice.
The press kicked up a fuss about 'cash for questions', but have some MPs been receiv- ing 'blood money for travel expenses'?
Mark Almond
Oriel College, Oxford
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