Letter: Serb `genocide'

Sir: Brian Pocock (letter, 5 April) believes that there is no parallel to be drawn between the Second World War and the Holocaust on the one hand, and current events in Kosovo on the other.

His argument is that the current conflict has been confined to the former Yugoslavia, without the invasion of neighbouring states.

But this ignores the fact that what distinguished Nazi Germany and made its policy truly evil was its policy of genocide, or ethnic cleansing.

There is the similarity to what is happening in Kosovo, and it is that to which the international community has to put a stop.

It may be argued that what the Serbs are doing now is worse than anything the Nazis got up to before the Final Solution in 1942.

Further, I do not understand what possible use there is,at this stage, in lamenting the failures of Western foreign policy.

For all the faults that Clinton (and Blair) and company have committed thus far, there is one overwhelming fact that has to be faced: the Albanian Kosovars are being murdered en masse, and the only way to put an end to that is to intervene in such a way, ground troops and all, as to defeat the perpetrators and, indeed, to destroy the Milosevic regime.

JEFFRY KAPLOW

London SE3