Letter: Who's to blame?

James Oates
Wednesday 31 March 1999 23:02 BST
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Sir: After the Second World War, memorials were erected to the dead in each of the many concentration camps of Poland and Germany. On all of them it says in the seven major languages of the United Nations: "Never again".

Sixty years later, in the heart of Europe, mass murder, genocide and even concentration camps have been built by the Serbian regime. Fascists control the government in Belgrade.

Serbia is no longer, as Chamberlain once said of the Czechs, a far-away country, of which we know nothing. It is two hours' flying time from London. The whole basis of the European Union is to "rid Europe of the scourge of war". If we fail the Kosovars, then the EU and Nato are worth nothing.

Genocide can never be an "internal affair". We have always recognised our moral responsibility to oppose fascism from wherever it comes. Intervention is morally and legally right. The dictatorship in Belgrade should be made to answer for its crimes. Invasion and a protectorate are now the only way to restore peace in the Balkan peninsula.

JAMES OATES

London W2

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