LETTER:Bosnia: when to withdraw

From Mr M. G. Payne

Sir: Robin Cook is right to insist that we must have a clear long-term plan for Bosnia, but his suggestion that Serbs be forced into a pluralist Bosnian statelet lacks the logic of either possibility or justice. If the Slovenes, Croats and Muslims can be allowed to destroy the once viable pluralist state of Yugoslavia, why should the Serbs be denied the right to unity in a Greater Serbia? This denial of justice to the Serbs does not excuse their barbaric atrocities, but does explain them.

Denying the Serbs their rights is not worth the bones of a single British soldier. Attempting to do so will simply prolong the mutually inflicted misery of the Bosnian civil war, and risk the disaster of a conflict between America and Russia by proxy.

Yours faithfully,

M. G. PAYNE

Sheffield

30 May

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