Letter: Kosovo confusion

Sir: Doctors and medical personnel helping refugees in Kosovo are being hunted and tortured by Serb forces ("Serb forces `torturing doctors in Kosovo'", 10 October).

Keith Ursel, a Canadian nurse, said an ethnic Albanian doctor was abducted, had his fingers hacked off and his eyes gouged out before being shot.

And it all happened in front of a nurse and other witnesses? Furthermore, the Serb forces just let 'em go home to spread the horrible truth about Serbs throughout the civilized world?

Or perhaps they weren't exactly eyewitnesses but instead heard that story from Albanian friends, not stopping to think about how plausible it was?

Some poor soul came from a big conflict and told you a story like that, unable to back it up, not even with personal testimony, not to mention hard evidence, and you can't wait to put it in your newspaper?

I assure you, here in Serbia we are normal human beings just like you and we want the same things that you want: peace, prosperity, a better future for our children. We are most certainly not the embodiment of Satan that you've been portraying for the past eight years.

Was it in our best interest to destroy the former Yugoslavia that kept all the Serbs in the same country, and leave the hundreds of thousands of Serbs in independent Croatia that only decades ago slaughtered so many Serbs? Was it in our best interest to add Nato air forces to Croats and Muslims by all our alleged atrocities in Bosnia? Is it possible that now when Nato is about to bomb us we are committing these atrocities, which is exactly what Nato needs to get a green light for attacks on our country?

DEJAN KUGA

Belgrade, Serbia