Letter: Milosevic's role

Stuart Russell
Sunday 02 May 1999 23:02 BST
Comments

Sir: Ian Flintoff maintains (letter, 29 April) that we shan't know until later whether the atrocities in Kosovo are the official policies of Milosevic and ordered by him or whether they are barbaric savageries by rogue troops and their leaders.

There are rogue elements in any army and any society. But such acts are thankfully rare and, unless given official approval, remain rare.

We have yet to hear any mention of Milosevic condemning, or even distancing himself from the atrocities in Kosovo and therefore it seems a reasonable assumption that they are being committed with his connivance if not actually at his command.

The main point of my earlier letter, which Mr Flintoff alludes to, is not that there weren't differences between the Holocaust and the Kosovan situation, but that the similarities are more important. Whether mass terror is created as an object of government policy or simply as a result of government policy, the civilised nations of the world have a duty to stop it.

Thankfully there does at least appear to be a genuine ethical element in the foreign policy of the Western democracies.

STUART RUSSELL

Poulton,

Gloucestershire

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in