Letter: Serbia's lost war

Sir: "Not even Christmas can halt the bloodshed" in Kosovo, writes Rupert Cornwell (Comment, 28 December). Cornwell should be informed that for the Serbs, Christmas will fall - as always for the Orthodox - at the end of the first week of January.

He adds that "monoethnic states ... are the only bricks with which to build the new Balkans". Someone please show Cornwell an ethnic map of the Balkans. In former Yugoslavia, only Slovenia was (more or less) ethnically homogeneous; every other area was and (even after ethnic cleansing) still is a hodge- podge. Easier to set up monoethnic boroughs in London than monoethnic states in the Balkans (or anywhere in Europe outside Iceland).

Professor TOM PRIESTLY

University of Alberta

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada