Right of Reply: The Yugoslav Ambassador answers charges that Serbia has been guilty of aggression

IN KOSOVO, the West has made a wrong diagnosis and continued to use the wrong medicine. The Yugoslav and Serbian Governments have no desire to create or incite the crisis in Kosovo and want peace. However, they cannot let this territory be torn by armed bandits and terrorists and let them kill, without punishment, the police and army units, Serbian civilians and the ethnic Albanians who do not want to join them.

Have the governments of other countries acted differently in similar situations? Were troops not sent to Northern Ireland, where a significantly greater number of people lost their lives than in Kosovo? It is only in the interest of the leaders of ethnic Albanians to have Kosovo become a hotbed of crisis as they see their way to establish the independence of Kosovo and create a "Greater Albania".

It seems that the Contact Group have already fallen into this trap.

In a grand permutation of the facts, the West have sided with the allegedly weaker party. Information is taken without any critical perception. There is no doubt that the leaders of ethnic Albanians have learnt from Bosnia how to wage the propaganda war and win with the assistance of western media. The same pictures of a house in flames or small groups of refugees are presented almost every day on the TV news in addition to Goebbels- like accusations blaming the Serbians for the "ethnic cleansing". Serbians can hardly recognise themselves.

Western politicians and media should focus their pressure on the leaders of ethnic Albanians to continue the negotiations which they abandoned at the very beginning. The lack of effort in this direction cannot be justified.