Bosnia: Saving Sarajevo

Two weeks ago the Independent published proposals for maintaining humanitarian supplies to Sarajevo. The plan called for the deployment of 1,800 UN troops, mandated to use force to secure the route from the coast to central Bosnia. The total number of letters we have received backing our stance now stands at 3,945. Below are the names of a further 811 people who have written in support of our campaign.

The relief of Sarajevo is central to any real prospect of peace. This is where the Serbs expect to be fully confronted. This is where signatures on paper will be seen as meaningful or another scrawl of lies.

However, it needs to said that aid agencies continue day by day to work in other parts of Bosnia and indeed in Croatia, where many thousands still need regular supplies.

If things are now drawn to a head in Sarajevo, while the summer weather is with us, we will rapidly enter an autumn of total despair. There is no harvest to reap in the fields. Winter supplies of aid will be obstructed or halted altogether. The Serbs will have effectively won yet again.

DAVID H W GRUBB

Executive Director,

Feed The Children

I applaud your stand on Sarajevo and the whole Bosnian situation, an appalling tragedy brought on with the cowardly complicity of 'civilised' Europe and the USA.

The ethnic cleansers deserve our wrath and their victims have an overwhelming claim on our aid and compassion.

Prof LAURO MARTINES

London, NW1

(811 names omitted)