LETTER: EUROPE'S BALKAN FAILURE

FOR SOME time now your editorial policy has been to argue for a minimalist approach by the West to the tragedy in Bosnia. You have said that we have no strategic interest there and the inference of this, along with your hostility to positive action, is that you want an end to the UN mission and Nato engagement. You should also be explicit about the consequences of such inaction: that the Bosnians will fall victim to starvation on a scale not yet seen and that ethnic cleansing will intensify. You should also say that we have to stand by while 10,000 or 100,000 people are murdered in Europe at the end of the 20th century.

Martin Hutchison

Stirling