Letter: Crisis over Kosovo

Sir: During the Second World War, Yugoslav partisans tied up tens of thousands of Axis troops backed by a Luftwaffe with total air supremacy. The partisans, aided by Allied advisers, were never subdued.

This is not to excuse the actions of the appalling Milosevic regime. Rather it is to point out that the current generation of Western leaders pay insufficient regard to the recent past.

When Britain was blitzed in 1940 the country's resolve to fight on alone was strengthened. Germany was almost razed to the ground by the RAF and the USAAF, but, as I and others still around knew to our cost, their troops fought hard to the bitter end.

No, I don't have a solution to the problem of why people are persuaded to kill each other any more than I had when as a teenage in khaki I scrambled from a tank wrecked by gunfire a couple of days before the war ended. But I know that history has a habit of repeating itself.

TONY HEATH

Brecon, Powys