Letter: Shame over Kosovo

Sir: The EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, Emma Bonino, and Christopher Hill, the US envoy to Kosovo, are quite right when they say we are fiddling while Kosovo burns (report, 8 September).

On 4 March the Prime Minister assured me and the House of Commons that we would not stand idly by while President Milosevic ignited another ethnic war in the Balkans. The lesson of appeasement in Bosnia, he agreed, had been learnt.

Six months later hundreds of ethnic Albanians have been murdered and 300,000 driven from their homes. Yet again Milosevic has called our bluff and the West has shown a shameful lack of political will to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing in Europe.

BEN BRADSHAW MP

(Exeter, Lab)

House of Commons