Letter: It's peace that Milosevic fears

FOR THE first time in my life I've had the unenviable privilege of being bombed, and judging by last night's attack on the heating plant that kept me and my family warm last winter, I may end up being killed.

According to Tony Blair and Dough Henderson, the Splendid launched its cruise missiles in my direction in an attempt to put a halt to the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, to stop Milosevic on his 10-year-long murderous spree. If this is really their reason, then they have made a catastrophic mistake. With every bomb that they drop, every "military" target they "take out" they are helping, not hindering, Milosevic.

After 10 years of fighting, it is clear that the one thing Milosevic fears more than anything else is not war, or air strikes or the suffering of his people, but peace; peace in which this oppressed nation would find time to consider the dire straits into which its president has led it, and to act accordingly. What did Richard Holbrooke really come to Belgrade for? If he'd been a fairy with three wishes then air strikes is exactly what Sloba would have asked for.

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