Letter: Kosovo: heading for a new catastrophe

Brian Pocock
Tuesday 30 March 1999 17:02 EST
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Sir: The fears expressed by the Chairman of the Macedonian Citizens in the UK (Letter, 29 March) are real indeed. The KLA have as their aim the union of all Albanians of Serbia/Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania itself into a single state.

Tito allowed nearly half a million people to flee Albania and settle in Kosovo in the upheavals of 1948 when Yugoslavia broke with Stalin. This altered the demographic profile of the region dramatically. Corrupt Albanian officials abused the extensive autonomy granted in 1974 to carry out a campaign of intimidation to "encourage" the dwindling Serbian inhabitants to move north.

But it's probably "unpatriotic" to point out any inconvenient historical details at such a moment of "national glory".

BRIAN POCOCK

London W6

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