Letter: This is no way to protect Kosovars

Sir: Less than four months ago the US State Department had this to say about the KLA:

"The KLA harass or kidnap anyone who comes to the police ... KLA representatives had threatened to kill villagers and burn their homes if they did not join the KLA ... The KLA harassment has reached such intensity that residents of six villages in the Stimje region are 'ready to flee'." (Compiled from daily reports of the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission, 21 December 1998.)

That was when fighting was at a lull. Since the bombing the KLA has launched an all-out offensive. Is it any wonder that between saturation bombing of Kosovo and attacks by the terrorist KLA over a third of all ethnic groups in Kosovo (Albanians, Serbs, Turks and gypsies) have fled the area, going into Macedonia, Albania and north to Serbia itself?

Far from being an impartial defender of human rights the Western powers are complicit in all the atrocities committed in Yugoslavia over the last eight years, having sponsored armed separatists against Belgrade from the start of these civil wars.

ROBERT CLAYTON

Higher Foxdale, Isle of Man