http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/section_letters.tpl?IdLanguage=1 <http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/section_letters.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4 > &IdPublication=4 TOL (TransitionsOnLine) 8 February 2008 Sir: David L. Phillips labels Russia as a troublemaker for its principled approach to Kosovo ("Abkhazia Is Not Kosovo <http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue =255&NrSection=4&NrArticle=19333> ", 7 February 2008). But Russia is not alone. Does he similarly label Slovakia, Romania, Spain and Cyprus? Phillips also rewrites history with his claim that Yugoslavia's 1974 constitution granted Kosovo the same rights as the federal republics. But the two autonomous regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina were denied the right of self-determination. Phillips' claim that Serbia's leaders launched an ethnic cleansing campaign in 1998 resulting in the displacement of a million of the province's Albanians hides more than it reveals. Serb forces did mount a counter-offensive against the Kosovo Liberation Army in western Kosovo. It prompted many villagers to flee to Kosovo's towns and cities. By the time of the Rambouillet talks [in France in 1999], almost all had returned to their homes. If there was any ongoing ethnic cleansing, it eluded the 2,000 international observers that had the run of the province. The observers, of course, were ordered by the OSCE to leave when it became apparent that NATO had opted for war. It was the bombing that triggered an exodus, with the province's Albanians fleeing into Albania and Macedonia, and a similar proportion of Serbs into supposedly safe inner-Serbia. Only after NATO's occupation of Kosovo did ethnic cleansing unarguably take place, the Albanians being the perpetrators. To believe, as Phillips does, that the beleaguered Serbs left in an “independent” Kosovo will be protected by NATO troops (or EU police) is pure moonshine. NATO was limp-wristed in its failed attempt to persuade the province's Albanians to allow the return of those they expelled. An independent Kosovo is a recipe for a state fit only for Albanians. So much for General Wesley Clark’s comment during the bombing of Serbia that "There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th-century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multiethnic states.” Yugo Kovach Twickenham, Middlesex United Kingdom Abkhazia Is Not Kosovo: http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2008/02/abkhazia-is-not-kosovo.html
