Letter: US cleansing

THE PENTAGON spokesman Ken Bacon has laid the USA's cards on the table concerning ethnic cleansing in the Balkans: he doesn't think that Kosovo will be "a very happy place for Serbs when Nato comes in ... many Serbs may want to leave" ("Serbs stall at peace talks", 6 June). This is not people fleeing from war, but a cold-blooded threat to all people of a particular ethnic origin. In yet another chilling phrase straight out of Nineteen Eighty-Four, he goes on to proclaim that "the free movement of people is something that all democracies stand for". Coming from the same people who reduced Kosovo to "a wasteland" (to quote Jamie Shea), or "rubble" (in the words of General Naumann), and incinerated and dismembered thousands of Yugoslav citizens, this is a pretty convincing threat. It is accompanied by the forced withdrawal of any protection the Serbs (and anti-KLA Albanians) might have had against the KLA - now led by Agim Keku, the supreme Serb-cleanser of the Krajina.

An ethnically pure Kosovo will match Nato's other colonial entities in Bosnia - as will, according to Tony Blair, the ethnic discrimination when it comes to aid. Serbia is still the only true multi-ethnic area in the former Yugoslavia, but it is hard to see it lasting through this tremendous hatred, destruction and economic catastrophe. Nato tried to cut off Vojvodina during their "campaign" - because it contains a very large ethnic minority. This may be their next project, if their new territory in Kosovo proves to be insufficient.

PETER MCKENNA

Liverpool