Kosovo

* Re “Christian Sites Being Decimated in Kosovo,” Sept. 22:

Last October then-U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke got Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic to agree to U.N.-monitored free elections, plus a host of other full-autonomy concessions in Kosovo. But, instead of proclaiming the tentative agreement as one that was sufficient in itself for serving as the basis for Kosovo’s political future, NATO mediators at Rambouillet inexplicably told the Serbs and ethnic Albanians to continue negotiating on terms for--you guessed it!--Kosovo’s political future.

The radical, KLA-dominated ethnic Albanians’ idea of Kosovo’s political future was (and is) outright independence, plus armed NATO-led forces on the ground. Both demands were, of course, anathema to the Serbs. So, instead of a peaceful settlement in Kosovo, we’ve gone from Serbian ethnic cleansing to a destructive 78-day air war to the present ethnic Albanian cultural cleansing. It’s too bad we can’t turn back the clock to last fall, but we can still recognize and learn from the mistakes made back then.

HARVEY PEARSON

Los Angeles