Clashes in Kosovo

Re “Soldiers Use Tear Gas to Avert Kosovo Clash,” Feb. 22:

How can it be that NATO troops are now preventing ethnic Albanians from traveling freely in Kosovo? Wasn’t that the reason we went into Kosovo in the first place, to halt Serb-sponsored genocide and apartheid? Instead, I now see NATO troops in effect doing the bidding of war criminal Slobodan Milosevic by ratifying the ethnic partition of Kosovo and protecting jeering crowds of Serbs, the same Serbs who not only formed the core of Milosevic’s support in Kosovo but who also attacked American GIs in Mitrovica (Feb. 21).

NATO should make clear to the Kosovar Serbs that all of Kosovo has been liberated and then back this statement up with massive and uncompromising force. Kosovar Serbs need to learn that they will live in a united and ethnically tolerant Kosovo, or they won’t be living there at all.

RONALD O. RICHARDS

Los Angeles

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The northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica is the only remaining multiethnic enclave in Kosovo. Close to 5,000 Serbs and over 2,000 Albanians are living there under permanent siege from Albanian extremists. In the last two weeks we have witnessed a sharp escalation of terrorist attacks against the Serbian population: a bus hit by an antitank missile, a bomb hurled into a pub, two days of bloody clashes on the bridge linking the southern (Albanian) and northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica. But, instead of retaliation against the perpetrators, NATO/KFOR was quick to hit the victims. On Feb. 20, under a pretext of a “search for weapons,” American armored units brutally ransacked every Serbian home, office, hospital and school, leaving behind a disaster similar to infamous Kristallnacht raid against Jews in Nazi Germany.

The message is crystal-clear: Serbs must abandon their fatherland, and Kosovo should become “ethnically pure” Albanian, under U.S./NATO protection and in defiance of U.N. Resolution 1244.

ALEXANDER YAHONTOV

Long Beach