NATO responsible for its act

This is in response to the letter from Mr. James Richards on April 24, 1999.

Mr. Richards agrees with me that unprovoked aggression of one country (or a group of countries) on another country is a crime. He illustrates this by making a parallel between current events and Hitler's invasion on Poland in 1939 and here is where I can agree with him: like Yugoslavia in 1999, Poland in 1939 had not invaded no other country, let alone Germany.

As we all know, this did not stop Hitler from bombing, from ground troops attacking, and from the eventual occupation of Poland. Like NATO today, Hitler also had fabricated some excuses for doing what he did. But unlike NATO today, Hitler at least declared war so that everybody knew what was going on. So Mr. Richards is actually giving us a perception of current events that any Yugoslav would agree with: what NATO is doing to Yugoslavia today is what Hitler was doing to Europe in 1939.

Mr. Richards is (on purpose?) skipping Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. Maybe because Hitler had the same excuse as NATO has today: protection of a minority group in another sovereign country by means of war. And regarding "Britain's intervention on behalf of Poland": I wish it helped the Poles. Unfortunately it was not Britain but Russia that eventually drove Hitler back to Berlin.

Mr. Richards, further in his letter, says that "it is regrettable that there have been, and will be, more civilian casualties in Yugoslavia", and then he talks about "hundreds of thousands of Kosovars who have died." I'll try to help him gain perspective which he does not seem to have currently. During the course of one year, starting with the Kosovo Liberation Army's armed rebellion and up to NATO aggression, there were 2,000 casualties in Kosovo (this is according to Western sources). This number includes KLA members killed in clashes with security forces, but also a substantial number of policemen that fell victim to KLA terrorist tactics. Technically, these were not civilian casualties, unless a KLA member is a freedom fighter when he fights, but turns civilian once he gets shot. Anyway, Mr. Richards' "hundreds of thousands" are actually 2,000 over a year. On the other hand, NATO has killed at least 800 civilians in its first month only and Mr. Richards is promising us more. NATO has created hundreds of thousands of refugees.

To make a long story short, NATO attacked Yugoslavia (and not vice versa), hence NATO is the aggressor in Yugoslavia, hence NATO is responsible for the consequences of its aggression.

BRANIMIR SALEVIC

Jakarta