Sir, - As someone who feels angry and frustrated that NATO has started to bomb Yugoslavia, but has great difficulty in understanding the situation, I wonder if I could appeal through your good offices for some expert on the former Yugoslavia to give us a grasp from an Irish point of view on what has happened there and where our support should lie.
The reports we read seem to be out of context, without proper background. Our hearts go out to the poor people we see on our television screens, displaced from their homes and worse; we read of slaughter by both sides. But instinctively one feels that air strikes without even the pretence of UN approval cannot be the answer. I am sure I share with many people complete confusion on the problems besetting that unhappy land.
We know that there are a large number of Albanians in the present Yugoslavia, or should we call it Serbia? Presumably this results from past emigration due to very poor conditions in their home country, a situation not unfamiliar to us Irish.
The fact that they are in a local majority in the province of Kosovo and are attempting to set up an autonomous area independent of the main state is also not unfamiliar. We know that there is a Kosovo Liberation Army, and we are mindful that one person's freedom fighters are another person's terrorists.
I was pleased that the big Western powers called the sides together to talk, but very concerned at the threat that if Yugoslavia did not accept the favoured solution it would be bombed. In God's name, what does that solve, and couldn't it be as counter productive as all the examples from Coventry to Canary Wharf?
So, to return to my appeal: can we please have an authoritative summary of the background to this awful problem and what we in Ireland could do to help restore peace? - Yours, etc., W. J. Murphy,
Malahide, Co Dublin.