Madam, - Zivko Jaksic (September 24th) claims that what Slobodan Milosevic tried to introduce was a "one man, one vote" system in the former Yugoslavia. This raises the inevitable question: why should one be indicted for war crimes in pursuit of such a noble cause?
He then states that under this "one man, one vote" system, the Serbs would have had only 40 per cent of the vote (in fact the actual figure based on population would have been closer to 32 per cent). What he doesn't make clear is why Serbia should have waged all those wars - either directly or by proxy - in the cause of preserving a state in which the Serbs would have remained a minority.
In fact the question of population ratios was of no relevance whatsoever to Milosevic's goals and the means by which he set out to achieve those goals. What was fundamental to his programme was that by the time of the onset of the break-up of Yugoslavia, he had succeeded in gaining total control of the Yugoslav army. And it was this army, under the 100 per cent control of Milosevic's Serbia, which mounted in turn assaults on Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. This was the Serbian domination to which I alluded in my previous correspondence.
If one is to cite Milosevic as a champion of "one man, one vote", one must recognise also his particular understanding of this idea. The hundreds of thousands of dead and the millions of dispossessed that he left in his wake made the fateful mistake of not being the type of voters that he might have felt comfortable with - by not being born Serb, or not adhering to the hyper-chauvinistic form of Serb nationalism that he embraced.
Mr Jaksic asserts that independence for Kosovo will result in the creation of a "second Albanian state". This is an extraordinary statement. The fact is that Serbia has abandoned any semblance of a legitimate claim that it might once have pretended to have had, by its appalling and at times genocidal record in Kosovo over the past 15 years (to say nothing of the previous 80). Kosovo will be a state of and for its citizens alone, just like any democratic state anywhere.
Besides which, what is it about the Albanian nationality that they must be prevented from enjoying self-determination in more than one state? Why should such a restriction not be placed upon the Serbo-Croat, English, German, Arabic or Turkic linguistic groups, to name just a few?
Finally, Mr Jaksic claims that independence for Kosovo will set
the stage for the partition of both Macedonia and Montenegro, with
likely bloody consequences. If this was a cause for real concern,
why is it that Kosovo's independence in its actual borders enjoys
both the overt support of Macedonia along with the tacit but
unmistakable support of Montenegro? - Yours, etc,
MENTOR AGANI,
University of Prishtina,
Kosovo.