IN the light of Nick Hopkins's remarks today I have reread my letter on Nato policy in Kosovo (April 20). Nowhere can I find any evidence to support the notion that I am a member of the ''Appeasement Brigade'', or that I ''paint the Serbian rejection of the Rambouillet deal as resulting from the West's unreasonable demands''.
I argued that the terms which Nato demanded the Serbs must accept in toto, or face attack, were unacceptable to any Serb Government which had not first been militarily defeated. The undefeated Serb Government rejected the ultimatum, so Nato attacked Serbia.
As for the so-called ''key fact'' that ''Scots have already been able to vote for their own Parliament, and those wishing to move towards independence have an option to vote SNP on May 6,'' I can only say that the Scots Parliament will have considerably less powers than the autonomy Nato demanded for Kosovo before its independence referendum was to have occurred.
Scots were deliberately denied the option of voting for independence in their recent referendum, and the Westminster doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament specifically denies the right of the Scots Parliament to opt for independence, or even to hold a referendum on it.
The fact that Serbia ''has not attacked or threatened any of the Nato countries'' is classified by Mr Hopkins as ''true but irrelevant'', and we are referred to ''the responsibility of humanity to ensure the protection of people from mass murder, rape and ethnic cleansing''.
These are indeed crimes, but how are we to deal with the fact that Turkey (which invaded the independent sovereign state of Cyprus, seized the northern third of the island, and ethnically cleansed the Greek population - maintaining a 35,000-strong army there to prevent the Greeks returning to their homes) is a member of that very Nato which is currently at war with Serbia? Are we to bomb Turkey for the sake of the Greek-Cypriots? When the Turks invaded Cyprus the UK was possessed of significant military forces on the island, as well as having treaty obligations to the Cypriots - which obligations were ignored. Are we to try to police the globe, restoring the Pax Britannica to the (no doubt ungrateful) less civilised peoples of the world? I think not.
Brian D Finch,
20 Whitelaw Street, Glasgow.
April 23.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article