Monday, 26 Apr 1999

Peace can be obtained very easily and very quickly

    Peace can be obtained very easily and very quickly: it is only a matter of accepting Nato's conditions from the Milosevic side.

    Lidell Hart wrote in his great book "The History of WW II, vol. 2" that in it's last months the war only was led because of Hitler's unshakeable will to continue. It could have been finish much ealier if the Western allies wouldn't have had that rigid in their demand of unconditional surrender and would have been better informed on the German mentality.

    Not to be misunderstood, I don't want to compare S.M. with Hitler as the situation is very different as Hitler had a different ideology behind. But just telling S.M. has just to accept the conditions set by the NATO and everything will be stopped is similar than what happened 54 year ago. To build up a peace on the base of hand granades will only lead to another war in this area. The peace treaty of Versailles proved it now 60 years ago.

    What the balcan needs now is not a suppression of S.M. by NATO via air strikes. It needs a concrete peace plan not only for the Kosovo but for the whole region. We need a peace based on the principles of humanity and tolerance. Intolerance was the main reason for what happend in Kraina, B&H; and now in Kosovo.

    NATO needs to understand the mentality of the people on the balcan, most European politicians don't. Now most facilities of FRY is destroyed. What is the reason for NATO now to stop the bombings for some days and go back to the conference table ? The other alternative to continue air strikes against FRY in order to be prepared for combat forces on the ground will lead to bloody partisan war which was also trained by the Yugoslav army for many decades.

    The genocide in Kosovo - caused both by Serbs and Albanians - is something that hurts many people in Germany as many of them were trown out of Eastern Europe after WW II after their families were living there for many centuries. So they can imagine the feelings of the people from Kosovo. I really hope that Europe has now another solution than to clean up the terretories from minorities and come to a solution like in Alsace, les Pyrenees-Atlantique or in Southern Tyrol.

Berthold Herber