FOREIGN Secretary Jack Straw's article on Macedonia (LET, August 30) carries on with the same old anti-Serbian diatribe much loved by his predecessor Robin Cook and before him by Tory Foreign Ministers.

He wrings his hands over a lack of decisiveness in 1991. If only that were true. It was the West, particularly Germany and the USA, which led the way in destabilising the Yugoslav Federation. They were the ones who financed the political and military moves by extremist nationalist forces in Croatia and Slovenia, encouraging them to break away from Yugoslavia.

In March this year the Observer quoted a European KFOR battalion commander as saying that "The CIA has been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with a private army designed to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic."

In January, the BBC reported that western forces were training guerrillas in Kosovo for the purposes of opening a new front in southern Serbia and Macedonia.

UN special enjoy Jiri Dienstbier blamed the crisis in Macedonia on NATO refusing to disarm the Kosovo Liberation Army and prevent the ethnic cleansing of the non-Albanian population.

So what's it all about? Among other things, oil. The new Trans-Balkan pipeline will run from the Bulgarian port of Burgas, bisect Macedonia and through to Vlore, Albania's Adriatic port. This line will carry oil from the new finds of the Castpian Sea. It will also make a fortune for the big oil companies.

Same old story.

Lastly, Jack goes on about ethnic cleansing, but said not a dicky bird about the 250,000 Serbs and 100,000 Roma, Gorani, Turks and Jews, driven from their homes in the Krajina region of Croatia.

Not a word of the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo, watched and supported by NATO troops.

Not a word about Turkish massacres of their own Kurdish population, or of Turkish invasions of northern Iraq. Isn't Turkey "in Europe's and Britain's backyard" also Jack?

GEORGE DAVIS, Redearth Road, Darwen.