The letter to “PRAVDA” — Internet”, just another theme for Forum discussion

Dear Editor,

I am a regular reader of your newspaper, both in printed form and now on the internet. I would like to make a comment about the article you had posted to the internet page on 17 June 1999 at 19:00 concerning comments by a Czech government official related to the bombing of infrastructure in Yugoslavia. The article raises the question of who will undertake the reconstruction of the destroyed areas, and states that the Czech Republic will have to do its share as well.

As a matter of fact, I read an article in the International Herald Tribune very recently about British construction companies getting in on the bidding for contracts to rebuild the country. The article was written in the context of British companies losing out on the last opportunity, the Gulf War, but that this time, however, they are going to do their best. What this means is that the reconstruction of the country is a task that will be passed on to the private sector, funded with taxpayers' money from the participating countries, such as US. (This especially concerns me, because I am American.)

The whole thing smells fishy to me. Why was there such rampant bombing of civilian infrastructure -- facilities that have an only very indirect affect on military production -- such as electric plants and water treatment facilities? To demoralize the populace, is what NATO propaganda told the world. However, there is no historical precedent for this kind of policy. Did the people of Leningrad want to give up and go over to the German side during the blockade? Of course not. And neither did the Serbs decide that maybe NATO was right. The crucial point here is that NATO knew this, too, and acted accordingly.

The way I see it, those facilities were destroyed in order to produce lucrative contracting work for Western companies. But of course, none of this will ever be explicitly stated in the Western media. This is your job, and I hope you continue to do it well.

Marc ADLER.