Looking at History to Face Balkan Future

Permit me to congratulate you on the front-page article "Old Animosities Exploited Today Underlie Complex Balkans Puzzle," May 17. However, I have yet to see any newspaper adequately deal with the issue. As a superpower, we must question whether by our inaction we have not contributed to the horrors and atrocitites. It would have been simpler and quicker to have dealt with the problem a year ago, but now it will not go away. We have to provide leadership or lose our role and the world's trust. American i solationism has always been a European fear, and our wavering can only raise the question: What, again? Guy C. Hill, San Diego, Calif.

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