Rifkind and Bosnia | @guardianletters

In a persuasive article arguing the case for a forceful western response to Russian aggression against Ukraine, even at the cost of some harm to British economic interests (Ban Russia from the City, 5 March), Malcolm Rifkind says: "The last time the alleged need to protect ethnic brethren was used as a justification for invasion and annexation in Europe was the Sudetenland, and the shame of the Munich agreement in 1938." Can this be the same Malcolm Rifkind who was defence secretary from 1992 to 1995, at what has been termed the country's "unfinest hour", when the internationally recognised Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina was devastated by an invasion by Serbia on precisely such a pretext of defending ethnic brethren (replicating a pattern already pioneered in its earlier assault on Croatia)? The same Rifkind who, as foreign secretary in 1995, helped prepare the infamous Dayton accords, awarding half of Bosnia's territory to an entity – Republika Srpska – carved out by genocide and ethnically cleansed of its non-Serb population; a settlement that saddled the country with an unworkable constitution linking political rights to ethnicity?
*Quintin Hoare, Branka Maga,*
*Noel Malcolm*
London Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.