Article by the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in the Times Newspaper.

7 May 1999

Tomorrow is Victory in Europe Day. It is a time for my generation to reflect on the fight of our parents' generation against Hitler's evil regime. That victory was hard won. Millions of people suffered in the struggle to preserve freedom and democracy.

But once victory was secured we vowed to vanquish forever from Europe the stain of ethnic hatred. We started the process of repair and reconstruction. Over time enemies became friends again; indeed the symbolism of British and German planes flying together over Kosovo stands as testimony to how far we have come. But we have not come far enough for, despite the establishment of the post-war institutions, in particular the United Nations and NATO, symbolising the international community's determination to ensure such a tragedy could not happen again, it has.

Hundreds of thousands of Kosovan Albanians are living the desperate, dreadful lives of refugees; many hundreds of thousands more are struggling to survive within Kosovo and, tragically, many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, are dead, murdered as an act of policy by the Milosevic regime. Earlier this week I stood in the refugee camps in Macedonia. Nothing really prepares you for what confronts you there: the smell, the fear, the stories that pour out from people who a few short months ago had homes, families and jobs and are now struggling to cope with the grimmest of existences, having survived the abuses of Milosevic's forces.

Time and again I was told stories of torture, murder and rape. Time and again I was urged to do what we can to restore Kosovo to stability and peace. This is what keeps the refugees going: the belief that they will go home and rebuild their lives in peace. Not one called for the airstrikes to stop. Not one had anything but support for NATO.

These were the scenes of my parents' youth; they were of the past. They belonged to an era that was over. This is what I and my generation thought. But we were wrong. I left these people more determined than ever that we should get them back to their homes.

Nato has successfully defended the values of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law for 50 years. In Washington we commemorated its achievements in the face of the single, enormous threat of the old Soviet Union.

Since 1989 the countries of the old Soviet Bloc have gradually embraced Western institutions. Three are now NATO members, many are negotiating their membership of the European Union. But Yugoslavia is not among them. That country's recent history has been blighted by the conflict born of Milosevic's policies of ethnic hatred: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia have each been his targets. Having failed there he has turned on the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

The international community tried to turn back Milosevic's tide of hatred. We worked hard for a diplomatic solution. Britain co-chaired, with France, the Rambouillet talks. We were close to an agreement there but the talks faded because Milosevic refused to sign up to it. Even as he was pretending to talk peace, his murder machine was massing. Nato and the international community had to act. We had no choice if the values on which NATO was founded were to have any meaning at all.

The first bombs fell on March 24. I was confident at the time that this was the right thing to do. Having now visited the region I am even more so. I make a personal commitment to Milosevic's victims: we will follow this through and we will win. Nato's resolve is stronger than ever. As General Clark, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, said earlier this week there is only one way this will end: victory for NATO, defeat for Milosevic, and the reversal of 'ethnic cleansing'.

This does not mean we should not work now with our international partners on the diplomacy that will be needed after the conflict is over, and we are doing that. It is important to keep the Russians engaged and involved, and we are doing that. But let nobody, least of all Milosevic, be in doubt: there must be an end to the killing and the repression; his troops must get out of Kosovo; and an international force, like the one we now have in Bosnia, must be allowed in so that the refugees can go home and live in safety while the international community oversees the running of Kosovo. There can be no compromise. These are our basic minimum demands. They must be met. I sense real unity in the international community that this view will prevail.

Let me also be clear about another thing: the Serb people deserve better than Milosevic. Yugoslavia used to be at the centre of European civilisation. Now it is isolated in the international community. I look forward to the day when we can welcome a democratic Yugoslavia back into the international fold. We are preparing for this: the European Union, NATO and other international institutions have a strategy to rebuild Kosovo and stabilise the region. But, first, the corrupt dictatorship of the Milosevic regime must be cast out.

The people of Serbia can have a future. They should remember that within ten years of Hitler's death Germany was back in the international community; in NATO, in the UN, a founding member of what is now the EU. And, what is more, Germany is today a brave and resolute partner in Operation Allied Force. Fifty-four years on from VE day that is worth remembering too.

Milosevic has made the horrors our parents saw in their youth part of our lives today. By doing so, he has inspired another generation to fight, in every way, to banish his tyranny from the Europe of the next millennium. We will win - as our parents did 54 years ago.

Article by the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to the 'Express Newspaper'.

7 May 1999

This week, I visited the refugee camps in Macedonia where I saw thousands of people who have been forced from their homes; families split up, fathers missing, mothers raped, children orphaned. Each individual story shocks - but there are thousands of them. And saddest of all, they are not new. They follow a script which Slobodan Milosevic has directed before, with the same plot and the same villains. Only the list of scenes and victims has grown ever longer.

Look at the trail of blood Milosevic has spread across Yugoslavia since he took power. It started in 1991 in Kijevo, a Croat village in a Serb area. Under the command of Colonel Mladic, Serb forces levelled the village in a 12-hour bombardment. It was our introduction to ethnic cleansing. At the same time, Serb forces began a siege of Vukovar. For three months, the town was indiscriminately shelled. When it fell, Serb soldiers removed 300 men from the hospital. They were taken to a ravine and shot.

In 1992, the Serbs turned on Bosnia. Paramilitaries under the control of Arkan, now an indicted war criminal, took over Zvornik, a Moslem town. Jose Maria Mendiluce, the senior UN High Commission for Refugees representative in Yugoslavia, saw what happened: militiamen loading corpses of children, women and old men into trucks. Vojislav Seselj, now the Deputy PM in Serbia, boasted: 'The Zvornik operation was planned in Belgrade...everything was well-organised and implemented.'

For three more years, the killing continued. Sarajevo was cut off and shelled. Snipers cut down women and children as they went for water. But the Serbs kept their worst for last. In 1995, they captured Srebrenica. With Mladic promising safe passage, they bussed away the men and boys to a killing field. Those that escaped were hunted down. The mountains were littered with the dead. Up to 8,000 were killed.

In each place, the plot was the same: intimidation, arbitrary violence, houses burnt, women, children and old men expelled, the men gathered in killing fields to be executed and thrown into mass graves. And there were cruel variations that underline the evil at work here: people shot in front of their families, women raped and men tortured - their eyes gouged out and Serb symbols carved into their flesh.

The actors have not changed, either. Mladic, Arkan and Seselj have had starring roles from the beginning. Lauded in Belgrade, little matter that their heroic defence of the Serbs was no more than the cold- blooded murder of unarmed innocents under the cover of tanks and artillery.

And behind them, in the shadows, the same director - Milosevic. His trail of blood has left more than 1.5 million homeless and at least 200,000 dead. Be in no doubt that there are fresh horror stories to confront when we go into Kosovo. For in a final awful crescendo - his project of a Greater Serbia having failed in every other respect - Milosevic has turned his forces on his own citizens in Kosovo. There, with cold premeditation, he has expelled more than a million people from their homes, emptied entire cities and killed thousands.

His corrupt cronies are now lining up to say that there is no ethnic cleansing, that it is all an invention. This just confirms that they are liars looking to shuffle off their hideous responsibility. I challenge them to allow international representatives on an unrestricted tour of Kosovo. I challenge them to explain the thousands of dead, the empty cities, the burnt-out homes, the mass graves. I challenge them to allow the International War Crimes Tribunal to go to Kosovo to investigate the horrifying accounts I heard for myself from the refugees.

History will not forget the terrible crimes of this regime. We know who the killers are. They will not escape justice. They will be called to account.

It is a tragedy that in Kosovo innocent people should be suffering such brutality. It is a tragedy that this horror should be the result of one man's overwhelming greed for power and complete disregard for human rights. The international community will not let this tragedy continue.

Each day, the air campaign intensifies. Each day, Milosevic's machinery of brutal repression is being dismantled. Each day, the Alliance is ever more united and resolute. We will continue to support all the necessary diplomatic efforts but there can be no compromise on our basic demands: his troops out, the refugees back in and protected by an international force. That is the pledge I gave to the refugees. I repeat it now. And my pledge to the war criminals is that they will see justice, too.