ONCE again the world is horrified at the stories of blood and terror coming out of the Balkans.

Innocent women and children in Kosovo have been slaughtered in cold blood.

A young girl lies with her throat cut, a woman had her stomach ripped open and a pregnant mother lay dead with a dead child at her feet. Some of the bodies had been horribly mutilated.

They had all been living rough after men, who call themselves soldiers, had used weapons of mass war to bombard them out of their homes.

Then they came to slaughter them as they hid in a ravine.

And this in Europe as we are preparing to celebrate the new millennium.

As you were going about your business on Saturday in East Lancashire people just like you were being terrorised and slaughtered.

This new atrocity is only the latest in the bloody history of the Balkans since the dissolution of the old Yugoslavia.

And all this bloodshed can be laid at the feet of one man.

Slobodan Milosovic and his Serb cronies have been central to the bloody strife since the start of the Yugoslavian break-up.

It was they who coined the phrase ethnic cleansing for what should really be called genocide in Bosnia.

And that only stopped when at last the European countries and Nato got off the fence and did what they should have done far earlier and hit back militarily.

Like schoolboy bullies the world over, Milosovic and his partner in blood, Yaravan Karadic, capitulated and Bosnia now has an uneasy peace after allied air strikes.

Has Nato learned its lesson? No.

In the face of calls for autonomy for Kosovo from the mainly Albanian population Milosovic launched ferocious strikes against villages across the region. Houses were shelled and mortared, people were slaughtered or fled to live rough in the hills while all their belongings were looted by the Serbs.

The net result was even more violence as more and more Albanians were driven into the arms of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

All the while the politicians of Europe prattled and the killing went on.

Just this week Nato threatened to carry out "pinprick" strikes against Serb artillery positions.

Milosovic said the campaign against the Kosovo Liberation Army was over. He lied -- again.

This is a man who cannot be trusted.

Nato must act and act soon because, with winter approaching and thousands living under plastic sheeting in the hills which will soon be covered in snow, we are facing a humanitarian disaster.

The Serbs must be given a salutary lesson that the world has finally run out of patience with their bloodthirsty ways. Their troops must be hit and hit hard.

And the country should be ostracised by the civilised world.

While Milosovic and his cronies are in power in Belgrade there should be comprehensive sanctions against all trade and travel with the rump of Yugoslavia.

And, when the ordinary people of Serbia come to their senses and ditch him, Milosovic should be indicted as a war criminal along with all the other psychopaths who have carried out his murderous policies.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.