When the nail bomb went off in Old Compton Street, Mr Blair described it as a barbaric act. When cluster bombs go off in Serbian market places, cutting children to pieces, we are told that such an act is being taken on behalf of "civilisation against barbarism". Mr Blair is clearly having a wonderful time. But if Britain remains America's poodle, she is now a vicious and demented poodle.

The NATO action is in breach of its own charter and outside all recognised parameters of international law. The United Nations has been treated with contempt. NATO is destroying the infrastructure of a sovereign state, murdering hundreds of civilians, creating widespread misery and desolation, doing immeasurable damage to the environment. Underneath the demonisation and the hysteria, there is an agenda. What is it? It is certainly not what it purports to be. Neither Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the Kosovan Albanians, despite the tears. This action is yet another blatant and brutal assertion of US power, using NATO as its missile. This "new aggressive" NATO is helping to fulfill one thing and one thing only, American domination of Europe. The true danger to world peace is not "former Yugoslavia" but the United States.

Harold Pinter