He reported on the upheaval in Croatia as Yugoslavia broke apart and later on the seiges of Sarajevo and Mostar.

Now he's back in the Balkans reporting from the Albanian border on the results of another round of ethnic cleansing - this time from Kosovo.

BBC News Online's Joanna Ross puts your questions to Jeremy Bowen

Read Jeremy Bowen's answers to your questions about his reporting of this conflict and about his career with the BBC.

Dave, UK:What is the reaction of the local Albanian population to the influx of so many refugees ?

Jeremy Bowen: I think actually that they've been pretty hospitable, a lot of people have taken refugees in their houses. They've helped them out, they've given them food but as time goes on, this crisis is now in it's fifth or sixth week, the fact is that they are over stretched and over burdened and the refugees are now being bused and trucked to all parts of Abania to try and find more space for them because this is much bigger now than just hospitality on a personal level. It's actually a major, major emergency.

Edward Donne, UK: From your perspective, is the money we are sending for aid being spent effectively?

Jeremy Bowen: As far as I can see, I don't see the money being wasted. I think that the needs of these people are so immense and are so continuing and will probably grow. Let's not forget that the whole point of the campaign, the politicians say, is to get these people back to their houses. Eventually, there will be a massive reconstruction job to be done. There will be billions and billions of pounds to be spent just to get these people back to their houses and to their old lives. So that's going to be a very hard thing to do and very expensive.

Mary Samarine, Ireland: How is it that a Western Alliance can spend millions, even billions of dollars on air strikes, without feeling any obligation to house in a human fashion the refugees?

Jeremy Bowen: I don't know what the politicians are thinking back in the places where they make these decisions but of course the military campaign is massively more expensive than the humanitarian operation here. I think the criticism that has been made by some people about the humanitarian operation is that it was a bit slow getting going and that it was a bit disorganised and that they were taken by surprise. UNHCR were saying that their contingency plans were for about 100, 000 refugees into Albania but there have been around 400, 000 now plus they have been trying to stockpile some emergency supplies. Six months ago their warehouse was looted and they didn't have the money to replace it. Now they are getting the money through but it does mean that some people have had a very nasty few weeks.

Fatima, Denmark: Do you think there is any real prospect of the refugees ever being able to restart their lives in a multiethnic society, including Serbs, after all they have been through?

Jeremy Bowen: I think that it is going to be really, really, really, really difficult. I hope that that is enough 'reallys'. From what we can hear Kosovo itself is in flames, it's destroyed. The fabric of the lives that were there have been destroyed, not only the last couple of months but in the period before that as well. The vast majority of Kosovar Albanians are now displaced from their homes inside Kosovo or they are refugees outside Kosovo. We are hearing grisly accounts of war crimes. I've spoken to KLA fighters who are talking about the need to exact vengeance from the Serbs. I think that Nato, if it puts its mind and its muscle to it, has the power to get these people back to their homes certainly. The question is though, what sort of lives are they going to have then? That's very difficult. There are many, many people you have to remember that are now dead.

Cliff Maffia, UK: What are the refugees feelings about returning to Kosovo after hostilities have ended?

Jeremy Bowen: Every refugee I have spoken to, and I have probably spoken to hundreds by now, wants to home at the end of this. They want to go back to where they were before. Like any people's lives are at the end of a war, they are going to be changed forever. This is an event in their lives which, at best, they will come to terms with, at worst they will never recover from. There is no questions about that. War changes everything in any war and this war may get bigger. So, they may get back to their homes but getting back to their old lives is probably going to be very difficult indeed.

Lynda Battersby, Albania:Reports are coming through of the outbreak of water-borne diseases in refugee camps. What, if anything, is being done to improve access to clean drinking water?

Jeremy Bowen: I've seen water engineers from various aid organisations like Oxfam, trying to get fresh water into the camp. Certainly, they are only just now in Kukes putting in large amounts of pit latrines, chemical toilets, places where people can wash clothes and so on. I think that they have been helped by the fact that the weather has been cold and wet. The weather now is started to get really hot. It is a really hot day today in Kukes. Unless they get the water problem sorted out then there will be great problems with disease, there is no doubt about it.

Andrew Hill, UK: I think you've been one of the best correspondents the BBC has had. How do you deal with the suffering you've seen and are seeing again. Doesn't it make you despair of the world?

Jeremy Bowen: I think it does to be honest and thank you for the compliment. I have been a foreign correspondent for the BBC for about 12 or 13 years now and I have covered many, many refugee stories, practically every big refugee story in the last decade or so. So I have seen it many times. But I have to say that the more you see it, the harder it becomes to take on a human level. I am personally very affected by the plight of these people. It is something that is very hard to be objective about. The fact is that this is a bad thing that is happening. People have to leave their homes by force, it's a bad thing, it's an evil thing. And what I've been doing in my reporting is to humanise the story, to try and stay clear of these metaphors about human tides, as if a tap has been turned on and turned off and to try and remind the viewers as much as I can that we are talking about human beings here that have hopes and fears and lives and families. So in my reporting I try to always remind people of that because otherwise, if you are not careful, as the images become more familiar, it can be almost like a faceless crowd and that is not a good thing.

Ben Gallagher, UK: Has there ever been a time when you have found a situation so distressing that you can't face talking or looking towards it, during the Kosovo War?

Jeremy Bown: No that's never happened, when it comes down to it that's how I earn my money, I've got to report what's going on. I've got to come out with the story and I've got to pass it on to people - that's why I'm here. I think this is one of the best rationales for what we do, which is sometimes I admit very intrusive into people's lives. The truth of being a reporter in these situations is that for us a "good day", in terms of a good strong story, is very often the very worst day of somebody's life. So if you're there on the worst day of somebody's life and you're there sticking a camera at them and asking them very personal questions, then it is a bit intrusive. I think the only way to justify that is to say that these people want to let the world know what's happened to them, and that it's our job to transmit that.

Defkalion Tsagarakis, Greece: Are the western mass media objective about the Kosovo crisis?

Jeremy Bowen: I try to be. Objective is a funny word when you're talking about reporting, I think you can be balanced. I think no human being on anything is fully objective because of course you come to every issue and you think about every thing you see through the prism of your own background, your education, your own views. I try and keep my own views out of it as much as I can because I think people don't turn the TV and radio on to listen my views, they turn it on to try and find out what happened. So I try and put out a balanced report certainly. But you know I think in the BBC you've got to look across the whole range of what we do. One programme there may be a piece from me here, and there may be a piece from Belgrade, and a piece from Brussels, and a piece from Macedonia or a piece from Washington - and so across all that the idea is you get a whole balanced account of what is happening. I've got a lot of sympathy for my colleagues for example in Belgrade, who I know have been criticised in the British media very unfairly for what they've been doing. I've done a lot of stuff myself in Baghdad, in the "enemy capital", and I know that there as a foreign journalist you are very exposed to criticism from every side.

Stephen White, UK: When reporting from refugee camps and various other areas of the world where food and basic necessities are scarce, where do you stay and what do you eat? How and who organises it?

Jeremy Bowen: Well, we've rented a number of houses and flats in Kukes, Kukes is a small town which normally has about 25,000 or 30,000 people in it, at the moment the population is about 140,000 including all the refugees. In the last few weeks at times it's been more like 300,000. We've rented a house here in Kukes. The ground floor has got a lot of refugees in it, and we're on the first floor and second floor. We've got one or two flats as well. People have basically rented us their flats and moved out, and I think we pay them pretty good money so they're quite happy about that. In terms of food and drink when people come in from places like Italy and they bring in supplies for us. So sometimes it's great and we have lots of things and sometimes we run rather short. You can always buy things locally although it's rather expensive very often and refugees can't afford it, but we're lucky that we can. But what generally happens here in the evenings is one of our team cooks something, normally something to do with pasta and tomato sauce and that's more or less what we eat.

Nathanael Johansen-Allison, UK: Do you believe Nato land troops entering Kosovo is the correct way forward?

Jeremy Bowen: It's not for me to say what's correct or incorrect. I think that listening to the things said particularly by Tony Blair the British Prime Minister, about the need to return the refugees to their homes. I think the only way they'll be able to achieve that, as far as I can see it at the moment and barring any massive changes in the position in Belgrade, I think the only way they can do it is to send to troops in to safeguard that return. There is a war going on, a big war going on in Kosovo, and people are not going to go back voluntarily, they're not going to take the risk of going back unless they're convinced it's safe. I've covered 10 or 11 wars around the world and I can't see another way of making the place safe for the refugees to return than by sending in ground troops. Maybe there are other ways forward but I can't think of them.

Alex Slater, UK: Do you think Nato bombing has actually made the plight of refugees worse?

Jeremy Bowen: I think that what people have said to me is that it possibly sped up what was already happening. There was a campaign of forced deportations of ethnic Albanians, ethnic cleansing, going on and it was stepped up and started going much faster as a result of the bombing. That's what people have said to me, Kosovo Albanians. They've generally gone on to say that they are glad that Nato have become involved and they think that even though what is happening is terrible they don't blame Nato for it, they blame President Slobodan Milosevic for it.

Madhukar, India: As an expert on Balkans what do you think is the ROOT of this conflict? How far back do the tensions go?

Jeremy Bowen: That's a very hard one. I've covered the wars in the Balkans since they started in 1991. I was there in Croatia in 1991 and Bosnia from '91 to '95 and now I'm back here for this Kosovo conflict. I think nationalism is the root of it. Nationalism is something which destroyed Europe, and we had to rebuild Europe after 1945 because of two big wars caused essentially by nationalism and perversions of nationalism. So if you had to look at one thing, I would say it was that.
Some people have said that the wars in the Balkans are a sort of reactivation of ancient ethnic hatreds, well I don't really buy that at all. I think maybe some aspects of the historical experience that people have had have affected parts of it. But essentially I think that in the Balkans, from the time that Yugoslavia started to break up, various politicians have manipulated their people through the shrewd use of nationalism and appealed to deep fears that they have within them. As a result of that we're in this enormous mess at the moment.

Neil, Scotland: The tales you report of rape camps, indiscriminate executions and mass graves in Kosovo are truly appalling. Do you think that this situation would have arisen if NATO had not ordered the withdrawal of the OSCE monitors and maybe even reinforced the monitors rather than bombing the Serbian people?

Jeremy Bowen: Reinforcing the monitors are making them even more of an armed force, or something like that, just was not an option at that particular time because it was something the government of Yugoslavia, President Milosevic's government, wasn't prepared to accept. I think if the OSCE people hadn't left when the bombing started I think they would have been in big trouble. They may even have been held as hostages. There may have been casualties among them and they couldn't do their jobs. They've retreated now to Albania and Macedonia and the OSCE people are on the borders trying to look in. But they were an idea for trying to supervise parts of the conflict there which frankly, in the end, didn't work.

Jake Maun, UK: What do you think the chances are of this conflict widening to a full-scale European war?

Jeremy Bowen: I don't think it's going to lead to a wider European war but I think if mistakes were made then it's not impossible at the moment. I think one of the most disturbing things about this is that once again Russia and the West are at odds. Once again there are two camps that appear to be forming - East and West. I remember the euphoria in 1989 at the end of the Cold War when the Berlin Wall came down and everybody who had grown up under the shadow of the bomb, people of my generation, were incredibly relieved that this threat that had hung over their lives forever had gone away.
Once again we're getting back to a situation of conflict and division in Europe and I think that's very worrying. I think this conflict will set the scene for the next 10, 15, 20 years in Europe. So I hope to goodness that all the leaders in the countries concerned take the long view and try to sort this thing out in a peaceful way ultimately and try and have reconciliation afterwards otherwise we could be in for a difficult time. What is the position of Serbia going to be after this is all over? What are the Kosovo Albanians going to do? What about the Russians? What happens after Yeltsin in Russia? These are big issues and I think the West has gone down a path that it never really knew existed and it's on ground now that it doesn't really know and it's going to take some very wise statesmanship to lead us through all this.

Andy Brown, UK: Have you ever faced death during the course of your reporting career?

Jeremy Bowen: I've been in situations where I've thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to die now. Jeremy, you complete idiot. What on earth are you doing here?' and that sort of thing. Yes, quite a few times actually. Doing this sort of work, it's an unfortunate by-product of it at times. On this trip the cameraman I was working with and my colleagues were held up by armed gunmen in a place in northern Albania which is particularly lawless called Bajram Curri. We were held at gunpoint. They were firing over our heads, firing over our cars. They were masked men. I was absolutely terrified. I thought that they could quite easily have murdered us. I've covered a lot of wars and there have been times when I've suddenly thought 'I'm in a terrible mess here. I might get killed.' But thank goodness nothing has ever happened.

Sanjay Pandit, UK: How do the Kosovans react to the foreign press? Do they feel you are just there for the story?

Jeremy Bowen: I think they quite like us actually. The Kosovo Albanians are very welcoming and friendly towards us. I've never had any hostility whatsoever. I think they're pleased that people are taking an interest in their plight. There are a lot of people in the western media here and the big problem at the moment is not the unfriendliness of the Kosovo Albanians but the fact that I think some northern Albanians, in small numbers, tiny numbers, but nonetheless worrying numbers, have been robbing us. I was robbed at gunpoint. Lots of my other colleagues have been. Northern Albania is a place which is very lawless and when you're carrying expensive equipment you're a real target.

Stuart Robins, UK: Do you think the ethnic divisions in the Balkans will ever be healed?

Jeremy Bowen: Not in my lifetime. In the last 10 years so much blood has been spilt. So many things have happened. So many people have grudges. So many people want revenge for what's happened. So many people's lives have been destroyed and ruined that I think it's going to take generations for them to get over this. I hope that there is a process of reconciliation because the thing about the Balkans is that there are some wonderful people in the Balkans. I've been privileged to spend a lot of time in the Balkans and Former Yugoslavia and now in Albania. These are beautiful countries with some wonderful people in them and what's happened here as a result of the manipulations of nationalism is absolutely tragic.

Ferry Vanechtelt, Netherlands: Could you please give your comment on the delicate issue of the merits of an oil embargo? (If we look at Iraq for instance), wouldn't you agree that such an embargo would harm the innocent Kosovo people and other people the worst?

Jeremy Bowen: The innocent Kosovo people are being deeply harmed by what's happening in their country. I know that because I've spoken to large numbers of them and I've seen massive numbers of people in awful, pitiful states of distress, coming over the borders, leaving their homes, being forcibly deported. That's what's hurting them at the moment. I think that the oil embargo is going to hurt innocent people in Serbia and Montenegro who aren't any part of this. All the times I've been in the Balkans I've made some very good friends in Serbia and I don't like the way that Serbs in general, by some people, are being demonised because they're not like that. There are some extremely decent people in Yugoslavia and what's going on is a tragedy for them as well as a tragedy for the Kosovo Albanians.

Disclaimer: The BBC will post replies to as many of your questions as possible. The BBC reserves the right to edit questions.