No Serbia, No World

There is reason to believe that Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is just about the only person happy with the outcome of the Contact group's Rome session. The organization was expected to define clearly the international community's position and policy on Kosovo, if not prevent a war threatening to set the turbulent Serbian province on fire. The Contact group did neither, because its ministers were too busy keeping the organization together, as it looked to be falling apart at one point.

A week and a half before the session, the United States said it would walk out of the Contact group if it didn't impose sanctions on Serbia for Milosevic's persistent refusals to start unconditional dialogue with Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. The U.S. administration expected most opposition from the Russians, but it was quite surprised to see that the Italian and French position on the matter was very much the same. It appears that even Britain and Germany refused to support any extreme measures against Serbia.

CONFUSION: Naturally, all parties were guided by their own separate interests.  Using their productive strategy "Why do you say Serbia when you mean dollars", the Russians once again put their alleged ties with Serbia on the table and exchanged it at the right moment for Western money. The Italians were protecting their investments in Serbia. The French-American relations have been tense for some time due to a conflict of various interests, including territories in Africa and the NATO command structure. Kosovo was a good opportunity to settle old scores. The Germans have no interest in burning their bridges to Belgrade because that would jeopardize the repatriation of ethnic Albanians. The British were least concerned about the Kosovo problem, so they could afford to be neutral (to a certain extent) this time round. When you put together all these conflicting interests, it is clear that the Contact group session ended the only way it could. It brought a number of half-measures and half-threats, as well as another two sessions set for May 8 in London and May 20 in Paris.

Even the Americans don't know how to put out the fire that has just started in Kosovo. Their main concern is not Kosovo itself, but the possibility of the clashes spilling over into Macedonia and Albania. The Contact group countries have not even agreed whose troops to send to these countries in case a large-scale conflict breaks out. The Americans would prefer to provide logistic support only and have someone else send their ground troops. The French and the British have had a bad experience in Bosnia with such a "division of duties", meaning they won't let the U.S. get away with it this time. In appears that the U.S. wants a change in Kosovo's status within the Yugoslav federation, without changing the borders. The problem is that neither threats nor concessions have so far compelled Milosevic to cooperate. "He doesn't seem to understand that we are trying to help him", said a frustrated Western diplomat. The recent statement by a State Department spokesman, James Folly, best illustrates the international community's indecisiveness about Kosovo. Folly said the Yugoslav army's presence in the region bordering Albania was legal and legitimate, adding that it used "excessive force" to deal with the situation there.

SIGNALS: Milosevic is apparently aware of the rifts within the international community and he is taking full advantage of them. Rifts within the international community have always played into his hands. The state-controlled media are criticizing U.S. policy, using vocabulary even Stalin's propaganda experts would have been proud of, but there are indications that the referendum "victory" is not as obvious as it seemed. They appeared in Ratko Markovic's letter inviting Ibrahim Rugova for talks without mentioning Serbia's constitution or qualifying the ethnic Albanians as a minority. The Sunday edition of the daily Politika brought Tanjug's favorable comment on some Contact group positions condemning terrorism and ruling out independence for Kosovo.

"It seems that the Serbian side has given up on some of its conditions. We would like all conditions to be given up", said a U.S. diplomat.

The letter and the comment incited a number of rumors on "secret negotiations which are well underway", a "lex specialis" for Kosovo and even a Sino-French initiative.
Room for hope appeared after the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, visited Belgrade. Ivanov came out of the meeting with his hosts happy and he even told Russian reporters that he managed to persuade Milosevic to open a CSCE office in Belgrade and even accept Felipe Gonzales as the organization's special envoy in Yugoslavia. Milosevic's cabinet, however, issued a brief statement to the effect that the two sides "exchanged views on the situation in the region". Nothing was said about the CSCE or Felipe Gonzales.

There was hardly anything behind Ivanov's grin. Neither France nor China can get us out of this mess. Not even Russia can. One brief look at the situation on the ground is enough to realize that we are further from a peaceful solution to the Kosovo crisis today than we were yesterday, and that we will probably be even further tomorrow. Apart from Milosevic's insubordination, the West also has to deal with a shadow hanging over Rugova's legitimacy. His popularity among the ethnic Albanians has taken a fall, his party has split into two while he keeps saying that he can do nothing to change the situation on the ground. "He keeps saying the same thing. I sometimes wonder if we are talking to the right person", the head of a Western diplomatic mission said upon his delegation's return from Kosovo's capital Pristina.

There are opinions that Miosevic will want to talk to the ethnic Albanians only when their leadership manages to bring under control the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK). Not one of the ethnic Albanian leaders, however, has managed to do that so far, although Kosovo's "exile Prime Minister" Bujar Bukosi would like to be in that position.
We have an equation with three undetermined factors; the international community's strategy, Milosevic's intentions and the ethnic Albanian leaders' legitimacy. The Kosovo problem can't be solved until at least two of them are determined.