Disappointed restaurant patriots and enthusiasts for Russian aviation

Certainly, everything he accepted now and to which he agreed could have been accepted long time ago.  Many lives would not have been lost, many houses would have been left undamaged, NATO intervention would not have been hanging in the air and - if you like - Milosevic would have been forced to a make fewer concessions.  Still, insignificantly fewer.
There is no need for proving that the policy which he has conducted in the past ten years in Kosovo and on Kosovo has been unavoidably directed toward the present situation.  The credits taken during all that time simply had to be paid back with all applicable interests - both incremental and annual.  That is something with which restaurant patriots and enthusiasts for Russian aviation, the cornerstones of that policy, are very disappointed, despite all the consequences of intervention.  On the other hand it is being noted will all fairness that Milosevic is serving up all the bills for his Government to the hard-struck citizens and economic despair, and that the agreement with the international community is called national insult.

In such a situation, the deal with Holbrooke is certainly not something which strengthens personal power - for that purpose, isolation, war with the rest of the world and bare dictatorship are far more efficient.  Accepting for that reason nearly everything that was demanded of him, Milosevic perhaps for the first time in his career took pity on his people.  He spared them guided missiles, smart and even stupider bombs and, if there is sincerity in telegram wishes which the state media are sending to him in enormous numbers, this is where it should be looked for.  In the final analysis, he made the only possible good move.

Just to be completely clear: there is no amnesty for Milosevic when the question concerns policies which he conducted during the crisis; at its very climax, not to go into the reasons, he behaved in an ultimately responsible manner.  That is something that is worth giving some sort of credit to.

That is why there is no use in lamenting over Kosovo - under the shadow of bombing, the black & red Talibans in search of witches and final judgments -as the Serbian holy land, the spiritual cradle and the most valued word.  Or - come what may.  If for nothing else, than at least because since 1986 very few people in the Serbian public sphere took any time over the problem of Kosovo, or offered any relevant alternative to Milosevic's answer.  And both explicitly and implicitly, even since the Battle of Kosovo, he had been given the go-ahead for dealing with Kosovo, and there is no going back on that responsibility.

If "tomahawks" have been avoided, the serious crisis in the state still remains.  Suspending newspapers and terrorizing the media, insistence on a half-declared state of war and decrees which go against the law bode no good.  Are the coalition partners in power working behind each other's backs?  Does anyone think perhaps that under the auspices of the reached agreement on Kosovo it is possible to put up with the total legalization of a showdown with independent media which, in as much as they can, have the only function of an opposition to the regime?  The only certainty is that clashes and conflicts in a state such as ours are inevitable.  In prognosticating outcomes, neither too much optimism or pessimism are becoming.  More than anything else, from the application of the eleven points of the agreement on Kosovo, it will be possible to clearly see the development of events.