Paris, Tuesday, December 15, 1998

Unlikely Peace for Kosovo

The Washington Post

From some of the self-congratulations circulating among

U.S. and European officials, you might assume that the

peace deal they brokered in Kosovo is working out.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. It was a weak deal to

begin with, and now, Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian

strongman, is flouting it.

After unleashing a seven-month war of terror against ethnic

Albanians in the province of Kosovo, Mr. Milosevic

promised he would let international war crimes investigators

look for evidence of atrocities. Now he will not give them

visas. He promised a general amnesty for ethnic Albanians

whom his troops had rounded up during the fighting. But as

The Post's R. Jeffrey Smith documented, many still are

being tortured and sentenced to prison on the basis of little

or no evidence. As many as 1,500 are in detention, and

they are not just prisoners from the summer's fighting; the

Serbian police arrest and kidnap civilians even now.

The Yugoslav president promised to allow 2,000 civilian

''verifiers'' from other countries to monitor the supposed

peace in Kosovo, but he continues to delay visas for them

and make their work difficult. The force, which the

American diplomat Richard Holbrooke said in October

needed to be constituted with urgency, still is not up and

running. The peace agreement allowed Mr. Milosevic to

keep more troops in Kosovo than the United Nations had

wanted, but he is violating even that generous limit. Nor

has the shooting stopped. Just last week a Serbian deputy

prime minister threatened both the international verifiers

and Kosovo itself, warning that Serbian forces might

resume their onslaught - ''but this time we shall go to the

end.''

The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Javier

Solana Madariaga, responded that the alliance would not

''tolerate'' such statements. But so far NATO has tolerated

bellicose actions and words alike. Partly as a result, most of

the Kosovars displaced by the Serbs' summer bombardment,

while they have descended from the mountains and no

longer face starvation, still have not returned to their

homes. Those who have returned usually have found that

Serbian forces have destroyed their houses, poisoned their

wells and booby-trapped their farms with explosives. It is

hard to see how Mr. Milosevic can continue to claim to rule

over a land to which he so thoroughly has laid waste.

U.S. diplomats pursue a political agreement that would give

Kosovo a large measure of autonomy inside Mr. Milosevic's

Yugoslavia. Their urgency stems from an understanding

that full-scale fighting is likely to resume in spring. But Mr.

Milosevic's scorn for promises should serve as a warning

about the value of any pact he makes. Without NATO

ground forces in Kosovo or democratization in Serbia,

peace in Kosovo remains unlikely.