The New York Times

April 2, 1999

ON MY MIND

By A.M.ROSENTHAL

Exporting Kosovo

Buoyed by their role in helping turn a Balkan civil war into shivering, desolate, crowds of refugees, a political booby trap for America unmatched since Vietnam, a perversion of NATO purpose and a planning debacle, the 15 nations of the European Union are now trying to export their collective political wisdom to shape the Mideast, which may God in Heaven forfend.

Of course, the European Union did have great assistance in the Kosovo tragedy -- the abominable thug who is Serbia's dictator, and a Kosovo Liberation Army with a yearning itself for ethnic expulsions, of Serbs.

Particularly important has been President Clinton. He was elected nude of experience in or feeling for foreign and military matters. But in six years in office he has reached new heights of ineptitude, exhibiting the attachment to truth and candor that became his trademark at home.

Still the E.U. came up with ideas guaranteed to bear fruit -- of tragedy. Europe's mind-set about the Mideast is pretty much the same that brought the fall into the pit of Balkan war. They are telling Israel that all of Jerusalem, not merely what Palestinians claim as their capital for the while, is a corpus separatum, separate international entity, not an inch of it legally under Israeli control. They are telling Israelis and Palestinians that nobody has the right to try to stop the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Palestinian independence and Jerusalem are supposed to be decided during the final series of Israel-Palestinian talks. So there is not much reason to go ahead with it, is there? Just let the two sides fight it out to the death, while the European Union thinks up more great ideas.

Don't be surprised at these proposals -- the European nations are simply selecting a time that could do most damage to disinter their old vicious gambit that the U.N. partition resolution of 1947 still stands.

The Jews agreed to partition and an internationalized Jerusalem in desperate pursuit of acceptance of their homeland by the Arabs. The Arabs rejected the resolution and fell on the Jews then and throughout the next half a century. Israel declared the resolution nullified.

Why do the Europeans commit this act of public grave-robbing now? One -- Europe's mercantile policy toward the Arabs: oil and weapons contracts in feudal Arab countries are put far above profits to be made with high-tech Israel. Centuries of warfare among European tribes have dulled their brains. Two -- they don't, well, care for Israel very much.

In Israel, Likud and Labor told Germany, current president of the E.U., to stuff these proposals. But Palestinians are already using them as a pressure point against Israel. If they go on too long, they will kill negotiations permanently and invite war. Kosovo will seem a merry little place.

The Europeans have no "plan" for Mideast agreement. Neither do they, NATO or Washington have one in Kosovo.

Bernard Trainor, retired Marine lieutenant general, put it best on MSNBC: all they have in Kosovo is a script. So, when the Serbs did not follow the script by surrendering and instead drove more Albanians out of Kosovo, NATO spokesmen looked all sad and hurt.

Where were the supplies for the refugees that should have been stockpiled? Coming; show check in mail.

The script treats Serbs as inferiors who would docilely give up under bombing -- which neither they, nor the British nor the Russians did in World War II.

Will the world be upset about Germans bombing children and grandchildren of the million Serbs the Nazis killed? Drop bombs, cut upset shot.

If Serbs lose Kosovo they will return to combat soon. They may prefer to fight on somebody else's land for a change -- like neighboring Hungary. Now it is a NATO member entitled to full NATO protection -- "full" meaning including nuclear.

What to show? Nothing; cut from script. What about from our minds? Shut up. Bill Clinton, not golfing today, says carry on.

Write new scene. Bring in troops, persuade some refugees to return, guard them. But for how long, chief?

Could we show us helping others attain some liberty -- Iraqis, Kurds, Tibetans, Sudanese? And please, please, could we show a policy? Then we could have an honest plan. But what does a policy look like? I forget.

Shut up and get on the team.