The New York Times

Monday, June 14, 1999

Kosovo and the Kremlin

Russia may no longer be a superpower, but it still has the means to bedevil the United States and NATO. It took the unexpected movement of only 200 or so heavily armed Russian troops into Kosovo over the weekend to disrupt NATO peacekeeping operations and to remind everyone that Moscow can thoroughly complicate the postwar scene in Yugoslavia. There should be no place in Kosovo for freelance Russian forces, but Moscow can play an important peacekeeping role if it will work in cooperation with NATO. The White House and the Kremlin urgently need to devise a way to make that coordination possible. To that end, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin talked by phone for an hour yesterday and plan to speak again today.

A small contingent of Russian soldiers and tanks parked at the airport outside Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, may not seem like a serious impediment to the 50,000 NATO peacekeepers now starting to fan out across the province. For the most part, the arrival of British, French, German, American and Italian troops has gone well, though there have been several violent confrontations with retreating Serbian units.

But the Russians, with the help of Serbian soldiers, peacefully blocked the British from taking control of the airport, which is needed for the delivery of military and relief supplies. More important, their presence serves as an emphatic statement by Moscow that it intends to assert its influence in Kosovo, whether NATO likes it or not, and is in no mood to take orders from the alliance.

To some extent, the Russian move may have been designed to counter intense criticism at home about the Kremlin's help in negotiating an end to the war mostly on NATO terms. Many Russians believe Moscow betrayed its Slavic allies in Belgrade, and some top military commanders have made little secret of their contempt for the Russian diplomacy. It was unnerving on Friday night to find the Russians troops rolling into Kosovo just hours after Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov assured Washington no such step would be taken.

But Washington should not buy Mr. Ivanov's explanation that the move was a mistake, and should be wary of speculation that President Boris Yeltsin is so politically weakened that the generals are dictating policy. The Russian military, however diminished it may be by budget cuts and sinking morale, remains a professional institution with a clear chain of command and a strong tradition of civilian control. It seems more likely that President Yeltsin quietly approved the march into Kosovo and did not bother to tell Mr. Ivanov. That impression was reinforced by the promotion on Saturday of the Russian commander in Kosovo.

As a practical matter, there is not much NATO can do to evict the Russians or to prevent reinforcements from arriving. Escalating military tensions with Moscow would serve no one's interest. That means the problem must be resolved by Mr. Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin and their aides.

Washington is right to insist on a unified command for peacekeeping forces in Kosovo. The risk of chaos and accidental confrontation is too great if Russian troops roam freely about Kosovo. Nor should Russia be given exclusive control over a separate sector of the province. That could be tantamount to partition, a step that should be avoided and certainly not taken by fiat.

But NATO should recognize that the Russian military, at this sensitive moment, cannot be seen as taking direct orders from the alliance. Some kind of face-saving procedure must be developed that gives Russian forces considerable latitude within the peacekeeping operation. That might involve giving them responsibility for some portion of territory within one or more of the five allied sectors. The war in Yugoslavia is over, but the events of the weekend show how hard it will be to produce an enduring peace. Securing the cooperation of Russia is essential to everything else.