THE REAL VICTORS IN KOSOVO

Geneva - Everyone involved in the strange Kosovo conflict is claiming victory - except for its chief victims, the Albanians.

Serbia's ruler, Slobodan Milosevic, has saved his own skin, evaded prosecution for war crimes, and managed, at least for now, to keep Kosovo, which was 93% Albanian until this year's ethnic terror, under Serb sovereignty. NATO's promises to the Kosovars of a future vote on independence have been forgotten in the rush to end the war.

The muddled accord almost certainly assures continued violence in Kosovo and a legion of future troubles for the Balkans. Many of the one million Albanian refugees are afraid to return to Kosovo, whose borders will remain under Serb military and police control, thus cementing Milosevic's terrorism. Albanians know once NATO loses interest in Kosovo, the Serbs will be back. Milosevic, who keeps power by creating trouble, will now turn his perpetual-motion crisis machine on neighboring Montenegro, unstable Macedonia, Bosnia, and Serbia's forgotten Muslim region of Sanjak. He will emerge from the war a hero and inspiration to the growing force of racism among Balkan Slavs and the Greeks.

The `peace' deal is being hailed as a triumph of sensible internationalism by the curious, ad hoc alliance of groups that opposed the war: leftists, right-wing isolationists, anti-Americans, and Muslim-haters. Far from a triumph, it is a craven surrender to expediency by NATO's weak-willed leaders. At the same time, the western democracies have not only invited Russia and China to meddle in the Balkans, they are relying on them as `partners in peace.'

Misery loves company; so do repressive regimes. It was no coincidence semi-communist Russia, and fully communist China, sprang to the defense of Serbia, Europe's last communist state. Nor that Moscow and Beijing reacted furiously to NATO's half-hearted intervention in Kosovo to protect human rights. Both are major vioo peacekeeping force. The Russian contingent, which was said to eventually number 10,000 troops, will be the second largest military force after the British. Far from keeping peace, the Russians will promote the interests of the outlaw Serb regime and, of course, Moscow's own centuries-old strategic ambitions in the Balkans, as Russia's seizure of Pristina airport showed this weekend.

China has been enlisted in the `peace process' because its support in the UN Security Counci Bejing's campaign to swamp the region with Han Chinese settlers, repeating the process of Chinese ethnic inundation in Inner Mongolia and Tibet.

China recently executed a score of Uighurs, arrested hundreds of suspected nationalists, and imposed martial law in many regions of Sinkiang. While Chinese repression in Tibet has provoked worldwide protest, its equally brutal policies in Sinkiang remain almost unknown. Not surprisingly, NATO intervention to save the Kosovars from Serb ethnic terror set off alarm bells in Beijing, which fears foreign action over its own violations of human and national rights.

No wonder, then, that Russia and China, sought to be involved in Kosovo. Under the guise of peacekeeping, Moscow and Beijing will try to ensure Kosovo never gains independence from Serb rule, a precedent that would embolden and encourage their own long-oppressed Muslim colonial subjects.

War and peace often make strange bedfellows. But NATO did not need to invite such violators of rights to join its councils over Kosovo. NATO troops massed on Serbia's borders before the bombing campaign would have ended this war before it began, saving Serbia and Kosovo from devastation, and the need to beg Russia and China for help. By failing to deploy sufficient military force - and being seen as ready to use it - NATO has created a quagmire it will long regret. Seeking the aid of big oppressors to curb a small oppressor makes a mockery of NATO's

humanitarian mission.

Russia, and to a lesser degree, China are the big winners of this botched war, and at no cost to themselves. NATO and Serbia have achieved merely Pyrrhic victories. They have made a desert, and call it peace. The Kosovar Albanians have lost everything.