Just Kidding

At the usually decorous Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe meeting in Stockholm, diplomats rocketed from their seats when Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev tossed out the diplomatic equivalent of a fragmentation grenade: a blistering anti-Western philippic right out of the cold war. After giving delegates 30 minutes to digest demands that the West immediately end U.N. sanctions in Serbia and get out of the Baltics, Kozyrev returned to explain that the speech was a ruse. His intended message: Don't take Russian democracy for granted.