Ready to Rumble Again

By Johanna McGeary/Belgrade

Sensible people would sign this agreement. The 81-page peace document on the table in Paris may not satisfy the full ambitions of either side in the Kosovo struggle, but it offers advantages all around. While it doesn't give the Albanian Kosovars the independence they crave, it would afford them three years of breathing room under international protection to practice being a state. After that, they could come back to negotiate or fight for full freedom from Serb rule. While Slobodan Milosevic would have to swallow Kosovar autonomy and NATO peacekeepers inside his territory, he'd get out from under a hard-to-finish war that earns him international opprobrium, and he'd retain ownership of land regarded by Serbs as the heart of their nation.

But we're not dealing here with entirely sensible people. The whiff of superpower attention went to the head of Kosovo's Albanians as they savored their first steps onto the world stage, prolonging the negotiations and frittering away pressure that was supposed to be reserved for the Serbs. Milosevic bathed in ego gratification as the world's diplomats trooped to his door. Both sides seemed to think, Why not keep this game going?

Last week the ethnic Albanians were the first to see sense. Their upstart army, the K.L.A., had won international confirmation of its meteoric rise to pre-eminent power in the would-be state. By appearing to be willing to give up their arms and dream of independence in exchange for a strong Western umbrella, the Kosovars could show up Serb belligerence. It was smart tactics: if the Serbs refused to go along, the Kosovars wouldn't have to give up anything. So the ethnic Albanians sat down and signed the deal.

But Milosevic? His delegation came and went each day in Paris demanding pages of impossible changes, then kissed off the plan entirely as a "fake document." In the streets of Belgrade, Serbs reiterated their attachment to Kosovo but secretly believed a last-minute deal would be made to ward off NATO bombs. Not until Thursday night did Serbian state television even begin to hint that the threat of air strikes was growing real. And somewhere, burrowed into the rooms of the old Tito residence he rarely leaves, Milosevic was mulling over his difficult choices.

In one sense, the Serb strongman was exactly where he most likes to be--at the pivot of an international crisis. He has built his career, as biographer Slavoljub Djukic puts it, by being both pyromaniac and fireman--igniting crises, then convincing people that only he can put the fires out. But the Kosovo conflagration he first lighted in 1989--by stripping away the rights of the ethnic Albanians who make up 90% of the province's population--is proving tricky to put out. Now he faces a perilous calculus: Is it riskier to cave in to Western demands or to suffer through air strikes?

Like other dictators of this age, Milosevic makes these calculations in virtual isolation. He rarely appears in public, never travels anywhere. He nominally consults an inner circle of perhaps 15, but his only true adviser is his ambitious, neocommunist wife Mira Markovic. "His pride at being a guy everyone comes to is huge," says a Western diplomat. "But his purpose is to throw people into confusion."

No dictator ought to be able to survive after he has brought his country to ruin the way Milosevic has. Yugoslavia's gdp is half what it was in 1989; more than 25% of the workforce is fully unemployed; and the country is deep in debt. Says Mladjan Dinkic, coordinator of a group of independent economic reformers: "Whenever people start to realize how bad things really are, Milosevic creates a new crisis to paralyze them."

Those who know the Serb leader best say he is perfectly capable of sacrificing Kosovo when the decision makes political sense. Even as the Paris talks foundered, most in Belgrade believed he would find a way to back down. But in Washington, officials feared Milosevic had already opted to let bombs fall. By last week he had massed some 40,000 Serb troops along the borders--hardly an optimistic sign. The allies may undertake another run at diplomacy to give Milosevic a last chance--yet another one--to retreat. But Milosevic may have decided limited bombing is in his best interests.

Pentagon officials are less sure it is in theirs. While President Clinton thundered last week about NATO determination--"If we and our allies do not have the will to act, there will be more massacres," he said Friday--the Pentagon's top brass went to Capitol Hill to raise some questions. "Will the strikes achieve an end?" Marine Commandant General Charles Krulak asked. "What happens if Milosevic doesn't come back to the table? What if he uses this as a reason to attack? What is the endgame?" Says a Navy officer: "He can just say no--no matter how much pain we inflict."

So the Clinton Administration is falling back on the same weak rationale it offered for the December air strikes on Baghdad: the purpose is not to bomb Milosevic into submission but to cripple his military so he can't devastate Kosovo. "We hope," said a Pentagon spokesman, "that Milosevic has the good sense to prefer negotiation." But with U.S. and NATO credibility on the line, hoping for good sense from the Serbs may be the ultimate Balkan folly.

--With reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington