Caution in Kosovo

Belgrade’s acceptance of a NATO-supported peace plan for Kosovo has brought expressions of relief from ordinary Yugoslavs and cautionary words from Washington. The relief comes from the foreseeable end to 2 1/2 months of NATO bombing that has crippled Yugoslavia’s economy and taken the lives of thousands of Serb combatants and hundreds of civilians. The caution of U.S. officials is shaped by the certainty that Yugoslavia’s President Slobodan Milosevic is a consummate deceiver whose promises are worthless. The value of the peace plan will be determined by deeds on the ground--by “implementation, implementation and implementation,” in the words of the State Department.

The plan approved by the Serb parliament--Kosovo is a province of Serbia--appears to meet NATO’s essential objectives. All Serb military, police and paramilitary forces in Kosovo are to be promptly withdrawn. U.N.-authorized military and civilian relief personnel would then be deployed--”with fundamental participation by NATO . . . under unified command and control”--to allow the safe return of all the expelled Kosovars. Kosovo would get “substantial autonomy” but not independence, and the irregulars of the independence-minded Kosovo Liberation Army are to be disarmed. Belgrade would be represented in the province by a limited number of security and administrative personnel. NATO bombing would stop as soon as the Serbian military withdrawal from Kosovo began and was verified.

Some members of the Serbian parliament denounced the peace plan as a capitulation by Milosevic. Western leaders have avoided using that word, but it’s hard to interpret the accord as anything other than an abject knuckling under by the Yugoslav leader. Milosevic would be compelled to accept foreign troops on Serbian soil, something he--and the parliament--adamantly rejected on March 23. That rejection set in motion the bombing campaign that has battered Yugoslavia’s infrastructure and demoralized its people. Under fire at home, Milosevic can be expected to claim that the cause he led was honorable and the defeat his country suffered was glorious. But there is no honor in the murder, mayhem and rape his forces carried out in Kosovo, and there is no glory in the destruction he brought his nation.

Critical details of the peace plan are yet to be settled. The first order of business probably will be a U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning the peacekeeping mission that 50,000 NATO troops, joined by others, are prepared to begin. Russia says it intends to send its own soldiers to Kosovo, but it’s far from clear whether Moscow will put them under NATO control. U.S. officials are insisting on a unified command, if only to keep Kosovo from de facto partition. What happens to the peace plan and to U.S.-Russia relations if Moscow refuses to accept NATO’s authority is an open and troubling question.

Troubling too is how NATO intends to deal with Milosevic, an indicted war criminal whose removal from power Western officials see as imperative if Yugoslavia is to be democratized and brought back into the community of nations. In the light of his sordid record--both in Bosnia and his own country--it would be folly to trust him to carry out Serbia’s part in the peace plan. The next few weeks are likely to reveal far more about the crimes his forces perpetrated in Kosovo. Perhaps then the Serbs will move to rid themselves of the false leader who brought them so much destruction and dishonor.