Delay Is the Enemy

The mammoth job of rebuilding Kosovo and repatriating the nearly 900,000 ethnic Albanians who were driven from their homes there moved a step forward with Yugoslavia’s agreement Wednesday to a timetable for withdrawing its military forces from the province.

The weeklong delay between President Slobodan Milosevic’s acceptance of NATO’s terms for ending the conflict and today’s scheduled start of a military withdrawal has been costly. While Milosevic procrastinated, hundreds of Yugoslav soldiers were killed by NATO bombs and hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians still in Kosovo were compelled to suffer further at the hands of the Serbs. Milosevic might still be stalling had not Russia abandoned its support for his cause by joining with the G-7 nations in a draft resolution to be considered by the U.N. Security Council.

The Serb forces are being given 11 days to leave Kosovo. The White House insists that NATO will continue bombing until withdrawal of the first Serb units is verified and preparations for the departure of the rest are clear.

China and Russia, both permanent members of the Security Council with veto power, insist the bombing must cease before they will let the council consider the draft resolution. A key section of the document sanctions international peacekeeping operations in Kosovo, in which NATO would take the lead. A delay in approving the resolution could hold up the entry of U.S., British, French, German and other NATO forces and the relocation of refugees now in Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. Delay would also leave a dangerous vacuum that the revenge-minded irregulars of the Kosovo Liberation Army might use to attack Serb civilians and retreating soldiers.

Relief agencies face a daunting task. The homes and businesses of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians have been looted and destroyed. It will be some time before the full extent of the humanitarian tragedy is known. Any delay by the Security Council in approving the start of peacekeeping and relief operations would deepen the disaster.