President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia has been playing the international community for a fool for too long. But the horrific situation in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo has been allowed by the international community, particularly NATO, because if it had the political will it certainly had the military power to stop the killing of innocent people.
The West has several difficulties, one of them caused by the niceties of international law that justify massive intervention when, say, Kuwait, is invaded but do not strictly justify intervention in Kosovo. The trouble is that Kosovo is a province of Yugoslavia and as such an integral part of Yugoslavia, even if 90 per cent of its inhabitants are ethnic Albanians. If a nation state is invaded, articles of the United Nations allow response.
A further problem is that some NATO Governments are worried that if Kosovo became independent it could stir conflict in Macedonia and Montenegro, which also have ethnic Albanian minorities.
Another obstacle is that there are up to 200 international peace-keepers and observers of various kinds in Kosovo who could be taken hostage by Serbian forces or who would be in danger from fire from NATO air strikes.
Of course, the greatest obstacle for the West to bring a solution is that western governments fear the backlash likely from their voters if there are any dead bodies brought home. This would virtually rule out any ground action without a significant change in political will.
Mr Milosevic wrongly states that Serbian action in Kosovo is merely an internal police matter to deal with terrorism from the Kosovo Liberation Army. Unfortunately it is too easy for the KLA to provoke the Serbs, and the Serbs always over-react by taking reprisals and killing civilians.
Western governments must, surely, by now realise that they are dealing with an untrustworthy, murderous thug in Slobodan Milosevic. Nothing he says can be relied on. His political agenda is to have greatest amount of territory for the greatest number of Serbs possible. He has no concern or respect for any other ethnic or religious group to the extent that he is willing to engage in intimidation, expulsion and outright murder.
He only understands force. Western governments must now determine whether they are willing to allow a bloodbath in Kosovo — for that is where it is heading — or whether they will risk some military casualties to demonstrate to Mr Milosevic that wholesale murder will not be tolerated.
His bluff must be called.
In a small way the US was successful in calling on bluff. Mr Milosevic ordered the expulsion of US peace monitor William Walker for publicly accusing the Serbs of massacring 45 ethnic Albanians whose mutilated bodies were discovered Saturday in a gully outside the Kosovo village of Racak. Mr Milosevic set a deadline. Mr Walker rightly ignored it, staying in Yugoslavia as is his right under the accords brokered a year ago and agreed to by Mr Milosevic. Nothing has happened to expel him.
It would have been better if the troops of western governments under the auspices of the United Nations or NATO had similarly called his bluff when he refused to allow Judge Louise Arbour, the chief prosecutor of the
United Nations Hague War Crimes Tribunal, into the country.
The time has come for the west to dictate to Mr Milosevic, rather than the other way round. He should be told that he must withdraw Serbian troops from Kosovo and restore the internal autonomy of the province that prevailed before 1989. And if he does not the west will actively pursue full independence for Kosovo and will match that demand with whatever force necessary.
The consequences of not taking that course are too horrific and too inevitable to contemplate. Mr Milosevic will engage in another campaign of ethnic cleansing and the west will sit on the sidelines wringing its hands and issuing wordy condemnations while civilians in Kosovo are murdered.