[ALBSA-Info] News Analysis: NATO Adrift in the Balkans

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

News Analysis: NATO Adrift in the Balkans

By STEVEN ERLANGER
 
The New York Times 

ELGRADE, Serbia, March 11 — NATO is floundering in the Balkans, reaping the 
consequences of a refusal to deal seriously with the problems and aspirations 
of the Albanians it went to war to protect.

The alliance's failure to confront the armed, organized Albanians who are 
fighting to drive non-Albanians out of Kosovo, enlarge the province and make 
it independent has allowed them to grow into a serious regional threat. There 
has been new fighting in Albanian-dominated areas of southern Serbia and now 
also, farther south, in Macedonia.

The West could once blame Slobodan Milosevic for instability in the Balkans. 
But he is gone now, replaced by democrats friendly to the West. Yet his 
ouster has created new difficulties and uncertainties, and the borders of 
Kosovo are ringed with tension and gunfire, putting serious new pressure on 
the West's allies in Belgrade and Macedonia.

American troops have rushed to help defend fragile Macedonia, which would 
disintegrate in violence if the militants get significant support from the 
large minority of ethnic Albanians there. But the desire of the Bush 
administration to reduce the American military presence in the Balkans is 
well known, and combined with the reluctance of American commanders to take 
casualties, it has emboldened the militants, other Western officials say.

Some already compare Macedonia to Kosovo in early 1998, when the Kosovo 
Liberation Army was organizing in the hills.

Other nationalisms are again resurgent.

With Montenegro also pressing to secede from Yugoslavia against Western wishe
s, and the Bosnian Croats insisting that the federal Bosnia-Herzegovina 
imposed by the 1995 Dayton accord is no longer valid, the West is scrambling 
to restore the stability in the Balkans it fought to establish.

"With Milosevic gone and the Serbs out of Kosovo, NATO has become the single 
guarantor of stability and security in the Balkans," a senior Western 
diplomat said. "But it is not clear that NATO wants to do the job. 

Confronting Albanian extremists could cost lives, which is the Pentagon's 
nightmare, and it could make NATO forces a target in Kosovo itself."

But the refusal to confront the extremists, he continued, "sends a clear 
signal to them to keep pushing for what they want."

Slobodan Samardzic, a senior adviser to President Vojislav Kostunica of 
Yugoslavia, has worked with NATO on the idea of allowing the Yugoslav Army 
back, gradually, into the three-mile zone of separation in Serbian territory 
around Kosovo, intended originally to keep Yugoslav and NATO forces apart, in 
which the militants have found safe harbor.

"We want to cooperate with NATO, and anyway, we don't have another choice," 
Mr. Samardzic said. "But NATO is now facing the very nature of the problem, 
which is the Albanian dream of Kosovo as an independent state, and the 
project for a greater Albania — first to fight for autonomy and then for 
independence. And the method of the militant groups led by the Kosovo 
Liberation Army, no matter what they call themselves in southern Serbia or in 
Macedonia, is not to solve minority problems in a democratic way, but to make 
this zone of insecurity even more insecure, to step-by-step consolidate more 
land and make new frontiers."

The United Nations resolution that ended the Kosovo war promises Kosovo 
substantial autonomy but leaves its final status unresolved, subject to some 
future negotiation, while confirming that the territory is a sovereign part 
of Yugoslavia. 

But nearly all the Albanians in Kosovo reject the idea of any future rule 
from Belgrade, no matter how democratic, and most support an independent 
state. They cannot forget the repression by the Serbs, the atrocities 
committed by President Milosevic's forces sent to battle the Kosovo 
Liberation Army in 1998 and 1999, or the mass expulsions of the Kosovo war.

While many moderate Albanians do not approve of the forced expulsion or 
killings of Serbs, and do not condone the fighting in southern Serbia or 
Macedonia, they are afraid to confront the organized men with guns.

"The West has never made it clear enough to the Albanians that we are not 
there to ensure Albanian independence and promote Albanian interests, but 
we're there to promote our interests, which are a stable Balkans," another 
senior Western diplomat said. "We're all guilty of this. The serious problems 
now are a result of 18 months of indecisiveness, and a lot of soft decisions 
dancing around the real issues, without dealing with them."

He and other officials in Kosovo defined those issues as the connection 
between Albanian former military leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, now 
politicians, and the "new" militants; the connection between those same 
leaders and organized crime; the organized effort to intimidate the few Serbs 
remaining in southern Kosovo into selling their property and leaving for 
Serbia; the unchallenged partition of Kosovo in Mitrovica, where militant 
Serbs dominate the northern half of the city, and most important, the refusal 
or inability to punish crime when it happens.

Last year, when British troops discovered a huge and recently used cache of 
arms in Drenica, in territory controlled by Agim Ceku, the commander of the 
supposedly disbanded and disarmed K.L.A., there was a debate about cracking 
down, the diplomats said. "There was much talk about force protection and 
fear of a backlash against KFOR," a senior diplomat said, using the acronym 
for the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo. "What happened? Nothing."

Similarly last month, when a busload of Serbs, escorted by peacekeepers, was 
blown up by a carefully designed bomb triggered by wire, "there was a perfect 
opportunity for a crackdown," a senior international official in Kosovo said. 
"But no one did anything, and the message of impunity is loud and clear."

The Bush administration has refused to let NATO troops, despite British 
arguments, go into the three- mile buffer zone to deal with the armed 
Albanians in the Presevo Valley. Instead, Washington wants the Yugoslav Army 
to do it, but under careful monitoring and with limited weaponry. As a start, 
NATO has suggested the most dangerous part of the zone, a wedge on the border 
between Serbia and Macedonia.

Mr. Kostunica has agreed, but he is cautious, aides say, understanding that 
the army could be fired upon from three sides. He would prefer to see other 
parts of the zone dismantled at the same time, especially along northern 
Kosovo, which is dominated by Serbs. To date, the Albanians have not agreed 
to let the Serbs back into the zone. 

"KFOR is abandoning the border and is inviting our army into the crossfire," 
Mr. Kostunica said. "The army will of course do this, but it now undoubtedly 
has to make up for the mistakes of others." 

Mr. Samardzic said the Europeans and Americans should have more confidence in 
the ability of the new Yugoslav leaders to resolve the conflict in southern 
Serbia. 

Belgrade would allow foreign observers and journalists to report freely on 
the activities of the army in the zone, and is trying to bring local 
Albanians back into government and the police, he said. 

"The point is to isolate the militants," he said. "If they are not willing to 
have a cease-fire and negotiate, they should be diplomatically isolated. And 
if NATO is unwilling to intervene directly, the risks of settling the problem 
should be given over to us."