Mission Impossible

Richard Holbrooke has become Washington's favorite last-ditch diplomat. The newly nominated ambassador to the U.N. doesn't balk at hopeless missions, but he doesn't always succeed either. Three years ago, he waded into the intractable war in Bosnia and crafted a cease-fire that has lasted to this day. In 1997, as President Clinton's special envoy, he stepped into the 24-year-old struggle between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus and has so far achieved no major breakthrough. Last week he gamely turned his hand to the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, the site of a festering rebellion between 1.8 million ethnic Albanians and their Serb overlords, and quickly found himself in a diplomatic theater of the absurd.

June 23, 8:30 a.m., aboard a U.S. Air Force C-20 executive jet. Holbrooke flips through confidential State Department cables and contemplates the task ahead. He has been dispatched to persuade Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian rebels to stop shooting and start talking. As he prepares to face the Balkan furies again, Holbrooke sits quietly, looking anxious. "The goal is to prevent a war," he tells TIME, which was given exclusive access to the trip. "But it may be impossible."

All Balkan conflicts are complex, but this one is a dilly. The province, about half the size of New Jersey, is internationally recognized as a territorial part of Serb-ruled Yugoslavia, land they hold dear as their sacred ancestral home. But its 2 million inhabitants are 90% ethnic Albanians, known as Kosovars, who have long felt stifled under the domination of Belgrade. Their patience has been running out since 1989, when Milosevic revoked their autonomy and two years later launched a violent crackdown.

Now tempers on both sides are exploding as the Kosovars demand full independence and Milosevic bids to bring the rebels to heel. Since March, when the Yugoslav army began an offensive against the guerrillas known as the Kosovo Liberation Army, about 300 people have died and an estimated 65,000 have been driven from their homes. When Holbrooke arrives, 50,000 Serb forces and several thousand K.L.A. fighters are skirmishing all over the province, targeting civilians in one another's villages.

The K.L.A., as well as the moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, insist that outright independence is the only acceptable solution. Milosevic shows no willingness to countenance that and has stalled on negotiations in order to launch his crackdown. The West frets that escalation of the conflict could lead to a Balkan war wider and more destabilizing than Bosnia's, drawing in Albania, Macedonia and even Greece. Holbrooke's aim is to cajole everyone to the bargaining table.

Tuesday, 10:30 a.m., Skopje. Holbrooke has made a brief stop to assure Macedonians that the U.S. will try to keep Kosovo's violence from spilling into their country. Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia who has spent considerable time with Milosevic in past negotiations, joins Holbrooke's shuttle. The envoys already conclude that the best Holbrooke might finagle from Milosevic is an agreement to pull some forces out of Kosovo, but Holbrooke must also persuade the Kosovar rebels to stop their advances. Concessions won't come easily from them either.