Making A Deal: Why Milosevic Blinked

(2 of 6)

The Serbian people have paid dearly in lost lives, lost jobs, lost hope, yet the leader responsible still rules Yugoslavia, no less prone to stir up trouble--though surely less able--than he ever was. The West has acquired an unstable Kosovo protectorate that will require intensive military and political care for years to come, and an immense bill, in the billions of dollars, to reconstruct the ravaged economies of Europe's Balkan quarter. The truism is the same for this as for every war: the peace is going to be harder to win.

First come the inherent perils of doing deals with Milosevic. The very speed of his capitulation made everyone suspect a trick. From Washington to Brussels, officials urged caution, but the Pentagon privately believed the agreement was "the real McCoy." Unwilling to be caught wrong, Washington insisted the bombing would not actually stop until the Serbs have satisfied NATO they are carrying out the stringent terms for withdrawal of 40,000-odd troops from Kosovo. NATO wants verifiable deeds, not seductive words from a leader who has cheated on virtually every agreement he has ever made. "We are looking for implementation, implementation, implementation," said State Department spokesman James Rubin. Belgrade passed a symbolic test Thursday night when General Dragoljub Ojdanic, the Yugoslav army chief of staff, personally called NATO commander General Wesley Clark to "request" that alliance officers meet Serbian officers to discuss cease-fire mechanics.

More telling will be their faithfulness in following through. NATO brass convened over the weekend with their Yugoslav counterparts on the Macedonian border to map out a detailed end to the hostilities and tell the Serbs to get cracking, brooking neither prolonged negotiation nor trumped-up delay. Once that meeting concludes satisfactorily, Belgrade has 48 hours to pull air-defense missile batteries back 15 miles inside Serbia, and seven days to roll all its tanks and troops home. NATO reconnaissance planes will be watching vigilantly to determine whether the withdrawal is "serious, complete, irreversible," said NATO spokesman Jamie Shea. "The dust on the tracks of those Serbian forces moving out will be the test of whether we can trust Milosevic." If Belgrade cooperates, a bombing halt was possible as early as Sunday. If the Serbs hesitate or renege, the bombing will go on with renewed vigor.

NATO too will have to accelerate smartly to march its 50,000 peacekeepers into Kosovo right behind the departing Serbs--perhaps as early as Tuesday. A sizable British force is on hand in Macedonia, and the leading edge of the American contingent--2,000 Marines--is nearby in the Adriatic, but it could take a month for all 7,000 G.I.s to deploy. The peacekeepers need to move fast to prevent the armed and independence-minded troops of the Kosovo Liberation Army from swarming into the vacuum. Milosevic has shuffled off the problem of "demilitarizing" the rebels to NATO, and it won't be easy. "It is our expectation," insisted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, that the K.L.A. will cooperate and accept an agreement that promises self-rule but does not give them independence or even the future referendum promised at Rambouillet. Kosovar cooperation was mistakenly taken for granted in those negotiations too.