Kosovo Braces for a Bloodbath

Slobodan Milosevic may have backed down rather than expel a Western monitor, but he's winning the game. "Milosevic wants to keep terrorizing Kosovo's Albanians, and the West wants to stop him but isn't prepared to do that by bombing," says TIME Central Europe bureau chief Massimo Calabresi. "They're going to be so relieved that he's backed down over the monitors that they'll let him off the hook for last week's massacre."

Milosevic had earlier ordered the chief U.S. monitor, William Walker, out of the country after Walker blamed the Serbs for a massacre of 45 Albanians. Despite threatening air strikes, NATO is reluctant to act because the fundamental political problem -- the Albanians' demand for independence and the Serbs' refusal to grant even the limited autonomy favored by the West -- remains unresolved. "The KLA rebels are spoiling for a new fight, and Milosevic wants to scrap the cease-fire he agreed to last year," says Calabresi. "Everybody's now seen that the West is loath to intervene, so all the pieces are in place for a bloody spring."