Is That Your Final Answer, Mr. Milosevic?

In the end, there are only two ways to get rid of a brutal dictator: Smash his power structure, or offer him a sweet retirement package. And having failed to destroy his regime through bombing and sanctions, Washington may now be exploring ways to coax Slododan Milosevic out of office. The New York Times reports Monday that Washington is involved in back-channel talks — plausibly deniable, as any effort to engineer an indicted war criminal's evasion of justice must necessarily be — involving Russia, Greece and other NATO allies to develop a mechanism that would allow Milosevic to stand down in exchange for some form of immunity.

In the unsentimental world of geopolitical power-brokering, it's long been accepted that the immediate goal of freeing a country from its dictator is more important than bringing that dictator to justice — which is how Baby Doc Duvalier and Mobutu Sese Seko ended up in France, Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia, Erich Honecker in Chile and so on. Attempts to bring Chile's General Augusto Pinochet to trial in Europe, and now in Chile, may have shifted the tide, but secret overtures to Milosevic suggest the principle is far from dead. But the idea of bribing Milosevic to retire faces more immediate obstacles than its ethical palatability: The first would be to find a country that Milosevic would trust and would willing to take him. President Clinton during his recent Moscow visit sounded out Russia's President Vladimir Putin about sheltering the Serb pariah, but Putin reportedly suggested that Miami would be as good a destination as Moscow. Behind Putin's flash of dark humor is a sense that ousting Milosevic is Washington's problem, and Russia is no mood to help after being ignored during NATO's bombing campaign last year.

More to the point, though, Milosevic may not be interested in a deal. He'd certainly have no trouble getting one at home from an opposition that would be more than happy to grant indemnity for life if he left office, but the opposition is in disarray and the strongman's grip on power may be even stronger than at the end of the Kosovo war. When Greek emissaries sounded out Milosevic over the idea three months ago, the Serb leader responded that he has no intention of stepping down and intends to win his next election. So even as the Clinton administration scrambles for foreign policy trophies to add to its legacy, its eight years of sanctions and war now look as unlikely to topple Milosevic as they are to get rid of Saddam Hussein.