Action on Kosovo fraught with risk

Western leaders are stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place as they gather this week under the aegises of NATO, the UN and the Contact Group to try to halt the carnage in Kosovo following the worst massacre of the war.

Doing nothing about this simmering war is no longer palatable: Yugoslavia has followed up the massacre of 46 unarmed ethnic Albanians on Friday with more fighting and a refusal to allow war crimes officials into their country. As things stand, the massacre will, at the very least, scupper attempts to get peace talks going and, at worst, will probably trigger yet more bloodletting.

But answering the calls to "do something" is also fraught with danger. In October, following the last massacre of ethnic Albanian civilians in which 14 died, NATO demanded, and got, a promise from the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, to pull back his forces, let aid workers and refugees move freely and give open access to war crimes investigators.

A 2,000-strong verification force was ordered in with instructions to blow the whistle if Yugoslavia was not in compliance, at which point the country would face the threat of air strikes. To reinforce this, the "activation order", allowing commanders to dispatch the bombers, was left in place so, in theory, bombing no longer needs a political decision.

However since then, the political will has ebbed, even as Mr Milosevic has broken each of his promises. One week ago, the supervisors of those verifying, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, announced that, because of a lack of interest among its members, they would only be getting 1,500 verifiers.

The flurry of meetings - NATO on Sunday, the UN last night and the Contact Group of leading powers today - cannot hide the indecision at the top.

Diplomats say NATO is divided, with France and Germany both against launching air strikes, while Russia says it will block any move to get air strikes approved by the UN.

Air strikes are, anyway, no panacea: they may end up becoming air support for the KLA guerrillas.

Deploying ground troops is the most direct way of stopping the fighting. Certainly, NATO has the resources, as 35,000 men are deployed in nearby Bosnia.

But the problem will be: then what? After so much killing, Kosovo's ethnic Albanians are more set than ever on independence and the Serb minority, fearful of the consequences, is determined to stop them.

The "nightmare scenario" for NATO would be that, once its troops were deployed and the Yugoslav forces muzzled, the Albanians could simply take over the province.

Lesser options are no easier. Trade sanctions brought Yugoslavia's economy to its knees in the Bosnian war but did not halt the fighting. And with the country almost bankrupt, new sanctions might throw it into chaos and civil disorder, worsening the Kosovo crisis.

Western politicians are falling back on calls for war crimes investigators to get involved. But, as with sanctions, war crimes inquiries are unlikely to stop the war. Besides, they were going on for months before the atrocities at Racak.

NATO leaders still hope that fighting can somehow be halted long enough for a compromise deal to be worked out, in which the Albanians would drop their calls for independence in return for substantial autonomy and an end to Yugoslav repression.

Yet the time for this was before the serious bloodshed began. After a year of fighting, with 2,000 dead and much of Kosovo's countryside laid waste by Yugoslav forces, ordinary ethnic Albanians see no choice but to go on fighting.

The first problem is that the fighting will not be halted through persuasion alone but will need some combination of the above options, with all the dangers that implies.

There is also a second problem. A year of fighting ended in the early winter in military stalemate. This has left both sides feeling that they may yet win an outright victory on the battlefield, thus making a compromise at the peace table unnecessary.

Chris Stephen is a freelance journalist based in Belgrade