The former peace envoy, Mr Carl Bildt, said yesterday that the international community faced a more complex situation in Kosovo than it had in the Bosnian conflict.
Mr Bildt, attending a news conference to promote a book about his 1995-1997 stint as international peace co-ordinator in Bosnia, described last week's deal to avert NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia as "far from perfect".
"But given the situation I see it as difficult to achieve anything better at this particular moment in time," he said.
The deal struck by the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milo sevic, and the US envoy, Mr Richard Holbrooke, called for a sharp reduction in the presence of Yugoslav troops and Serbian police to end a brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
But yesterday the UN cancelled two aid convoys amid reports of more Serb shelling, and hundreds of ethnic Albanians were again fleeing their homes.
"I consider the problems of Kosovo as more difficult than the problems of Bosnia," Mr Bildt said.
Despite Bosnia's three religions and differing cultures and traditions "it tends to be the same people speaking the same language and sharing to a large extent the same history," he said. "In Kosovo, as you know, nothing of this is the case."
More than 250,000 Kosovo Albanians have been driven from their homes by the fighting. Albanians make up 90 per cent of Kosovo's 1.8 million population.
Mr Bildt, the leader of Sweden's Conservative party who married an Italian lawyer in Sarajevo on Sunday, said Kosovo had a longer history of ethnic conflict than Bosnia and there were no quick fixes.
He said the international community was, as usual, making policy from a distance.
"It is very easy to make political statements far away and much more difficult to do things on the ground," he said.