The massacre at the village of Racak has thrust the Kosovo conflict back into world attention, in a gruesome reminder that its basic elements remain unresolved despite the peace agreement negotiated last October. The facts of what happened on Friday must be rapidly and authoritatively established and the culprits speedily brought to trial. Such demands dovetail with what has to be done politically to address the conflict between Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia and his Kosovar opponents who increasingly support independence. Diplomacy has been deadlocked by the failure to reconcile these basic disagreements. According to Serb sources, the war will have to worsen before a further compromise is possible. Many observers of Mr Milosevic's regime believe his increasingly beleagured political position has led inexorably to this massacre, precisely to shore him up domestically. Last month, army and security leaders who negotiated October's agreement were dismissed and replaced by figures close to his ultra-Stalinist wife, Ms Mirjana Markovic, who opposed it.
Yesterday's refusal by Serb troops to allow an investigator from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia into Racak, is fully in keeping with such a fortress policy; so, many believe, is the very massacre itself, in that it provokes a crisis that can once again bind the Serbian population around such a potent symbol of national identity as Kosovo. The recognition that this might be so overlaps with international realisation that last October's agreement was used by both sides as a breathing space to rearm in preparation for another round of military conflict in the spring and summer, rather than for a process of political accommodation over three years.
International responses to this atrocity are inevitably coloured by such political realities. The immediate priority must be to insist that international legal process applies and to back that with credible sanctions. The international consensus, including that at the Security Council, can be held together on such a basis. Mr Milosevic has justified his refusal to remove troops and special forces by the continued presence of Kosovar guerrillas committed to a struggle for independence.
The unarmed OSCE monitors are presently at only half strength. Even if NATO air strikes were to be sanctioned in a rapidly escalating crisis, it is obvious that the targets involved bear little operational relation to the actual conflict on the ground. There is little stomach internationally to provide the much bigger armed force that would effectively contain the conflict and steer it towards the kind of settlement envisaged in last October's agreement. In these circumstances, co-ordinated human-rights, diplomatic and economic pressure on Serbia have as much chance of success as ill-judged or premature military strikes. There is certainly a role for military action, but to be effective it should carry maximum legal and international consensus against a Serbian population increasingly disenchanted with Milosevic's rule and capable of realising that the best relief would be to get rid of him.