Leading Article: Let's avoid the next chapter in the Balkans

RATHER THAN cry over spilt blood in the Balkans, the urgent imperative is to learn the lessons of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo to avoid the next horrendous failure of Western policy. The Kosovo talks resume today against the grim backdrop of bombs tearing apart women and children in the tiny Serbian province which is nine-tenths ethnic Albanian. But this could have been predicted, and indeed was predicted, seven years ago.

In 1992, Lord Carrington, who preceded Lord Owen as the European Community's mediator in the disintegrating Yugoslavia, dismissed the pleas of the moderate Albanian Kosovar leader, Ibrahim Rugova. By a quirk of open government, this poignant scene was filmed for a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the work of the Foreign Office.

Since then, the initiative on the Kosovar side has passed to the most extreme and least tolerant group, the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA seemed intransigent at Rambouillet, although soon afterwards its do-or- die leader was overthrown and his young successors appeared more in favour of the compromise deal.

It took the West three years to work out that mere threats would not work against the Serbs in Bosnia. Yet, a year ago, Tony Blair agreed in the House of Commons that "the international community has learnt the lesson of appeasement in Bosnia and that we will not stand idly by while he [Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic] ignites another ethnic war in Europe". In April, Robin Cook said: "We are determined that Belgrade should stop behaving as it is in Kosovo." In July, he said: "Mr Milosevic should back down and he should back down now. This is his last warning." Yesterday, he said: "If Belgrade opposes peace, then Belgrade may have to take the consequences." At some point, the threats will have to end and the action begin.

But more people will be killed in Kosovo, before the situation reaches some form of resolution. Meanwhile, Nato troops may well have to be deployed to try to keep the peace on the ground and eventually Kosovo may become, in effect, an independent state.

The West has tried to avoid that outcome because it will have the effect of moving the Balkan tragedy on to the next act, entitled "Macedonia". Kosovo's neighbouring statelet - once also part of Yugoslavia - contains a large ethnic Albanian minority and it is claimed by Greece.

In the early Nineties, Western leaders did not listen to the Serb minority in Croatia, to the Bosnian Muslims or to the Albanians of Kosovo, with dire consequences. Now the danger is that they are not listening to the Macedonians. Whatever the outcome of the Kosovo talks, the human rights of all ethnic groups in the region must be guaranteed: that should be the starting point for negotiations, not the cause of hand-wringing after the KLA has effectively won its war of independence.