Make or break for Pax Europa

TWO QUESTIONS hover over the creeper-covered walls of the mediaeval chateau where Balkan peacemakers are again plying their thankless trade. There is the obvious one: can Serbs and Albanians lay down their arms in Kosovo? And then there is the less obvious but even more momentous one: is this the moment when Europe finally starts to get its military and diplomatic act together?

Three years ago another Balkan peace conference took place, at a vast US airforce base in the depths of the Midwest. It was held amid the symbols of American military might, and chaired by a hardcharging American diplomat with a Kissingeresque contempt for Europe's diplomatic clout. That disdain of course was amply justified by the wretched European performance over Bosnia - and Dayton, Ohio, yielded a settlement which holds to this day.

The new venue could not be more different: a former royal estate west of Paris, in the heart of old Europe, where French kings sported and Napoleon spent his last nights before St Helena. The food undoubtedly will be far better than at Dayton, and Richard Holbrooke will be nowhere to be seen. The effort to impose a settlement upon Serbs and Kosovo Albanians will be chaired by the foreign ministers of Britain and France. If they succeed, British, French and German troops will account for over half the 30,000 men dispatched to police that settlement. There will be a small American contingent, but under the command of a British general. Kosovo, as they say, will be very much a European show.

The stakes are huge. "Who do I call when I want to speak to Europe?" Henry Kissinger once famously complained. Soon perhaps, an American secretary of state will have the answer. If all goes well, Europe will have taken a first step towards the common defence and security identity envisaged by Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac at St Malo last December. Who knows, even the European Union's future foreign policy representative may actually count for something. But if Rambouillet fails, and Europe watches Serbs and Albanians killing each other again, the heart could be torn from both initiatives.

The task now is both easier, yet more difficult than Dayton. Easier, because there are two, not three, antagonists, while a detailed and delicately calibrated draft settlement has been in preparation for six months now.Chris Hill, the US diplomat who is author of the plan, served under Holbrooke in Dayton, and thus learnt the art of Balkan headbanging at the feet of the master. But in some ways, Kosovo is even tricker than Bosnia.

For one thing, Serbs and ethnic Albanians are at total odds over the future of the province. Be they politicians or guerrilla fighters, the Albanians insist on nothing less than full independence for the province; Serbia will hear none of it. Mr Hill has only postponed that dispute with the device of an "interim" settlement, whereby Kosovo's final status will be reviewed after three years. Then, if not now, the crunch will come.

But there is no postponing the fact that President Slobodan Milosevic, who will not be at Rambouillet in person, is being asked to allow Nato troops onto Serb territory, within a sovereign Yugoslavia. Bosnia in 1995 was, after all, technically an independent state. Small wonder that ultra- nationalist Serbian parties are warning that if Nato wants to go in, it will have to fight its way in.

That may be bluster - but maybe not. For the interim agreement, by giving Kosovo an elected assembly and president, and by handing sweeping powers to the international monitor force, reduces Belgrade's effective control of the province to almost zero. Kosovo, the holy soul of Serbia, will become a quasi-protectorate of Nato.