Serbs test Western resolve on Kosovo

THE WEST'S Balkan strategy was in disarray yesterday after Serbia rejected a planned peace deal for the war-stricken province of Kosovo.

After eight hours of talks with the United States envoy Richard Holbrooke in Belgrade, President Slobodan Milosevic said Yugoslavia would never tolerate a foreign military force entering Kosovo to supervise a peace settlement.

"Attempts to condition a political agreement on our country's acceptance of foreign troops are unacceptable," read the statement from Mr Milosevic's office after Mr Holbrooke left the Serbian capital in defeat.

Belgrade's rejection of foreign troops, a vital element of the package, casts doubt on whether the second round of talks on Kosovo will even take place as planned on 15 March at Rambouillet, in France. Some Kosovo Albanian leaders suggested yesterday that they may boycott the whole event.

The shambles exposes Nato to the risk of public humiliation if the alliance's repeated threats to use force against Serbia are revealed to be hollow.

While Nato officials in Brussels were yesterday talking up the threat to use force to engineer a peace deal in Kosovo, the very fact that such threats have been around for six months has diminished their value.

"It would take several days of crisis, with the Serbs being obdurate at the table and brutal on the ground, to wind allied public opinion up into bombing mode," one Nato diplomat admitted.

Mr Holbrooke alluded to the new note of realism before he left Serbia for New York. There was no point "rattling rockets and making threatening gestures", he said.

Nor can the West draw much comfort from yesterday's visit to Belgrade by Russia's Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov.

Although publicly committed to supporting a peace deal for Kosovo, Russia's strong ties to its old Serbian ally mean it is unlikely to bring much - or indeed any - pressure to bear on Mr Milosevic.

Grim confirmation of Kosovo's deteriorating situation came with reports of new build-ups by the Yugoslav army near the western city of Prizren and a "very grim situation" on Kosovo's border with Macedonia.

Red Cross officials in the Kosovo capital of Pristina described as "pitiful" the plight of Albanian villagers driven from their homes by Serb forces. At least four villages were reported to be in flames after being shelled by the Yugoslav army.

While much of the blame for Kosovo's dismal prospects will be laid at Serbia's door, some of the recrimination will also be aimed at the Kosovar leadership.

Instead of wrongfooting Belgrade by agreeing to the peace plan, leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army have infuriated their Western sympathisers with endless procrastination.

Even a strong supporter such as the former US senator Bob Dole said, in a radio interview on Wednesday, that he was "frankly disgusted with the attitude of the Kosovars".