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Milosevic plays the U.N. card
Slobodan Milosevic appears to wave the white flag, and the blue United Nations banner is set to fly again in former Yugoslavia.
By Ian Williams
[06/03/99]

A refugee's escape from hell
With rumors of peace, Serbs are making a last-ditch attempt to change the ethnic mix inside Kosovo forever.
By Laura Rozen
[06/02/99]

Under the volcano
The Japanese, never known for their frivolity, have grown downright depressed as their decade-long economic troubles proliferate.
By David Lazarus
[06/02/99]

Three strikes and you're in
California's Democratic governor and Legislature fight each other over whether to build a new prison.
By Anthony York
[06/01/99]

Naked city?
A class-action suit seeks damages for thousands of New Yorkers the Giuliani administration admits were strip-searched after being arrested for misdemeanors.
By Ron Feemster
[06/01/99]

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And after initial skepticism, many people in this terrorized region began to cautiously express hope that this would be the real thing -- a peace that would once and for all start moving Kosovo's 1 million refugees back to their homes, end NATO's bombing of Serbia and help nudge the former Yugoslavia and the region toward desperately desired stability.

Milosevic plays the U.N. card By Ian Williams The beginning of the end By Daryl Lindsey

But hope for peace was mixed with regret in the Balkans, where many people -- deported Kosovars, bombed Serbs, the thousands of people who have lost loved ones -- do not see a bright future ahead for some time.

"I have mixed feelings," said Bratislav Grubacic, a political analyst and editor of VIP News, reached by telephone in the Serbian capital of Belgrade Thursday evening. "First of all, it's good to know this may all be over soon. But we are not facing a bright future here in Serbia. Milosevic will stay in power for some time. All I know is the Serb side has capitulated for sure."

Reacting to the Serbiian move, Balkan analysts cautioned that, while the Serbian climb-down looked real, the devil would be in the details.

"It is absolute capitulation. I am the first person to say I am shocked," said Chris Bennett, a Balkans expert and author of "Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse." Milosevic seemed to be settling for an agreement less favorable than the one he rejected in Rambouillet, France, Bennett said: "The Serbs were going to be able to keep 11,000 troops in Kosovo. Now they get none, zero. They basically have got to behave. Still, we have to see the plan implemented."

"We don't know what the Serbs agreed to," warned journalist and Kosovo expert Anna Husarska by phone from New York Thursday. "For instance, how many Serb border guards are going to be allowed back into Kosovo? How many kilometers from the border will they be stationed? What kind of munitions will they be allowed to carry? How often can they rotate? And when they rotate will they be driving tanks through [the Kosovo capital of] Pristina?" she asked.

The fact that so many crucial details are unclear is of concern, agreed Philip Zelikow, director of the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a former member of the National Security Council during the Bush administration.

"There are hints that at least at some of these things are not yet agreed," cautioned Zelikow by phone from Charlottesville Thursday. In particular, he said, it is not clear "what the command structure of the international peacekeeping force for Kosovo [will be], and the makeup of the international force will be."

"Here's what we know," Zelikow added. "We know that everyone has agreed that the Russians will contribute peacekeeping forces to the Kosovo force in this plan. However, there is no obvious agreement on which sectors in Kosovo will be controlled by which countries' troops. The British are pushing for NATO forces to be in every sector in order to avoid a de facto partition. But no one else seems to be talking about that."

Next page | Refugees won't return "until all Serbian troops are gone"