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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Yaacov who wrote (6572)	5/3/1999 9:36:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

Think-tank blasts NATO strategy in Kosovo 03:02 p.m May 03, 1999 Eastern By Paul Taylor LONDON, May 4 (Reuters) - NATO's ''air strikes only'' strategy emboldened Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to defy the West and may prove inadequate to achieve Western political goals in Kosovo, a leading strategic think-tank said on Tuesday. In its annual ''Strategic Survey,'' the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies said: ''While the operation against Serbia could clearly damage Serbian military power, the value of air power as an instrument to force diplomatic compliance was shown to be limited.'' The West's reluctance to send a fighting force on the ground encouraged Milosevic to adopt ''a hedgehog strategy'': taking air strikes in the hope NATO would not wish to destroy Serbian assets to the extent that the local balance of power would shift entirely to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), it said. The Serbian strongman was betting he could survive the air strikes, despite the damage to his military, and that the West would be unable to ram an autonomy agreement for Kosovo down his throat. The London-based institute said that faced with the choice between losing control over the southern province peacefully through the Rambouillet peace plan drafted by the international community or by war, ''predictably, he chose violence.'' ''Had diplomats told Milosevic that force would be used to assure Kosovo's independence, and managed to convince him that the West had both the will and capacity to do this, he might have preferred the softer diplomatic outcome offered at Rambouillet,'' it said. NATO continues to oppose independence for the 1.8 million ethnic Albanians in Kosovo because of the precedent in changing borders and fears of a domino effect elsewhere in the Balkans. ''Unless the threat of force is coupled with a promise to deliver a less attractive political outcome than that promised by diplomacy alone, dictators will often prefer to play poker with the West's military machine,'' the IISS said. The use of air power alone had not induced Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to allow the return of United Nations arms inspectors to Baghdad, it noted, and dropping bombs on Yugoslavia would hardly inspire Milosevic to sign the Rambouillet Accords ''when the facts of war might produce other, more useful options.'' The survey attributed earlier failures to settle the Kosovo question partly to Western short-sightedness, reacting to each crisis in former Yugoslavia as it flared without adopting a broader approach to stabilising the region, and partly to the reluctance of the United States to commit ground troops. In a world with a peerless United States as the only one global superpower, a rapidly rusting Russia and a still inchoate Europe, ''regional conflict will remain configured by the presence or absence of an American will to intervene,'' it said. In Kosovo, Washington long gave Milosevic the impression that it was not prepared to dispatch troops to impose peace. A U.S. decision to sub-contract to private security firms its contribution to the Kosovo Verification Mission deployed last year under the aegis of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation reinforced that impression, the IISS said. Despite the war over Kosovo and the resulting increased threat to the stability of neighbouring Macedonia and Albania, the ''Strategic Survey'' noted a series of positive developments in southeastern Europe. It cited political reform and the avoidance of ethnic strife in Romania and Bulgaria, the containment of Greek-Turkish rivalry and a widespread willingness to subordinate nationalism to the goal of integrating into European institutions. However, it said the West must recognise that Milosevic ''and the other dictators who have risen from the ashes of Yugoslavia by playing on nationalist feelings and economic frustration'' are part of the problem, not a stepping stone to a solution, and that any deal with them was bound to fail. While the Balkans would not return to their turn-of-the-century role as ''Europe's powder-keg...the region could revert to its traditional role as Europe's periphery, a zone which is theoretically part of the continent, almost ready to integrate but, somehow, still not making it.'' Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited