Cease-Fire Charade

This is a time of blunder and bluster for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Tuesday he declared a six-day Orthodox Easter cease-fire in the war with NATO forces. He said all military action against the Kosovo Liberation Army in the rebellious southern province also will be suspended. How many KLA fighters can still be active after the brutal Serbian sweeps of Kosovo province in recent weeks? The U.N. High Commission for Refugees estimates that at least 500,000 Kosovars, the vast majority ethnic Albanians, have been driven from the province since NATO began its air assault March 24.

The cease-fire bid is a cruel charade, and the NATO powers promptly and properly turned it down. Clearly the bombing has hit its mark, shaking confidence at the presidential palace. Now is not the time to talk deals with Milosevic. He knows that the key condition for a real truce is a return to the Rambouillet peace talks in France. Serbian emissaries walked away from a deal there when faced with the prospect of Kosovar autonomy and the presence of NATO ground troops to enforce it.

President Clinton, in rejecting the cease-fire along with leaders of the other NATO countries, reiterated the alliance position: To end the bombing, the Serbian strongman must pull his police and paramilitary forces out of Kosovo and accept an international peacekeeping force there, the very issue upon which the Rambouillet talks collapsed. Separately, an international criminal tribunal will have to sort out the killings and “cleansings.”

In recent days, Milosevic has talked of striking a deal with Ibrahim Rugova, a moderate Kosovar leader, who apparently has been a guest, or captive, in Belgrade for at least a week. Milosevic reportedly is seeking a temporary arrangement with Rugova that could establish him as compliant leader of the Kosovars. That deal might have been done at Rambouillet, but it cannot be realized now that Kosovo has become a Serbian-occupied province. At this point, men like Rugova are likely to be brushed aside while guerrillas of the hard-line Kosovo Liberation Army pick up the struggle.

Milosevic is running low on options in Kosovo, and his military forces appear overwhelmed by NATO air power in Serbia itself. The diplomatic door is still open, but his truce proposal offered no concessions and was rightly rejected.