Peacemaking is not easy, especially when war continues. Negotiating a peace is even more difficult when there is no real desire for peace among the combatants. That appears to have been the situation between the Serbs and the Albanian Kosovars as they ended their talks in Rambouillet, France on February 23. Does this mean the effort to make peace is the work of fools? Madeleine Albright and her French and British counterparts worked hard with a team of European and American diplomats to bring the bloodshed in Kosovo to an end. If their strenuous efforts now appear hapless, it is not they who have acted foolishly.

For several years, the Serbs, who claim Kosovo as their ancestral home, refused to return autonomy to the province whose dominant population is ethnic Albanian. The Yugoslav army has conducted a kind of low-intensity warfare against a population that initially adopted various forms of passive resistance. Under the political leadership of Ibrahim Rugova, the Albanians set to work, in the manner of other Eastern European liberation movements, creating political, educational, and cultural institutions parallel to those imposed by the Serbs in Belgrade. Over the past decade, this pacifist strategy worked well enough in creating a civic culture, but it did not win political autonomy for the province. A year ago, a fighting force, the Kosovian Liberation Army (KLA), appeared on the scene. It rejected Rugova’s political strategy, and went to war against the Yugoslavs. Military action intensified and atrocities against civilians followed, the Yugoslav police and army against the Albanians and the KLA against the minority Kosovian Serbs. Scenes of mutilated bodies and fleeing refugees increased pressure for a settlement.

This past October, Richard Holbrooke, who helped end the Bosnian war, wrested a kind of cease-fire agreement from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Matters cooled down somewhat during the winter with the presence of unarmed monitors operating under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation, but then flared again in the new year. Finally, sustained pressure from Europe and the United States, including a threat of NATO bombing, brought the Serbs to meet with a delegation of Albanian Kosovars, including Rugova and other political leaders as well as members of the KLA leadership. Although Rugova and his political allies have always understood that independence for Kosovo is a goal for the distant future, the KLA smelled victory in the support given by the Americans and Europeans. They seemed to have decided that with the peace talks they could achieve something greater than the return of provincial autonomy, namely national independence. And they held out for it at the talks in France. But without success.

Instead, the Albanians have gone home to "consult" on whether to accept a period of autonomy to be followed by a "referendum," which might lead to independence. The agreement requires that the KLA also lay down its weapons, while some 28,000 NATO troops would secure and guarantee the peace. Still, the agreement hammered out by the diplomats is so tentative that the Serbs have not yet signed onto it; in any case, they are unlikely to agree to independence for Kosovo. Nevertheless, the Serbs, who have proved so barbarous and recalcitrant, now find themselves holding the high ground in the diplomatic game, while the Kosovars, who proved more fractious than expected, may have seized certain defeat from the jaws of partial victory. This defeat could prove more decisive and disastrous than anything the Kosovars have yet suffered at the hands of the Serbs.

Of course, there is much about the negotiations to which the media and the public are not privy. Perhaps the return of the various Alabanian factions to Kosovo is simply negotiation by other means; certainly they must settle among themselves before they can settle with the Serbs. Their weak point-and perhaps it is the position solely of the KLA-is the drive for national independence. All the other nations involved are adamantly opposed. Certainly the Serbs will not tolerate the loss of Kosovo. And from the beginning, the United States and Europe have been reluctant intervenors precisely because they feared the Albanians would move toward independence, a step that many calculate could further destabilize the whole region.

The initial fault lies with Milosevic, who a decade ago in a fit of nationalist jingoism, usurped Kosovian autonomy. But if the Albanian Kosovars hold out for independence and the KLA adopts the pillage-and-burn tactics of the Yugoslav army, there soon will be more than enough blame to go around. The danger is that the Western powers will throw in the towel and leave the Kosovar Albanians to the superior fire power of the Yugoslav army and the inexhaustible cunning of Slobodan Milosevic. There will be more atrocities and more refugees, and ultimately more anguished calls for Western intervention. Now is the time to settle. Now is the time for the Kosovar Albanians to choose peace and a partial victory.