Balkans

Washington. -- A decade ago 241 U.S. Marines were killed in Lebanon by a lone terrorist driving a truck loaded with explosives. The attack compelled a humiliating withdrawal of American ''peace-keeping'' forces that had been placed in militarily indefensible positions in Lebanon, and which had come to be seen as taking sides in a fierce civil war in a country where the United States had no vital security interests.Our disastrous experience in Lebanon should stand as a warning to those who are now calling for direct U.S. military intervention against continuing Serbian aggression in old Yugoslavia.

Chronicle in Stone Ismail Kadare Arcade Publishing / 320 pages / $25 "War," the old woman says as she points to red places on the rooster's breastbone. "War and blood." The words haunt the boy who narrates Ismail Kadare's autobiographical novel, Chronicle in Stone. They also foreshadow the plot as well as establishing the tone and background of this gem-like growing-up tale, which was first published in Albania in 1971 and first translated into English in 1987. This new English translation by David Bellos is based on Kadare's revisions to the original, which were written after he received the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005 for the body of his work.

MOSCOW -- Less than a week after Croatia's rout of a Serbian army, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin called yesterday for a Moscow peace summit on the Balkans but also threatened to ignore United Nations trade sanctions by coming to the aid of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.Foreign affairs specialists said Mr. Yeltsin's combination of mediation and threats were a seat-of-the-pants effort to bolster his own image at home and Russia's image abroad and also to reassert Moscow's traditional sympathies with the Serbs.

Time's up. Serbian politicians will never agree to an independent Kosovo. So Kosovo will just have to become independent without their consent. For eight years now, ever since the NATO air war drove Serbian forces out, Kosovo has been in limbo. The Kosovar Albanians want sovereignty, and the U.S. and the European Union - albeit with serious qualms - have decided there is no alternative. But they've been trying to jolly the Serbs along, to entice them to recognize that Kosovo is lost to them.

Too late for many former Yugoslavs, too early for millions in many nations, show time is just ahead for the major powers. They will have sorted out whether to arm Bosnian Muslims, expanding the bloodletting, whether to try neutralizing Serbian butchers with air power, whether and with what orders to send ground troops.It is possible to write a script in which the democracies and even Russia, led by America, march decisively into Bosnia, stare down the murderers and take a bow. What a wonderful outcome!

"Balkan Odyssey," by David Owen. Harcourt Brace & Company. 389 pages. $25The London Conference of August 1992 was convened to end the fighting in the former Yugoslavia. There, David Owen and Cyrus Vance, Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, were commissioned by the European Community to negotiate a settlement to the conflicts. They failed.This book is Mr. Owen's account of their efforts. It is excessively detailed, mildly self-serving and sadly lacking in that delicious scathing quality common to the memoirs of English peers.

Two thousand years of religious differences -- but shared beliefs in justice and peace -- converged on Baltimore yesterday as Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergy prayed together for an end to the ethnic hostilities in the Balkans.Roman Catholic Archbishop William H. Keeler organized the five-hour series of afternoon services that took place in two cathedrals, a mosque and a synagogue.The day began in the Greek Orthodox cathedral on Preston Street, continued at a mosque in Catonsville and a synagogue in Pikesville, and concluded in the Catholic basilica on Cathedral Street.

The Discovery Channel's "Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation," a five-part, five-hour examination of the insane, bloody mess that's been tearing the Balkans apart for four years, was easily one the best things on television last year. A new chapter in the series airs tonight, with updates on the conflict and the hopes for a lasting peace."The City" (12: 30 p.m.-1 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- Actor, dancer, singer, choreographer, director and really-tall-guy Tommy Tune does a guest turn as -- now here's a stretch!

"The Fracture Zone," by Simon Winchester. HarperCollins. 257 pages. $23.There is precious little to like in this book, and that's a shame. Author Simon Winchester certainly is capable of better work, based on his fine previous effort, "The Professor and the Madman." But "The Fracture Zone: A Return to the Balkans" exhibits all the symptoms of a hasty idea hustled into print by a publisher determined to make a quick buck from a hot property.Shallow, incomplete and annoyingly melodramatic, Winchester purports to explain the centuries-old forces and tensions that led to this year's war in Kosovo from insights he gained during two trips to the region, one during the war and one in 1977.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has won support from the European allies for a comprehensive Balkan peace plan that would allow Bosnian Serbs to link up loosely with Serbia and would suspend most of the sanctions imposed on Belgrade, U.S. officials and European diplomats said yesterday.The president's national security adviser, Anthony Lake, returned to Washington last night after selling the plan in European capitals. A U.S. team led by Richard Holbrooke, an assistant secretary of state, flew to the Balkans from London yesterday to try to win over the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.

Tomorrow the Balkans come back into play. The immediate issue is the future of Kosovo, which has spent more than seven years now as an ill-defined international protectorate - to the dismay of Kosovar Albanians, who want independence, and of Serbs, who long to have the province back under their control. A larger question has to do with the continuing aftershocks from the collapse of European communism. The U.N. special envoy for Kosovo is to present his long-awaited plan for the province's future to the six-nation Contact Group tomorrow in Vienna.

Moroccan, electronica, Klezmer, Egyptian, Romanian. Balkan Beat Box has a long, abstract list of cultural and musical influences. You can hear it on the record or see it in the wild live show. The group's next concert is tonight at Fletcher's. On the band's album, Klezmer horns pump and blare along with guitars, pounding drums, electronic samples and Middle Eastern melodies. It's more than a modern take on traditional musical styles, said band co-founder Tamir Muskat. "I really think we're twisting the whole thing up right now," he said.

Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader whose sinister nationalism propelled his country into four wars and unleashed a decade of "ethnic cleansing" that cost more than 250,000 lives, was found dead in his prison cell yesterday in The Hague, where he was on trial for crimes against humanity. Guards found Milosevic, 64, dead in his bed at the United Nations detention center, the U.N. war crimes tribunal announced. He apparently died of natural causes. An autopsy was ordered. Milosevic had a history of poor health, including high blood pressure and a chronic heart condition.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. military Web sites that pay journalists to write articles and commentary supporting military activities in Europe and Africa do not violate U.S. law or Pentagon policies, a review by the Pentagon's chief investigator has concluded. But a senior Defense Department official said this week that the Web sites could still be shut down to avoid the appearance of impropriety. The Pentagon inspector general's inquiry concludes that two Web sites targeting audiences in the Balkans and in the Maghreb region of northern Africa are consistent with U.S. laws prohibiting covert propaganda, are properly identified as U.S. government products, and are maintained in close coordination with U.S. embassies abroad, according to a previously undisclosed summary of the report's findings.

The last American war of the 20th century - the war over Kosovo - has gone unsettled. Kosovo has festered for more than six years since the actual NATO bombing campaign halted. Overseen by foreign powers, the little province is home to a host of intractable problems, rife with Muslim-Christian tensions, unable to move forward, and an obstacle to progress throughout the Balkans. Even Bosnia is moving ahead, with a new agreement on power-sharing just announced in Washington, but Kosovo is a harder case.

R. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, recently put Balkan issues back on the front burner when he pressured Bosnia's Serb, Muslim and Croat leaders to replace the country's three-person, multiethnic presidency with a single president. That step is needed, he said, to create a stronger, more cohesive state. He added that there should be a firm commitment to such reforms by the time Balkan leaders visit Washington this month to mark the 10th anniversary of the Dayton accords that ended the Bosnian civil war. Dayton, Mr. Burns intoned, has served its purpose and now needs to "evolve."

WASHINGTON -- It is axiomatic in American politics that, barring a direct threat to national security, foreign policy issues are not likely to be decisive in presidential elections. So chances are that the current focus on the turmoil in the Balkans will be long since forgotten by Election Day, Nov. 3.But even an issue that may vanish from the television screens, and thus from the public consciousness, within a month or so can play a part in forming perceptions of the presidential candidates.

BUKAVU, Congo - One evening four months ago, a soft-spoken 18-year-old named Aziza was selling bananas in the market here when some U.N. peacekeepers summoned her to their car. Aziza went over thinking they wanted to buy fruit, but was persuaded to engage in a different kind of transaction. "They offered me love," she said, in the colloquial French spoken in this former Belgian colony. And money - just $5, but more than she would make in a month at the market. "It was done in the car, in the dark," she said.

I have made a habit of reviewing books written by colleagues at The Sun. Inevitably, there's the appearance of possible conflict in such cases, which is hereby acknowledged. Take that or leave it, I find it particularly gratifying when the volumes please me. And such it is with The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (Knopf, 320 pages, $24), Dan Fesperman's second novel. It is a literary thriller with historical perspective of Balkan society. It's a respectful but deeply troubled and troubling recognition of the apparently perpetual tribal hatreds among Catholic Croats, Eastern Orthodox Serbs, Muslims and any numbers of offshoots, subdivisions and outsiders.