Kosovo

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will step into Kosovo for the first time to-morrow, arriving as a peace-maker in a small, cold part of the world where not even food and shelter are assured -- let alone peace.Capping a 10-day tour abroad, Clinton will spend a day visiting U.S. troops, meeting a few ordinary Kosovars and conferring with officials from NATO and the United Nations, which are running the Yugoslav province in the aftermath of war.It's a victory lap for Clinton, whose administration paints NATO's expulsion of marauding Yugoslav Serbs from Kosovo last spring as a win for stability and humanity.

WASHINGTON -- It is touted as one of the Army's most lethal weapons, a fearsome-looking helicopter that can whiz along at more than 150 mph, pop up undetected from behind hills and spew a torrent of missiles, rockets and banana-size bullets.But when the Apaches were called upon for the Kosovo conflict, it took nearly a month to get the helicopters in place. And they never saw combat, though two pilots were killed in training accidents.Then the Army's most respected helicopter officer unleashed a stinging salvo, telling his superiors that the Apache pilots were not properly trained and the aircraft carried outdated equipment.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton declared yesterday that he was "anxious to end the bombing" in Yugoslavia, and the Pentagon said the 10-week-old air war could end as early as tomorrow if Serbia begins a troop withdrawal from Kosovo.As Washington became more optimistic that peace in the Balkans was in fact at hand, Clinton also sought to assure the American public that the nation had pursued a "goal that has been worth fighting for" -- stability in Europe and the return of more than 800,000 ethnic Albanians to their homes in Kosovo.

WASHINGTON -- Yugoslavia announced yesterday a partial withdrawal of its troops from Kosovo. But U.S. and NATO officials said they saw no evidence that troops were leaving or that Belgrade had agreed to NATO's other conditions for halting the 7-week-old bombing campaign.Belgrade's state news agency said the withdrawal of some army and police units was ordered late Sunday because the Yugoslav military had completed its actions against the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.Some analysts here and in Belgrade saw the move as an effort by President Slobodan Milosevic to begin softening up Yugoslav public opinion to prepare for concessions to NATO.

TIRANA, Albania -- Top U.S. military officers flew here yesterday in an apparent effort to lay the basis for deploying more U.S. forces -- possibly including ground troops -- in NATO's effort to stop Serbs from driving ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the NATO commander, arrived at midafternoon and immediately drove from the once decrepit airport, now swarming with helicopters and relief supplies, to meetings with Albanian government officials.His trip was arranged so suddenly that U.S. Air Force press officers at the airport had no inkling of it until queried by journalists in the late morning.

AID MUST be rushed to the fragile little countries of Albania and Macedonia, to feed and house the desperate Albanian refugees fleeing extermination in Kosovo. Italy and the European Union have both begun emergency aid programs.Debate is pointless about whether the NATO bombing, responding to genocidal atrocities, provoked more. Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic's spin machine wants us to believe it has. But the atrocities reported, the methodical murders of Albanian men and execution of moderate leaders, follows the model Mr. Milosevic's subordinates used against Bosnian Muslims five years ago. It is inspired by -- in some mad fantasy is a payback for -- genocide conducted against Serbs in the 1940s by Croatia's Ustashe government, Hitler's puppets.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- The international peacekeeping force in Kosovo is clamping down hard on the Kosovo Liberation Army, seizing arms caches almost daily and confiscating documents and even cash in what some officials say is a determined effort to break the movement.NATO and United Nations officials maintain that the tougher action is routine, part of an agreement signed almost seven weeks ago that aimed to dismantle the rebel operation within three months.Until now, the NATO-led peacekeeping force has given the guerrillas a fairly wide berth.

KOSOVO, Yugoslavia -- Kosovo's ethnic Albanians have begun to return to their ruined villages.Donkey carts and tractors ply the roads, seeking supplies as winter cold intensifies. But where do the drivers live? Only rubble and graffiti remain where the Yugoslav army swept through last month. Every house looks uninhabitable.From the midst of one ruin, in the village of Carraluuka, smoke rises. What had appeared to be an abandoned structure bristles with life. Smiling children run up as their parents peek out cautiously.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- It was two weeks into NATO's war against Yugoslavia that Dejan Nikolic left Kosovo.The 19-year-old Serb took a bus out of Prizren and never looked back. And he figures others are sure to follow now that Yugoslav troops are on their way out of the Serbian province."I think all the young Serbs will leave," Nikolic said yesterday. "There are no prospects and there is no future."In the coming days, the toughest question to confront Kosovo's Serbs is this: Should they stay or should they go?

CONGRESS and the people should support the administration's policy on Kosovo, including air strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. One goal is to avert humanitarian disaster, to prevent more death and destruction than the bombing causes. The other is to keep NATO intact for the security of Europe.Before shooting at the policy, Congress should consider carefully the possible consequences of defeating it in Washington.On the ground in Kosovo, the Yugoslav army would likely roll forward, not to destroy the guerrilla army that would recede in the hills, but to kill ethnic Albanians, destroy villages and cleanse the north and west of the province of Albanian people.

Ex-Kosovo leader acquitted by U.N. PARIS --The United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia acquitted Ramush Haradinaj, former prime minister of Kosovo, of all charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, in a surprise decision yesterday. Judges found that prosecutors had failed to prove a deliberate campaign to kill Serb civilians in Kosovo or expel them in the late 1990s, when Haradinaj led the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbian security Forces. The tribunal also acquitted one of two other defendants, Idriz Balaj.

MOSCOW -- Kosovo's looming independence, and promises of quick U.S. and European recognition, have undercut and infuriated Russia at a moment when this oil-rich behemoth is eager to show that its global clout has been restored, analysts say. Russian officials have spent weeks issuing dire assessments of the U.N.-administered province's pending declaration of independence from Serbia, expected to be announced this weekend. The Russians have repeatedly derided Kosovo's possible change in status as a "Pandora's box" that will destabilize Europe by setting off a chain reaction of shifting borders.

After the band had played, the politicians had spoken and the 180 returning members of the Maryland National Guard had been recognized for serving their country overseas at yesterday's "Freedom Salute" welcome home ceremony, it was 3-year-old Evelyn Joseph who took to the stage and received some of the day's loudest applause. Evelyn, in a red dress, white tights and pigtails, walked on stage at Loch Raven High School with her mother, Petronella Henry-Joseph, who received an award for heading up one of the National Guard's family-readiness units.

Kosovo is slouching toward independence - a formal declaration may come before the end of the month - and that's going to require diplomatic attention and cool judgment on the part of the United States and its European allies. Kosovo, once independent, could explode (and set off a detonation in nearby Bosnia among ethnic Serbs there), but this is by no means inevitable. What is more likely to happen is that the Serbs in Kosovo's northern slice, already essentially run by Serbia, will reinforce their links to Belgrade.

Tomorrow, the United States, the European Union and Russia will report to the United Nations on the latest round of talks on the future of Kosovo. They will be tempted yet again to delay resolution of the Kosovo question - even after three years of talks. On its face, the new report will be largely meaningless. The most recent talks were no more than a sop to Serbia and Russia. Positions have not changed, compromise has not been reached, and agreement remains a fatuous hope. Kosovo is determined to exercise its political self-determination by pursuing internationally recognized sovereignty and independence.

Since the Kosovo problem began back in 1912, 1981, 1989 or 1998 (take your pick), no one would - or should - be foolish enough to predict that we are now entering the Kosovo endgame. However, it is clear that one chapter in this tortuous story is closing and a new one opening. Beginning today in the Austrian spa of Baden, Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders are meeting for one last time under the aegis of the Troika of mediators from the U.S., Russia and the European Union. No one expects any significant results.

Cost of elder care rising, poll shows The out-of-pocket cost of caring for an aging parent or spouse averages about $5,500 a year, according to the nation's first in-depth study of such expenses, a sum that is more than double previous estimates and more than the average American household spends annually on health care and entertainment combined. The average cost of providing long-distance care is $8,728 a year. These caregivers spend on average 10 percent of their household income. These findings and others, to be released today, come from a telephone survey of 1,000 adults caring for someone over age 50. The survey was conducted by the National Alliance for Caregiving and Evercare, a division of the UnitedHealth Group.

CHICAGO -- During the Democratic debate in South Carolina, I heard something I never expected to hear: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton coming out against U.S. military intervention. At least I think she was coming out against U.S. military intervention. Asked if U.S. troops should be sent to Darfur, the New York Democrat made a valiant effort to dodge the question by declaiming about sanctions, divestment and U.N. peacekeepers. But when pressed, "How about American troops on the ground?" she finally said, a bit awkwardly, "American ground troops I don't think belong in Darfur at this time."

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.

TIRANA, Albania -- President Bush, making a historic and welcome appearance yesterday in this former communist nation where no previous sitting American president has set foot, pledged full commitment to promoting Albania's admission to NATO. But Bush appeared less certain about his stated commitment to the independence of neighboring Kosovo, with the president insisting that he will push for international agreement on the autonomous province's freedom from Serbia - yet questioning whether he had actually called for a deadline.