Yugoslavia after Milosevic

The wars of Yugoslavia's dissolution might not be over yet. There remains m uch unfinished business, including, most urgently, the question of Kosovo's future status. If left unresolved, this question could well trigger a new round of violence and instability. If an obvious and satisfactory solution existed, it would already be known. None of the available options - includi ng a reconfigured Yugoslavia containing an autonomous Kosovo, an indefinite international protectorate, or Kosovo's partition - are appealing. The lea st problematic option is probably to prepare Kosovo for a form of 'conditio nal' independence, with heavy international supervision of minority rights and guarantees against further revisions of borders. This would require the new Serb leadership to make a clean break with the Milosevic era and the m yth of Serbian 'reconquest' of Kosovo. It also would require a Kosovo Alban ian leadership that is mature enough to embrace a twenty-first-century - ra ther than a nineteenth-century - concept of sovereignty.