The words "stability" and "Balkans" have rarely been heard together in this century, but the leaders of 40 countries who met for a three-hour summit in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo yesterday were trying to defy history. President Clinton, Mr Tony Blair, Mr Jacques Chirac, the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, and their colleagues met in a city that will forever symbolise the start of the first World War to propose a concerted region-wide effort to promote economic development and democracy as an antidote to the last 10 years of ethnic conflict.
The meeting was presided over by Finnish President Maarti Ahtisaari, the current President of the EU and a negotiator of the agreement that ended NATO's 11week war against Yugoslavia.
"Everyone has felt the destabilising and demoralising effects of ideologies of hatred, intolerance and violence," Mr Ahtisaari told the gathering. "It is high time for the region to make up for lost time. Under the Stability Pact we shall try to bind the region into European and international structures."
He envisaged "a Europe at long last undivided, prosperous and free. A Europe where war becomes unthinkable".
The US, Britain and Russia argued about whether a six-page declaration issued at the end of the summit should single out President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia for criticism.
The final text said Yugoslavia must "embrace democratic change" or remain a pariah. But Mr Milosevic was not mentioned by name. A chair was left empty as a symbol of Yugoslavia's absence - and an unsubtle reminder to the people of Serbia that they would be welcome were it not for Mr Milosevic.
"We regret that we were not able to invite the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to be present today as a full and equal participant in the Stability Pact," the declaration said, adding that it appealed to Yugoslav citizens "to embrace democratic change and to work actively for regional reconciliation."
Montenegro, whose President, Mr Milo Djukanovic, opposes Mr Milosevic, was invited to the Sarajevo summit, and the declaration suggested that Montenegro - although part of Yugoslavia - might benefit from the Stability Pact.
The Russian Prime Minister, Mr Sergei Stepashin, said the exclusion of Serbia from the Stability Pact was "an obstacle to lasting peace in the region" which would "above all hurt innocent Serbs". It could have "very serious repercussions", he added.
In his statement to the summit, President Clinton said: "Serbia will only have a future when Mr Milosevic and his policies are consigned to the past."
Discord over Serbia's place in the regional plan goes beyond the fracture between the US and Britain on one side and Russia on the other, resembling arguments over policy on Iraq.
In both cases, France leads the European countries advocating mercy for the pariah countries. Its view is shared by the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, who last month advocated aid for the Serbian people "even if President Milosevic is still in power, so that the Serbs, already victims of their own regime, not be punished twice."
Washington's philosophy is that the more the Serbs and Iraqis suffer, the more likely they are to overthrow their governments. A draft law under consideration in the US Senate would give $100 million to the anti-Milosevic opposition - the same amount paid to opponents of President Saddam Hussein.
On a tour of Sarajevo, which was bombarded and besieged by Bosnian Serb forces for 3 1/2 years from 1992 until 1995, Mr Clinton praised the "remarkable, astonishing job" done in rebuilding the Bosnian capital. The summit was held in Sarajevo for symbolic reasons - so that the city where the first World War was ignited should mark the closing of the millennium with a visionary gathering for peace. Yet Bosnia is hardly a beacon to the region. Despite $5 billion in assistance over the past three years, its economy has not recovered.
The 1995 Dayton accords ended the killing, but nationalist Serbs, Croats and Muslims remain entrenched in their enclaves.
In many ways, the Yugoslav war was a boon to other countries in south-eastern Europe, whose chances of receiving aid and joining the EU and NATO have greatly increased. But many sources of instability remain.
They include the Kosovars' insistence on independence from Yugoslavia, demands for autonomy by ethnic Albanians in Macedonia and the danger that Albania could fall back into a state of near civil war, as it did in 1997.