The cascade of news yesterday bringing an end to the fighting in Yugoslavia and Kosovo is welcome indeed, opening up the prospect of refugees returning home and the beginnings of reconstruction of the severe damage inflicted over 78 days of war. It will take time to accomplish these tasks, not least because the agreements reached yesterday leave major questions outstanding about the deployment of forces and the political future of Kosovo. In a longer perspective the whole region of south-eastern Europe has been brought into the foreground by this conflict. Unless a comprehensive effort is made to address its political and economic development over the next generation the entire continent will continue to be dogged by instability.
The alliance fashioned against the Yugoslav president, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, withstood his tactical efforts to qualify or unravel the agreement he signed in Belgrade last week. It brought together the European Union, the Group of Seven industrialised countries and Russia in addition to the United States, the main NATO power involved. Central to these efforts and a key to their success was the insistence on a withdrawal of Serb forces and the return of refugees under the supervision of a strong international force. So was their explicit commitment to obtaining a United Nations Security Council resolution mandating the settlement and endorsing the military force to implement it. The one represented the persistent demands of NATO leaders, backed up by the bombing campaign and the ambiguous threat to use ground troops; the other ensured Russian support and opened the way for Mr Milosevic to insist he has complied with United Nations demands rather than capitulating to NATO. But the UN endorsement is important for the whole international community and the legitimate use of law to regulate future such conflicts.
As in all wars there is a rough fit between the military effort put in and the eventual outcome. But this war uniquely combined high technology precision-guided weaponry - directed with devastating accuracy at minimal risk to NATO pilots' lives against Yugoslav military and infrastructural targets - with a horrendous use of ethnic cleansing and mass expulsions against the Kosovar population by Serb forces. Nearly one and a half million people have suffered, many thousands have been killed and it is estimated that Serbia's infrastructure has been set back some 15 years. Surrounding states such as Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro have been battered and damaged by the war, whose costs they of all European states can least afford.
There must be a better way to tackle such conflicts. Little can be achieved in Serbia so long as Mr Milosevic remains in power. The cost of reconstruction will be borne overwhelmingly by European governments and peoples. They ought, therefore, to devote a great deal of attention in coming years to fashioning political, economic, security and defence mechanisms that can include the Balkan region in European integration. That will require a radical overhaul of NATO structures and the US military dominance which has been so marked a feature of this war. It will involve a costly commitment to regional economic development. And it will necessitate a generous effort to open up political paths towards EU enlargement for all the states involved, Serbia included.