Dilemmas within Dilemmas : A report from the Balkans.

'Greece has a problem," said the head of an American non-governmental organization. "It wants to lead the Balkans without being part of the Balkans."

We were chatting at a conference in Athens that had brought together Greek politicians, American and West European observers, and, most important, Serbs opposed to the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic. The topic was, inevitably, how to restore stability to the Balkans.

The American's joke was quite serious. Greece today wants to shed its ramshackle and corrupt Balkan image and enter the world of globalization and free markets-but it is next door to countries that have engaged in four wars over the last decade. So the Greek government and its opposition agree on the same foreign policy: a firm upholding of the international status quo by Europe and the United States. As opposition leader Kostas Karamanlis told the conference: Borders must be inviolable, Kosovo must remain part of Yugoslavia, and Montenegro must be discouraged from seeking independence.

Standing in the way of stability, however, is a large obstacle: Milosevic. So far, the wars he has waged have lost for Serbia a great deal of territory-up to and including Kosovo. One Serb oppositionist predicted that Milosevic would end up as mayor of Belgrade, fighting a losing war for the suburbs.

But as long as he remains in power, no one can rest easy. The Serb oppositionists argued that the West should assist the remaining free media in Yugoslavia (and themselves), and direct humanitarian aid not through bodies controlled by Milosevic but through the 32 major Serbian cities run by opposition mayors.

Greek politicians present were sympathetic, but doubtful that the Serb opposition could beat a ruler as ruthless and crafty as Milosevic-and as desperate. He is now facing a dreadful dilemma: Either remain in power or go to prison for a very long time. Naturally, he is determined to stay in power.

Off the record, some even argued that the indictment against Milosevic should be lifted as part of a deal that would allow him and his family to live quietly in exile. When we countered with the need to punish human- rights violations, they replied, "Well, if you really value human rights, you can always march to Belgrade and depose him."

We stood our ground, of course, but I noticed that our side of the debate all had return tickets to Paris, London, Berlin, and Washington.

Which is not to accept the Greek argument as a whole. It is understandable that Greece should not want the Balkans to be balkanized further. But stability is not to be achieved by blind support of the status quo against deeply rooted popular sentiments. If the people in Kosovo and Montenegro are determined not to remain in a Yugoslavia ruled by Milosevic, they cannot really be forced to do so. After all, the four Balkan wars since 1989 have all been started by Milosevic attempting to compel four nations to remain in Yugoslavia against their will. And Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia are today all independent-while Kosovo is heading in that direction.

On to Pristina. If the capital of Kosovo was ever a beautiful city, it must have been just after the Second World War. Though it nestles in a pleasant valley and has some dignified older apartment buildings, its more recent architects have been the "FX" school of neo-modernism and NATO's bomber pilots. Both did their worst.

Along with their usual egg-box apartments, the neo-modernists erected one building that looks like the inside of a piano-a concert hall perhaps?-and another that resembles giant tennis balls packed inside barbed-wire cages. (If it should turn out to be a sports stadium, I will reevaluate it as a witty subversive comment on the plight of the athlete under Marxism.)

Naturally, these were the buildings the bombers managed to miss. What they hit were respectably functional structures such as army barracks and power utilities. In addition, Serbs and Albanians burned out each other's homes, leaving some streets looking like teeth in a decaying mouth. Add in the occasional bomb site with steel wires sticking up from the ground and shattered windows covered with blue plastic, and Kosovo offers a first impression of disorder and ruin.

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But in fact, it's not so terrible. Almost all Kosovar Albanians returned to their homes within a couple of months of the war's end. They are restoring them with astonishing speed. And there is a kind of mini-boom in the "informal sector" of the economy, as the Albanians reopen shops and rebuild everything.

This judgment does need some qualification. The entire Kosovo economy is really an informal (i.e. black) economy, since there is no settled government to tax and regulate businesses. The U.N. civilian mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) was set up to provide such a government.

But UNMIK has very little money with which to establish its authority. After the war, the U.S. and the European Union agreed that since the U.S. had done most of the military heavy lifting, the EU would finance the bulk of reconstruction costs. Thus far, however, little EU aid has reached Kosovo.

UNMIK's second problem is that, while its charter, written by diplomats, laid down very firmly that Kosovo remains a province of Yugoslavia, the overwhelming majority of Kosovars will accept nothing less than full independence. UNMIK, meanwhile, has to make practical decisions: Does UNMIK have the right to privatize an industry without the consent of Milosevic, an indicted war criminal? Must Kosovo's telephone calls go through Belgrade, or do they get a new national code? In almost all of these cases, common sense points one way, and UNMIK's charter the other.

Finally, UNMIK has competitors for its role as Kosovo's new government-one political party drawn from the Kosovo Liberation Front, and another from Ibrahim Rugova's "shadow government." Both are gearing up for political battles, and seeking UNMIK's support.

Until the EU's promised reconstruction funds arrive, however, Kosovo can expect very little government from anyone-apart from the military protection provided by the NATO-dominated KFOR troops.

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But if you were to judge by the language of the Kosovar politicians who spoke to our delegation, you would suppose we were visiting Sweden or Switzerland. "I want to see a political system based on pluralism," said one. "No, it must be a pluralist democratic system," replied a second. "Not enough," said the third. "It must be a pluralist, democratic, multi- ethnic system." That final declaration scoops the pool, since the "principle of multi-ethnicity" is something to which UNMIK and other international aid groups have committed themselves very strongly.

After a while, though, one couldn't help noticing that these platitudes were uttered by men surrounded by bodyguards; further, that some of the speakers could themselves get employment as bodyguards. Also, my advance briefing had suggested that I refrain from speaking Serbian in Pristina-no problem, fortunately, but sound advice. A Bulgarian aid worker was recently shot in the street for answering a question about the time in Serbo-Croat.

The remaining Serbs in Kosovo-about 90,000, or just under 10 percent of the population-have accordingly congregated for safety in about ten enclaves. Those in cities live in fear. It will be some time before Serbs can lie down with Albanians in safety. (And vice versa, naturally.)

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In a Serbian Orthodox monastery-a remote rural citadel guarded by KFOR soldiers-Father Sava, a practiced media cleric, argued that power should be decentralized to small Swiss-style cantons so that people living in the Serb enclaves could receive basic governmental services without discrimination. In theory, there is much to be said for cantonization. Switzerland is the world's most successful multi-ethnic country, and has managed to combine several languages with a strong sense of national identity by decentralizing power down to the lowest possible level. Maybe that solution will be adopted in the distant future, long after present hatreds have cooled.

In the current state of Kosovo, however, cantons are a non-starter. Both UNMIK and the Albanians see them as an attempt to reestablish Milosevic's power and create conditions for the eventual partition of Kosovo. Also, there are stories of "men in black jackets" (i.e., Serb paramilitaries in light disguise) turning up in some of the enclaves to stiffen Serb resistance to both UNMIK and Kosovo's independence.

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Milosevic's strategy can only put the Kosovar Serbs at greater risk. They are simply too few in number to bargain effectively for multi-ethnic power-sharing on the Northern Ireland or any other model. The present reality of Kosovo, as Veton Surroi points out, is that it is an ethnic nation-state heading for an independence that became more or less inevitable when the Yugoslav Army moved out.

Surroi, a well-respected independent editor, is a moderate who might be expected to endorse the "principle of multi-ethnicity." But he is also a realist. What is needed, he says, is not multi-ethnicity but tolerance.

Building tolerance, however, will take not only time but also the restoration of people's security. In other words, it will require the presence of KFOR for a long time to come. All of the people, Serb and Albanian, and most of the politicians want it to stay indefinitely. And what is the view of the Pentagon and the U.S. administration?

"Take a look at the military camp the U.S. is building down the road," said a senior KFOR officer. "It's the only thing in Kosovo you can see from the satellite. You may be here for the long haul."

Or even longer-if the international community insists on building multi- ethnicity too.