THE BALKANS BOIL OVER : The U.S. ties NATO's hands.

One can debate the merits of interventionist versus noninterventionist foreign policy, but the worst policy of all is one that makes promises it fails to keep, backing off when things become difficult. Exactly this, on the part of Washington, underlies the serious crisis of interethnic fighting in Macedonia.

Albanian guerrilla forces have taken advantage of NATO's occupation of Kosovo to launch themselves into Serbia and Macedonia. Doing so, they profited from a short-term decision by Washington to sponsor attacks into Serbia as a way of undermining Slobodan Milosevic.

Now that Milosevic has been overturned by conservative and constitutionalist leaders in Serbia, the Albanian guerrillas--unchecked and emboldened by Washington's noninterventionism--have become instigators of war in Macedonia, as well as obstacles to political reconstruction in Serbia.

Three years ago, for the action-minded in Washington, backing the Kosovo Liberation Army seemed a good idea. The NATO allies were not so sure about this, but Washington prevailed. After NATO's occupation of Kosovo, the United States encouraged KLA militants to set up in the so-called buffer zone in southern Serbia, largely Albanian-populated, where Serbian army forces were prohibited. The guerrillas attacked Serbian police and demanded the region's reunification with Kosovo (from which it was separated only in the 1950s).

It was easy for them to move clandestinely from there into the adjoining Albanian-populated part of Macedonia, whose territorial integrity the United States has formally guaranteed. No one blocked them, even though there was a sharp dispute between the United States and London over Britain's call for aggressive NATO patrols inside the buffer zone to check the guerrillas. The Pentagon has formally limited the U.S. Army's role to peacekeeping inside Kosovo.

The United States even vetoed NATO protection for thirty European Union monitors. They were meant to observe a limited Serbian army movement back into the buffer zone, authorized to block access to Montenegro. "There is no guarantee the Serbs are going to behave," an American official explained, as if assurance of good behavior were not the point of such an exercise.

Washington says that it wishes to preserve its "credibility" with the Albanians. In fact, it is appeasing Albanian extremists. A factor in the situation is that the guerrillas are blackmailing Washington. They, or extremists among them, know that if the United States turns against them, they can provoke a major crisis between Americans and NATO allies, and profit from what follows.

The scenario would involve killing enough U.S. soldiers to provoke the Bush government and Congress into pulling American troops out of the Balkans. It is a reckless scenario, dangerous for all concerned, and possibly fatal to NATO. But it is plausible.

The Western powers went into the Balkans to stop ethnic cleansing, not to sponsor guerrillas set upon creating new ethnic states. They aimed to support liberal, nonethnic government, or at least to defend a liberal society in the place where it still existed in the early 1990s, in Sarajevo.

For an ethnic community to want to live inside its own national borders is a legitimate choice, so long as this is not at the expense of others. No one would have objected to Yugoslavia's breakup if it could have been accomplished without war. There was war, and the Yugoslav people (who have nothing but history to set them apart) have individually and belligerently segregated themselves.

The Albanians were the people left out. They have not, until now, been war-makers. The Kosovo Albanians practiced nonviolence under heavy Serbian repression, demanding only to be treated as equal citizens, which they mostly had been until Slobodan Milosevic took power.

The Albanians in Macedonia have wanted a binational state that would also grant them equality with the Slav population. An Albanian party is currently part of a coalition government and holds five cabinet posts, including the ministry of justice; but the civil service, education, and official treatment of the Albanians remain heavily weighed against them. The resulting popular resentment fuels the crisis that has now been provoked by the guerrillas.

None of these Albanians seem eager to become part of backward, impoverished, mafia-ridden Albania itself. The Kosovars consider Kosovo the natural center of any ethnic Albanian nation.The situation is not hopeless. The new Serbian government proposes serious compromises to reconcile the Kosovars to autonomy within the federation. The European Union offers future membership, in which the narcissistic particularisms of the former Yugoslavia might become increasingly irrelevant.

The Albanians are entitled to whatever future they can peacefully negotiate. Their desire for autonomy and unity is widely understood. They can have plenty of support from the international community in negotiating their problems with their neighbors.

The main thing is that NATO insists that violence is unacceptable. NATO's intervention in the Balkans makes no sense if it cannot prevent more ethnic violence. NATO is there, with overwhelming force and enormous resources. It can stop the violence. The United States holds the key to what NATO does. As matters stand, it is failing its responsibility.

[C] 2001, Los Angeles Times Syndicate International