Who's Won When Both Sides Are Cheering?

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While its too early for NATO to plan a ticker-tape parade, Milosevic, personally, has no cause to break out the Mot. His nationalist allies have deserted him over his surrender of Kosovo; his more liberal opponents will attack him for pointlessly subjecting the country to a 78-day bombing nightmare; hes now wanted in the Hague to face war crimes charges; and the U.S. and Britain are warning his countrymen theyll get no help rebuilding their shattered country while hes still in power. (The latter condition may well be quietly dropped as Europe balks at the destabilizing consequences of trying to starve out a dictatorship in its own backyard.) Indeed, with Milosevics strongest challengers right now being nationalists who reject the Kosovo peace deal, it may not even be in the Wests immediate interest to make Milosevics ouster a short-term priority. After all, in the long run hes probably damned himself to a nasty end, whether as a besieged despot, a fugitive, in a war crimes court or worse. The truth, of course, is that there are no real winners in this messy Balkan conflict, only plenty of losers: The Kosovar Albanian civilians who have been terrorized, tortured, r aped, murdered and driven from their homes, and for whom the trauma of exile isnt yet over; and the Serb civilians who have seen their country - and many of their loved ones - bombed into oblivion, and who may have to suffer under their despotic president for some time to come.
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