Playing the hawk on Kosovo may allow Blair to toughen up his image among his own somewhat incredulous public, but it won't do much for British influence in Europe, where Germany, France and Italy are all pulling NATO in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, the real war continues, with more bombing overnight into Tuesday even as NATO released two Serb POWs captured by the KLA in Kosovo. And diplomacy progressed at a glacial pace, with Yugoslavia's foreign ministry announcing that Belgrade was "open" to negotiating over the peace proposals agreed to two weeks ago by Russia and NATO. Russian, NATO and Japanese diplomats are scheduled to meet Wednesday in Bonn to draft a U.N. resolution based on those proposals. "Right now there's not enough on the table to persuade either side to sign," says TIME U.N. correspondent William Dowell. Without the option of a ground war -- Blair's exhortations notwithstanding -- the factor that might break the deadlock is the urgency of resolving the refugee crisis before the onset of the Balkan winter. The humanitarian concerns that sparked NATO's air campaign in the first place may also eventually prompt the alliance to bring it to an imperfect close.
Arise, Sir Winston ... er ... Sir Tony Blair
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Maybe you ought to try cigars, Tony.... Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, appears to be doing his best to cloak himself in the mantle of Winston Churchill as he badgers those wavering Yanks to send the infantry into Kosovo. But being fully apprised of the fact that the ground-war option remains a nonstarter for NATO, Blair's bulldog barking looks more designed for domestic consumption than for seriously attempting to influence alliance policy. "Perhaps the British public is more disposed to sending in ground troops and he's trying to reflect that," says TIME Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson.