How NATO Stumbles Bolster Milosevic

In the end, Slobodan Milosevics secret weapon may be NATO. Opposition leader Zoran Djindjic vowed Thursday to keep up daily anti-Milosevic demonstrations despite Wednesday nights violent police crackdown. But even if the fractured opposition does manage to overcome its differences, the fact that NATO appears unable or unwilling to stop terror attacks on the territorys remaining Serb population creates fertile ground for Milosevic. "Kosovar Serbs are frightened because nobodys protecting them from these systematic, well-organized attacks and the culprits are never caught," says TIME Central Europe bureau reporter Dejan Anastasijevic. "The alliance lacks a strategy," he adds, "and its fast heading for a situation where its choices are either to accept partition of Kosovo or to accept the ethnic cleansing of Serbs."

On Monday three Serbs were killed by a rocket grenade attack on a marketplace in Kosovo Polje. "That unhappy scenario plays right into Milosevics hands," says Anastasijevic. "All he needs to do is send a few tanks to Kosovo and attack NATO forces. That would restart air strikes and put an end to any challenge. So his message to Serbs is, be good or Ill restart the war." Four months into the peacekeeping mission, NATO appears to have lost its way politically.