Roger Boyes on a 'stability pact' that could benefit the Balkans in an expanded EU
GERMANY LOOKS BEYOND COMBAT FOR LONG-TERM BENEFIT
WAR - vivid, simple and telegenic - supplants domestic political issues and squats like a fat toad on all debates. No one doubts that this week's European summit in Cologne will be more about Kosovo than about unemployment.
There are rows going on, above all between Germany and France; there are tricky decisions to be taken (for example, over who should be the human face of European foreign policy); there are Banquo-like absentees (the European Commission); and buried underground there is a European election campaign. All of this counts for little compared with the videotaped view from the pilot's cockpit, the contorted faces of refugees, or the emotionally charged argument about the deployment of ground troops.
Beyond war, war, beyond jaw, jaw, an interesting German-led strategy is taking shape. Sadly, nobody has been paying attention. Germany is playing a modest military role in the war and although it is reluctant to supply an offensive ground force, it will help to implement a peace deal. This is new, although no longer remarkable. More significant is Germany's readiness to leave the leadership of the war to the Americans, and at a stretch the British, while quietly carving out its own leadership role for the postwar Balkans. Bonn fears that it will end up paying for the war and wants at least the postwar settlement to be on its terms.
The key to this is the "stability pact" for southeast Europe that is being cobbled together by the diplomats of Joschka Fischer, the Foreign Minister. Herr Fischer last week suggested that European Union membership eventually be offered to Albania, Europe's poorest country, and to all the republics of the former Yugoslavia, including a democratically governed Serbia.
The ideas put in circulation at the Bonn meeting last week were still in the realms of science fiction. Could Kosovo, with EU help, be transformed from subsistence farming to a land of olive growers? By modernising Albania rapidly, prosperity could spill over the border, enriching Kosovo and lessening its dependency on Serbia.
Speeding up Bulgarian and Romanian entry to the EU could also create a magnet of prosperity. The close neighbourhood of a flourishing pro-Western economy could only encourage the pro-Western modernisers in Serbia.Germans are ready in prin-ciple at least to bankroll the recovery, if only to keep at bay hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war zone.
The Central Europeans fought for years for grudging access to Western markets. The process was made difficult to preserve the exclusivity of the European Union. Now the EU is beginning to lose that special status. Soon, much sooner than anyone had anticipated, the Union will be less of a gentleman's club and more like a noisy discothèque with ineffectual bouncers.
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Tom Walker reports from Qafa Prushit on activity inside KLA territory near the border with Albania
NATO SURVEYS ROUTE FOR INVASION
NATO reconnaissance teams are increasingly being seen near Albanian border areas controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Army, leading international observers to believe that the alliance is routing plans for an invasion through corridors well-trodden by the guerrillas.
Monitors with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe working in the northern Albania border towns of Bajran Curri, Krume and Kukes have noticed increased Nato activity in their areas over the past few days. Those working in the lawless, bandit-ridden Bajran Curri area even witnessed an Albanian army helicopter flying senior German and American officers from allied headquarters in Belgium, into the town from where American Humvee transport vehicles have been seen driving along difficult tracks towards KLA border camps at Papaj and Padesh.
There is not believed to be any formalised direct contact between the KLA commanders and Nato reconnaissance teams. Officially, the American army has a training and co-operation programme with the Albanian army, which has positions on the same route. But the Humvees have been seen far beyond the most-advanced Albanian positions, closer to the KLA corridor being forged from Padesh through the former Serb stronghold of Kasare and down towards the western Kosovo plain.
As Nato moved in, some OSCE observers have admitted that the international monitoring organisation is thinking of moving out. Over the weekend, stability along the entire border zone deteriorated markedly, as thousands of new KLA recruits flooded into the guerrilla camp from their training bases further south in Albania. OSCE observers in Krume said that they had seen at least 6,000 KLA soldiers on the move over the past three days. There are believed to be about 10,000 in the KLA zone of operation stretching from Padesh in the north to the Morine crossing near Kukes.
There was sporadic but intense shelling by Yugoslavian tanks and artillery, trying to pick out KLA forward bases at Cahan and Vlahene on either side of Pastrik mountain, the dominant feature of the border east of Prizren. At one point, the KLA appeared to be making significant advances, taking the Serb border post of Gorazhub - bombed weeks ago by Nato - and occupying the nearby village of Malaj. But on Saturday afternoon, the Serbs hit back, cutting off further KLA advances by firing two rockets towards Cahan, which on detonation dropped thousands of mines around the KLA base.
One monitor said that KLA military police were stopping the OSCE from driving up the mountain track to Cahan. Yesterday in Kukes, the KLA helped to organise a refugee convoy south to new camps around Fier and Vlore. A week ago the KLA, like the United Nations refugee agency, was opposed to Nato's wish for the Kukes camps to be closed, but the latest KLA action suggests that Nato may have persuaded senior commanders that the camps will be better used by Nato troops later in the summer.