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INTERNATIONNAL HERALD TRIBUNE
THURSDAY, JULY 1, 1999

EDITORIALS / OPINION

SERBS MUST SHOULDER  BLAME FOR THEIR LEADERS'  ACTIONS
By Jim Hoagland

WASHINGTON -  The mathematics of human hatred ,work this way in
Kosovo's ancient town of Pec. Before the war one-fifth of Pec's population
was Serbian. Today four-fifths of the town's houses are charred wrecks.

Slobodan Milosevic did not set fire to each of those houses in Pec. 
Individual Serbs did. They did so willingly and often with murderous glee, 
according to the survivors' accounts now being collected by journalists,
war crimes investigitors and N ATO peacekeepers.

Most of the Serbs who systematically destroyed  their neighbors' homes 
are fleeing. Their houses began to burn as soon as the first ethnic
Albanian
refugees came home. As a result the Serbian population of Pec is heading 
rapidly toward a new percentage; zero.
    
"If we have to protect every Serb here, all  the armies in Europe will not
be 
enough," an Italian lieutenant told a correspondent for the French news-
paper Le Monde this week, undermining his commanders appeals for 
Serbs to stay in Kosovo and just get along with those they victimized for 
a decade.
  
The lieutenant is more realistic than are his leaders about the grim
destiny 
the Serbs have sown and now reap for themselves in Kosovo and inside
Serbia. The Serbs fleeing from the province are not the victims of reverse 
ethnic cleansing, or of the imposition of collective guilt, as apologists 
frequently claim. They are the victims of their community's support for
or acquiescence in Mr. Milosevic's war.
As individuals they may be guiltless. But the attempted murder of Kosovo 
was carried out willingly by Serbs as a national act. Conceived and
implemented 
by their national leaders, who remain in office,the campaign to reduce the
Kosovar Albanians to absolute, final submission to Serbian political will
has 
summoned forth failure and its consequences for the Serbs.
The thought is not that NATO troops and the world at large should stand
aside
if the Kosovars want to even scores on Serbian civilians That would only 
guarantee an unending Balkan war. Nor is the spirit here one of vengeful 
punishment on Serbia, which will soon be appealing  for outside aid to get 
through the winter. Purposeful vengeance also guarantees permanent

conflict.
Mv focus is different : NATO and the United Nations, which now will
cooperate 
in running Kosovo as an international protectorate for the immediate
future, 
must avoid helping the Serbs escape the consequences of the actions they
have allowed their leaders to take in their name.

The Serbs cannot be allowed to find ways to continue to ignore the horrors
of 
Kosovo, or to arrange those horrors into a comfortable version that fits
with 
their widespread complex of persecution. The key struggle in Kosovo and
Setbia
at this moment is not diplomatic or military. It is moral and psychological
 .
For the outside world that struggle involves at a minimum doing nothing
that 
would delay the national reassessment the Serbs must make of themselves
and their society. The war and the lack of dissent it created in Serbia
show that 
their political framework is based not on police-state terror but on
voluntary Stalinism.

Censorship and propaganda do not fully explain general Serbian indifference

to Kosovo's calvary. There were no significant differences in public
reaction by 
Serbs with access to Western accounts and live broadcasts and those without

such access.

Individuals felt free to criticize Mr. Milosevic to Western journalists,
but Serbia's 
political parties did not debate the wisdom or morality of the war. Minds
were 
shut, and hearts were hardened, in ways that are frankly hard to imagine at
the
end of the 20th century.
That is why it is important  that NATO, the United Nations and the
countries that 
compose those organizations should find ways to maintain the powerful
display 
of moral outrage that the regime's actions merit. Only such a display can
exert
pressure on Belgrade to grasp the nettle of change.

The contact the West has with the Serbs now must be based on change, not on

reconstuction that would help them avoid the painful consequences of their
own 
evil. They can have bloodstained leaders; or they can have  Western help
for power 
plants. They cannot have bolh.

The Washington Post.
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