


It was as long ago as 1999 that NATO launched air attacks on Serbia, ostensibly to end the ‘ethnic cleansing' of Kosovan Albanians, and the UN Security Council turned Kosova into a protectorate of the UN, with six countries – America, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia – acting as the ‘contact group'. Yet the UN is still administering the province, and NATO troops (about 17,000 of them) remain in place to preserve a grudging peace between the Albanian Kosovars and the remaining Serb minority.