When the Foreign Ministers of the six-nation Contact Group meet in London today on the Kosovo crisis they will share a terrible feeling of deja vu - it is Bosnia all over again, and what to do about the principal actor of that tragedy, the irredentist President of the Yugoslav Federation, Slobodan Milosevic.
Once again the evidence is clear that the Belgrade regime will respond only to actual force or an utterly convincing demonstration that force will be used.
Once again the dynamics of the international security environment are such that making such threats is enormously difficult, despite a greater political will to become engaged at an earlier stage in the crisis.
Many fear we are already at five minutes to midnight. On Kosovo's border, UN officials are bracing for the possible arrival in northern Albania of as many as 20,000 refugees from the undeclared war, a refugee agency spokeswoman said on Wednesday. The UNHCR has said that at least 65,000 ethnic Albanians have fled recent operations by Serbian security forces.Over 300 are feared to have died since February.
Ministers today will almost certainly agree to press on the Belgrade authorities a deadline for the implementation of a package of confidence-building measures in Kosovo that are seen as a crucial prelude to the resumption of internal peace talks scuppered by the latest Serb assault. These are likely to include the withdrawal of troops and special police units, security guarantees for the ethnic Albanians, guarantees for the return of refugees and an agreement to station observers in the province.
What then? The international community has moved, it is clear from Monday's statement from EU foreign ministers, from an ineffective policy of promising to reward President Milosevic by easing sanctions for behaving well to threats of the use of force.
But the Yugoslav president knows that the sanctioning of "all means necessary" by the UN Security Council will not be easy. Russia has signalled her reluctance, although President Yeltsin, anxious to get more western aid, is particularly susceptible to external pressure.
Whatever the political difficulties, NATO yesterday made clear it would maintain its pressure on Belgrade in the meantime by preparing for war. That means preparing to send in substantial ground troops to reinforce the Albanian border from the Albanian side and probably preparing to impose an air exclusion zone over Kosovo. That could be complemented by air attacks on Serbian artillery and tanks.
The tactics will also be shaped by a determination of the major powers not to give succour to Albanian separatists and particularly the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has made significant military gains in recent days, although the scope of its influence is both unquantifiable and disputed.
The US Defence Secretary, William Cohen, was blunt on his arrival in Europe on Wednesday: "It is important that the Kosovars understand that whatever action is taken that it not be seen as an endorsement for their move toward independence."
The fear is both that an independent Kosovo would be the source of major regional instability and could be achieved only at a cost of enormous bloodshed, given Serbia's historic attachment to the province. Suggestions, too, that Kosovo could be partitioned, with the Serbs retaining control of the north and the capital are seen as unrealistic.
The international community has pinned its hopes of a settlement on the unusual - for this part of the world - moderation of the Kosovo Albanian leader, Ibrahim Rugova, who has urged compatriots not to engage in violence, despite huge provocation, and has been willing to settle for autonomy within the Yugoslav federation.
YET, while it might appear at first to suit Mr Milosevic to do a limited deal with such a man, autonomy within the federation could pose enormous future problems politically for the president. The Yugoslav federation's structure gives the small republic of Montenegro an influence far beyond its population weight - that has allowed its newly mandated and reformist President Milan Djukanovic to cause Mr Milosevic much grief.
A similar arrangement for Kosovo, or even autonomy within the Serbian republic, could prove another thorn in Mr Milosevic's side. Not surprisingly he clings to a forcible union in which the 90 per cent Albanian majority of Kosovo's 1.8 million population is governed by its Serb minority via Belgarde.
For now, however, we sit and wait to see who blinks first.
