The victory of firmly pro-independence candidate Hasham Thaci in Kosovo's parliamentary elections presents imminent and fateful choices about its future. On December 10th a negotiating deadline expires, after which Mr Thaci is committed to making a declaration of independence for the territory from Serbia. It has been run by a Nato-led force under United Nations mandate for the last eight years. The key question now is whether independence will be declared unilaterally - perhaps triggering destabilising moves elsewhere in the Balkan region and beyond it - or can be contained by agreement.
There is precious little sign that any such compromise is available. For months negotiations on how to proceed have been deadlocked between United States and European Union positions supporting the "supervised independence" proposed by UN mediator Martti Ahtisaari, and Serbia and Russian ones which doggedly reject it. The demographic balance in Kosovo is 90 per cent Albanian and 10 per cent Serb. But historically it has a huge symbolic importance for Serbian nationalists as the site of the crucial battle they lost in the 14th century against an advancing Ottoman force - a memory drawn upon by Slobodan Milosevic in the speech that launched his bid for the Yugoslav presidency in 1987. His victory led directly to the vicious wars which then broke the federation up, in which half a million people died.
There is now a real danger that those wars could be reopened, notwithstanding the immense international effort made to prevent and contain them. This could happen if a declaration of Kosovan independence is followed firstly by a violent de facto partition of the territory as the Serbian minority secedes or flees and then by a reignition of conflict involving the Serbs in neighbouring Bosnia and the Albanians in Macedonia. The Ahtisaari independence plan insists on strong guarantees for minority representatives in the Kosovo assembly and a high level of autonomy for the Serb community.
But that community boycotted the elections and sees Kosovan independence as a partition of greater Serbia, whose leaders now warn that it would set destabilising precedents elsewhere in Europe. Russia stokes such fears and says it will veto UN recognition of a new state. The US supports immediate independence for Kosovo but the EU is divided, with several large states fearing the consequences for their own minority conflicts. In addition, the sheer poverty and endemic unemployment in Kosovo would swiftly become visible again after independence, mocking the hope and zeal attached to it. This is already seen in the low 45 per cent election turnout.
All this counsels caution and some delay as the EU faces up to a foreign policy crisis in which it is the principal external player. But the time for indecision is past, since there is no realistic alternative to Kosovan independence. The EU must play its major card - the prospect of eventual EU membership for Serbia - with skill and determination in this endgame period.