The arrival in the Balkans of two of Russia's deputy foreign ministers with accompanying teams of officials is a welcome sign of Moscow's determination to reach a peaceful solution to the crisis in Kosovo. At the very least this diplomatic offensive illustrates that Moscow, as the regional power with the greatest influence over Serbia, is not prepared simply to accept at face value the statements of the Serbian leader, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, after his recent meeting with President Yeltsin. Mr Milosevic's record in the past in relation to Kosovo, to Serb communities in other parts of the former Yugoslavia and even to his own people in Serbia, most of whom are virulently opposed to his continuance in power, has been shown to be duplicitous in the extreme. Russia has placed its growing reputation as a peace negotiator on the line in Kosovo. It is proud that its intervention in Iraq, led by the foreign minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, led to a diplomatic solution when hawks were calling for military action. In Kosovo, Russia seeks to place another diplomatic feather in its cap and should a volte-face by Mr Milosevic prevent it from doing so one can expect a serious rift between the Russians and Serbs who have been traditional allies for hundreds of years.
The brief of deputy foreign minister, Mr Nikolai Afanasyev, who arrived in Belgrade yesterday is to meet Mr Milosevic before moving on to Pristina for talks with local leaders of the Serbian and ethnicAlbanian leaders. In the meantime another Russian deputy foreign minister, Mr Alexander Avdeyev, has arrived in the Albanian capital Tirana for talks with local politicians including President Rexhep Meidani and will then travel to the Skopje in Macedonia which has a very large ethnic Albanian minority population.
This intense diplomatic activity contrasts sharply with the statements of Colonel-General Leonid Ivashev of Russia's defence ministry, who has warned of a "new Cold War" should NATO act militarily in Kosovo without a mandate from the UN security council. The gap between rhetoric and reality in the Russian defence ministry has always been a wide one and it should be noted that Gen Ivashev's views are far from typical of those in the policy-making establishment in Moscow. He has, for example, offered a job as special adviser to Marshal Dmitri Yazov, one of the leaders of the attempted Moscow coup d'etat of August 1991.
Military action by NATO without security council backing would be unwelcome but that backing depends largely on Russia itself. Moscow should be prepared and indeed would be likely to give its support to such action should Mr Milosevic renege on his promises to President Yeltsin. In the meantime the main aims of economic sanctions from the west and diplomatic pressure from Russia should be to bring operations against civilians in Kosovo to an end, to put effective international monitoring in place, urgently to account for missing persons who may be held as hostages by both sides in the conflict and to ensure the safe return to their homes of displaced persons.