Change in the Balkans?

After 10 years of fratricidal wars and impoverishment, would the former Yugoslavia finally break the bad spell it was cast? One has to acknowledge that good news has been abounding for a year. Everywhere, war factors are diminishing. We first witnessed the shaming defeat, in Croatia, of the national party and the election to the presidency, of a liberal who broadcast his desires to collaborate with the tribunal in The Hague and to facilitate the return of the Serbs chased from Krajina in 1995.

In Bosnia, the Muslim Islamic Party of Alija Izetbegovic keeps on losing ground against the social democrats. In Belgrade, the Serbs finally managed to remove Milosevic from power, to replace him by a man who desires to build a state of law and to collaborate fully with the European Union. In Kosovo, the moderate nationalist party of Ibrahim Rugova won the first elections since the arrival of the KFOR, despite an intimidation campaign led by his extremist rivals.

Is it to say that common sense has begun to prevail and that Balkan nations -- economically condemned to live together -- have renounced atomization? It is to early to affirm it. But the West must not waste its chance and benefit as soon as possible of the undeniable retreat of the spirit of war.

-- Le Figaro, Paris