Keeping the peace is far more difficult than going to war. In Yugoslavia, it is also far more dangerous.
United Nations peacekeepers have been used as human shields, international monitors have been shot. In the latest outrage, as armed Serbian police marched back into the village where others of their number murdered and mutilated 45 unarmed Albanian civilians last week, observers from a cease-fire verification mission were once again forced to flee for their lives as the shooting restarted.
In this bloody conflict no allowance is made for those who do not carry weapons, whether they wear the blue beret of the UN forces, or are defenceless inhabitants going about their daily business. The massacre and mutilation of the villagers in Racak is merely the latest atrocity by Serb forces.
Without positive action from the UN, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation or one of the other international groups who have tried so long and to so little effect to end this inhuman business, it will not be the last.
Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic is the Balkan equivalent of Saddam Hussein. He barred the International Criminal Tribunal from the region when it attempted to investigate the carnage his forces wreaked on Prekaz in central Kosovo last March, and it is unlikely that it will be given access now.
As long as he reigns unchecked, a peaceful solution to the Kosovo question is impossible. Almost a year has passed since the European Union urged Mr Milosevic to restore autonomy to the Albanians who make up 90 per cent of Kosovo's population, warning that 'if he does not act, he must not be surprised if others do'.