The Multiple Facets of Conflict Management
Preventive diplomacy
In the fall of 1992, the United Nations and the OSCE attempted to manage the Kosovo issue with the consent of the Yugoslav Federal Government then under the control of a pro-Western leader: Milan Panic. Within the Geneva International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia (ICFY), which started in September 1992, the United Nations tasked a special working group to establish a constructive dialogue between the Belgrade authorities and the leadership of the ethnic Albanians on the delicate matters of education and health. Unfortunately, when the nationalist parties won the federal elections of December 1992, the new government of the rump Yugoslavia immediately decided to put an end to the dialogue by alleging that Kosovo was a purely internal matter excluding by definition any kind of interference from the international community. As to the OSCE, it set up in the summer of 1992 "Long-Term Missions" in three potentially explosives ethnic spots of Serbia: Kosovo as well as Voivodina and Sanjak. This laudable and useful effort of preventive diplomacy came to an abrupt end after nine months when the authorities of the rump Yugoslavia refused to extend the mandate of the mission unless the status of Yugoslavia (whose membership has been suspended from the OSCE in July 1992) was fully restored as a regular participating State to the OSCE. The latter rejected the blackmail and the Missions were discontinued.
Mediation/Conciliation efforts
After the failure of preventive diplomacy efforts, the international community ignored the Kosovo issue until March 1998, when Kosovo became the bloody theater of regular armed incidents between the troops of Belgrade and the KLA.
Contrary to current expectations, the leading institution which spontaneously addressed the situation was not the UN, but a quite different body: the Contact Group, an ad hoc body performing on a purely informal since 1994 (in connection with the ongoing conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina) the role of a "Security Council for the Balkans." From the outset, and consistently onwards, the Contact Group (composed of the USA, France, the UK, Germany, Italy and the Russian Federation) adopted two basic guidelines. Under the first guideline, the Albanian leadership was asked to abandon the idea of independence. As to the second guideline, it warned the Belgrade authorities that the perpetuation of the present situation was unacceptable to the international community and that it was indispensable for Belgrade to negotiate with the ethnic Albanians an "enhanced status" for Kosovo including "a significant degree of real autonomy." The Contact Group tried to make use of carrots as well as sticks on the one hand by promising to normalize Yugoslavia's relations with the outside world and on the other hand by envisaging possible sanctions against Belgrade in case of non-compliance.
The European Union endorsed the Contact Group's approach. From a practical point of view, it provided financial humanitarian assistance to Kosovo deportees and decided to respect the set of sanctions approved by the majority of the Contact Group―that is to say with the exception of Russia.
