The rosiest Balkan scenario goes something like this. Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president who has exploited ethnic loyalties so brutally and successfully to stay in power over the past decade, is voted out of office at the presidential poll on September 24th. He is replaced by a doubtless prickly, but nonetheless more decent, Serb who realises that his country can be rebuilt only if he makes terms with the outside world, and accepts the need for a new constitutional settlement for much of the region—within, and perhaps beyond, the rump of Yugoslavia, which still includes the nominally Serbian province of Kosovo.
展开▼