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Not surprisingly, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Milan

Milutinovic rejected the Franco-German deal, saying,

"Kosovo is an internal matter of the Federal Republic of

Yugoslavia. It concerns only us."68   A week later, Yugoslav

Deputy Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic added, "No plans

or initiatives from outside which regard any form of our

internal affairs are acceptable to us."69

Milutinovic and Jovanovic may not be the most popular

diplomats in the world today, but they do have a legiti-

mate legal point under international law: States are sov-

ereign entities that have exclusive jurisdiction over mat-

ters within their borders.  There is a move afoot to cir-

cumvent that principle by arguing that "human rights is

not an internal issue," as the Council of Europe claimed

on April 22.70   But that argument should set off alarms in

Washington which, more often than not, bears the largest

military and financial burden for policing the world's

most dangerous neighborhoods.  Undeterred by that implica-

tion, Washington continues to threaten Belgrade with NATO

intervention, demanding that it withdraw its internal secu-

rity forces from Kosovo and commence talks for reorganiz-

ing its internal political structures.

Yet Washington's posture regarding Kosovo looks espe-

cially selective given its handling of other foreign poli-

cy matters.  For instance, although ethnic Albanians make

up one-fifth of the population of Serbia, they are one-

third of the population in neighboring Macedonia.  Oddly

enough, Washington supports Macedonia's policy of central-

ized government administration and does not oppose

President Kiro Gligerov's unwillingness to grant autonomous

status to Macedonia's ethnic Albanian population, which is

proportionally larger than Serbia's.  In sharp contrast,

Washington is demanding that Belgrade enter into foreign-

mediated discussions with ethnic Albanians to discuss some

unspecified form of autonomy.

In another example, Turkey has repeatedly cracked down

on Kurd secessionists in its southeastern region, bombing

their forces and razing their villages.  In fact, just

four days after Belgrade's February-March crackdown in

Kosovo, Turkish security forces--backed by combat helicop-

ters--killed 26 Kurdish Workers' Party separatists in the

southeast province of Bingol.71   Washington's response to

that crackdown was far different from its reaction to the

initial Kosovo crackdown.  As Simon Jenkins of the Times

of London has observed, "This is boutique foreign policy

at its worst."72