AFTER 11 weeks of NATO's air war - marked by painful blunders and frequent doubts about its effectiveness - there were signs today that Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic might have at last been bombed into backing down. Today he began a second day of talks with peace envoys after finding himself now confronted by Russia which has lined up with the West in the formulation of an international peace plan.

But even if the many obstacles to a deal can be overcome, and so halt a full-scale ground invasion of Kosovo by NATO, what follows the "peace" is a major question.

For just as Serbia was eventually forced to come to the talks table over Bosnia, it has since required enduring commitment by the international community to policing the subsequent settlement and keeping the lid on the festering hostilities there.

Over Kosovo, such a situation may well be as lasting and necessary - when the religious and ethnic hatreds that triggered this conflict will not have disappeared when the Kosovar Albanian refugees are returned to their homes and the Serbs find themselves policed "in their own country" by an international force made up largely of troops whose countries had been bombing them. Indeed, today, as the hopes of a peace deal in Belgrade were being glimpsed, the Yugoslav ambassador to the United Nations was speaking of the impossibility of his country being expected to act as host to its aggressors.

Even if a bitter pill of this magnitude can be swallowed by Milosevic as he faces more and greater war if he does not, the upshot may be a peacekeeping liability in Kosovo that might last as long as those which the United Nations have at present in Cyprus and Korea.

But though there would also have to be the resolution of the rift between Russia and NATO over the command structure of a UN-mandated peacekeeping force in Kosovo, no matter how tense and difficult such a settlement may be at least it would not be war and the evil of ethnic cleansing will have been undone.

But what of Milosevic himself?

He will want any deal he has to accept to leave him in power - and can the international community accept that compromise when it has now indicted him as a war criminal?

The peace may hang on him being toppled by the Yugoslavs themselves, but does that fit the NATO timetable or hopes of solving the Kosovo problem without a ground war?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.