Six years ago, diplomats were putting the finishing touches on what was to be the Rambouillet conference that led to NATO bombing. Refugees huddled under plastic sheeting in the rain and snow of the Drenice forests. Slobodan Milosevic did, or did not, bother to see American envoy Richard Holbrooke. It seems a world as distant now as that of the Middle Ages.
The refugees eventually went home, NATO sent in a protection force and, until the riots last March, the world more or less forgot about Kosovo. The United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) administration set about spending the reconstruction money, non-government organisations rebuilt homes, and the European Union (EU) repaired and widened roads. Elections were held, peacefully and successfully, but few of the diminishing number of Serbs in Kosovo bothering to vote in a society ninety-seven percent dominated by ethnic Albanians.
