But the image is misleading.

With periodic ethnic violence still breaking out between ethnic Albanians [Muslims] and minority Serbs nearly five years after the end of the Kosovo war, the province does not promise any time soon to become a model of ethnic tolerance and reconciliation as international officials had hoped.

Meanwhile, associates of Slobodan Milosevic — the former Yugoslav leader who waged a brutal campaign in Kosovo in 1998-1999 — have recaptured a measure of power in Belgrade.

That turn of events threatens to exacerbate the already difficult task international officials face in their goal of eventually finding a political solution for Kosovo — a province in political limbo.

The return of the Socialists also means that chances look slim that the United States and other NATO nations will be able to soon wrap up their peacekeeping mission [one that originated with the Clinton administration] in Kosovo — a move Washington would have welcomed in order to focus on its missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

U.S. officials in Pristina declined requests to discuss the issue. But unofficially, some in Washington have expressed concern about the possibility of an indefinite presence in Kosovo.

In the wake of Dec. 28 elections in Serbia, the former Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica sealed a deal this week to govern as prime minister with the parliamentary support of Milosevic's Socialist Party.

The Socialists will hold no Cabinet positions, but their support will be essential for Kostunica's government to get any measures through in parliament. The party faded dramatically following Milosevic's fall, but now controls 22 seats in the 250-seat assembly. It is likely to exert significant influence over the new Cabinet.

The reemergence of the party that backed the war campaigns in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia has brought bitter memories to the surface in this province. It also threatens to undo steps international officials have taken to get the Serbs and Albanians to begin talking about a final political solution for Kosovo. The two sides participated in their first postwar talks in Vienna last year.

"This is a step backward in time," said Ilir Dugolli, a senior adviser to Kosovo's prime minister, Bajram Rexhepi. "It is an open endorsement of the policies wagged throughout the 1990s."

Luk 14:28 Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

Mal 1:4 Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.

Kostunica is also considered less likely to compromise on Kosovo than the previous Serbian administration.

While officially part of Serbia-Montenegro, the successor state to Yugoslavia, Kosovo is run as a de facto U.N. protectorate. Belgrade still hopes to regain control of the province, which Serbs consider the cradle of their civilization. That goal, however, clashes with the dream of the ethnic Albanian majority [Islam]: full political independence.

In this transitional phase, the United Nations and NATO are keeping the peace, pushing ethnic Albanians and Serbs to reconcile and establish the rule of law and democracy. Only then, U.N. officials say, can a decision on Kosovo's final political status be made.

 "the ethnic Albanian majority believes in these"

009.029 Fight those who believe not in Allah

Milosevic rose to power in large part by manipulating the role Kosovo plays in Serb national consciousness. So it is unlikely that his party — which he still officially leads from his jail cell in The Hague, Netherlands, where he is being tried for war crimes — would suddenly compromise on an issue that has been a cornerstone of its power base.

By contrast, ethnic Albanians have indicated they will push even more forcefully for independence from Serbia.

"It is insulting even to suggest to Albanians that they should deal with such a government," said Gezim Dauti, a 34-year-old waiter, in Pristina. He prefers an Islamic one, one that breaks international laws 

He said he interprets the political comeback of Milosevic's party as a sign that Serbs lack remorse for the crimes committed in Kosovo by their people. The Albanians provoked---at the command of their allah

So with no progress on the horizon, NATO's largest peacekeeping mission worldwide seems likely to keep its peacekeepers, including some 2,000 U.S. troops, in place here. The Word of God is more powerful, and more peaceful.

Brig. Gen. Jerry G. Beck Jr., the commander of U.S. troops in Kosovo said Friday that there would at least be no significant reduction of U.S. peacekeepers in Kosovo for the time being.

"The configuration of forces in Serbia and Kosovo is not good for any constructive settlement to happen," said Alex Anderson, the Kosovo project director of the think tank International Crisis Group.