EPA The Kosovars are still gunning . . .  FOOD is important. But
half an hour before the mid-afternoon deadline on February 23rd
that the mediators had set for a peace deal on Kosovo, and with
NATO's air force and warships on stand-by, America's negotiators
were alarmed to find the ethnic-Albanian Kosovo delegation still
at lunch—without having agreed even among themselves. Even so,
Chris Hill, the chief American mediator, did manage to salvage
something from 17 days of staircase diplomacy between the floors
of the Rambouillet chateau outside Paris: a commitment by both
the Kosovars and their Serb opponents to accept a settlement in
principle, and to meet again on March 15th. But this has only
put off the day of reckoning.  It was not supposed to have
turned out this way. The Americans had bet on squeezing the
Serbs with the threat of bombs on the one side and the Kosovars'
approval of the deal on the other. It was thought that the
agreement on offer, giving a three-year interim period of wide
autonomy to the