MUCH LOOSE EMOTION BESETS THE BALKANS AS HARD DECISIONS WAIT

In 1941, Rebecca West wrote, "There was a lot of emotion loose about the Balkans which had lost its legitimate employment when the Turks were expelled." Half a century later, the fall of Communism has unleashed the same loose, cruel emotions.

These small, violence-prone Balkan nations always were an annoyance to Europe. A century ago Bismarck said, "The whole of the Balkans is not worth the healthy bone of a single Pomeranian musketeer." Thus, over time a conventional diplomatic wisdom developed: leave them to their own extremes and maybe they will wither away.

The bloody breakup of Yugoslavia was, it has been observed, "a colossal exercise of wishful thinking mixed in with a chronic lack of understanding of Balkan history and the Balkan mentality." No one would take the time to face up to the inherent unholiness of a Balkan holy war.

Under Tito and Communism, religion was suppressed and there was peace in Yugoslavia - not a happy peace, but peace nonetheless. After "liberation," sectarian chauvinism re-emerged with dreadful ferocity. the violence is beyond moral comprehension. The bloodshed in Bosnia isn't born of ethnic differences. The Serbs, Croats and Moslems in that small country are, ethnically speaking, brothers and sisters who speak the same language. It is religion that divides them - the conflicting legacies of centuries of ancient battles, ideologies and hatreds.

The Bosnian conflict is a holy war where victory is measured in exterminations and expulsions. Bosnia can never be put back together again. Serbia will keep two thirds or more of the territory. Croatia rushed in to bite off its chunk. The Moslems will, at best, be driven into a few enclaves.

Looking ahead, there is additional cause for anxiety. Serbia has now taken care of its Croatian problem and its Bosnian Moslem problem. Most likely, it will soon want to resolve its Albanian problem in Kosovo and western Macedonia. Kosovo is to Serbia what the West Bank is to Israel: sacred soil loaded with alien peoples.

Albania itself talks, from time to time, about unification of the Albanian people - sort of a Greater Albania to match a Greater Serbia. The overwhelming majority of Kosovo's population are Albanians who want, if not unification with Albania, at least some kind of separation from Serbia. The pot simmers and waits to boil.

Once NATO air forces begin the bombing of artillery sites and ammunition dumps around Sarajavo and other Moslem enclaves, a line will arguably be drawn insofar as further ethnic atrocities by the Serbs. If the cleansing is to be belatedly contained by NATO in the final moments of the Bosnian tragedy, then it presumably will be stopped at the outset by NATO if Serbia attempts to open new slaughter pits in the Balkans.

If this be the impact of the NATO message, then the Albanian government and the Albanian population in Kosovo have to understand Europe will not be sucked into a Kosovo conflict by rash acts of provocation and secession. The balance is delicate. We are not yet at the concluding chapter in the unraveling of Yugoslavia. There is more blood to be spilled. There are more tormenting decisions to be made.