Yugoslavia's contempt for international opinion has been made perfectly clear over the last week. Last week, Serbian police, backed by the heavy weapons of the Yugoslav Army, allegedly massacred 45 civilians in the Kosovo village of Racak. When news of the attack leaked out, Yugoslav authorities were defiant, charging that the victims were Kosovo Liberation Army terrorists and then it slammed the door on international scrutiny of its actions. Another round of fighting in the village has already begun. As Kosovo is about to explode, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is once again playing a game of chicken with the West, apparently indifferent to the consequences of his actions.

Eyewitness accounts and the evidence from the attack on Racak put the lie to official Yugoslav claims that the individuals killed were KLA rebels. According to the survivors, men and women in the village were separated and then the men were shot in cold blood. Reportedly, the wounds on the bodies of the victims corroborate their story of murder. In the following days, as Serb officials traveled to investigate the incident, the attacks have been renewed. Unarmed international monitors have been forced to withdraw under the Serb assault.

When Mr. William Walker, the head of the international monitoring group set up to monitor the ceasefire established in Kosovo last October, accused the Serbs of mass murder, the government in Belgrade declared him persona non grata and gave him 48 hours to leave the country.(The deadline has since been extended another day.) Two NATO generals sent to warn Mr. Milosevic of the risks he was courting were left cooling their heels for a day because of his busy schedule. And to make sure that no organization was spared a snub, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal was refused entry into the country to investigate the attack.