There is a strong resistance among the Rwandans to accept the notion that something might be awry in a society that erupts in ethnic bloodshed every decade.

Since June, tens of thousands of alliance troops and a United Nations' administration have failed to prevent de facto partitioning of Kosovo or continued ethnic bloodshed.

The view glosses over numerous massacres of Hutu civilians by the Tutsi-dominated army since the current round of ethnic bloodshed began in October 1993.

The conflict is also entwined with the ethnic bloodshed between Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda.

Aid agencies estimate that some 200,000 people have been slain in wholesale ethnic bloodshed during the weeks that followed, amid a massive humanitarian tragedy.

The ethnic bloodshed on the edges of the old empire confirm that civil war is hardly unthinkable.

Unsurprisingly, upon Communism's collapse, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania struggled for years on the brink of anarchy, although they at least avoided ethnic bloodshed.

The second was whether to move beyond the boundaries of NATO's members in the 1990s to halt ethnic bloodshed in the Balkans.

Though he has invited the refugees to return home, Mr. Milosevic has so far refused to accept the presence of a well-armed international peacekeeping force, which would be required to prevent further ethnic bloodshed.

We see constant ethnic bloodshed, not to say ethnic cleansing against the minorities in Kosovo by the hard-line nationalistic gangs in Albania.