The horrific images play nightly on our television screens: pictures of war on a scale not seen in Europe in 50 years. And behind it all is the specter of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian nationalist leader and driving force behind the killings and deportations in Kosovo.

It may seem an easy leap from the shattered faces of Albanian refugees and alleged massacres to a conviction of Milosevic by the Yugoslav international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.