The Role of International Community in Conflict Situation: Which Way Forwards? The Case of the Kosovo Conflict

International audienceThe changes and continuities of international community policies to­ wards the Kosovo/a conflict involved a contested reorientation of attitude in­ timately tied up with the preservation of international peace, regional order and existing institutions. The prerequisites of order shaped at a significant de­ gree the behaviour and the arrangements of international community to the settlement of the case. Accordingly, the attitude and the engagement of inter­ national community in the Kosovo/a case can be explained in terms of these prerequisites rather than the intrinsic causes of the conflict. These arrange­ ments offered by international community as solutions to Yugoslav dissolu­ tion process did significantly affect the development of the Kosovo/a conflict. These policies failed to produce consensus between the parties in conflict, in­ stead, as the paper would try to demonstrate, they played the role of a catalyst in the initiation of the conflict. Therefore, this paper, by offering a detailed re­ construction of the process by which the international community tried to settle the Kosovo/a case 1 , would seek to demonstrate how the dynamics of the conflict interacted dynamically with international community attitude and policies towards the case. The paper would discuss the attitude and policies of international community toward the Kosovo/a case underlining its attach­ ment to traditional prerequisites of international order instead of inherited causes of conflict