UNITED NATIONS -- Diplomacy, as Von Clauswitz meant to say, is the continuation of warfare by other means. Certainly NATO negotiators are as belligerent as the pilots in their assault on Belgrade, and the U.N. resolution agreed upon by the G-8 Tuesday takes few prisoners. Despite what the diplomats may say, the negotiated peace plan would inevitably lead to an independent Kosova.

In the meantime, the bickering over details continues. On Monday, the two sides reached an impasse. The Serbs would not withdraw without a U.N. resolution. NATO would not stop bombing without Serbian withdrawal. And the Chinese and Russians would not allow a U.N. resolution while the bombing continued.

Tuesday, NATO tossed the explosive parcel right into the lap of the Serbs. As they introduced the resolution for discussion at the U.N. Security Council in New York, Western diplomats insisted on their chronology for peace: First, the Serbs begin to withdraw, then the bombing stops. Only then would the draft resolution agreed on Tuesday by the G-8 go to the Security Council.

The bombers were already out over Belgrade and Kosovo as the Security Council began its closed-door discussions, and with the negotiations with the Yugoslav military resuming Tuesday evening in Macedonia, Wednesday would be the earliest time for the resolution to be passed. With Russia signing on, no matter how reluctantly, China is expected to go along, or, at worst abstain.

With the delay, it is left for Slobodan Milosevic to explain to his battered armed forces and demoralized civilians why they are still suffering while he fails to execute the deal that he agreed to a week ago. His previous exit strategies from Croatia and Bosnia have been equally tortuous and costly, but this time it is his own disenchanted electorate that is suffering. NATO fully expects its initial strategy of bombing Milosevic into submission will prevail.

Despite 12 hours of hard negotiations in Cologne, Germany, the resolution offers little of substance to comfort either the Russians or the Serbs. As a symbolic concession to them, the main text does not refer to NATO directly. But almost like hypertext, it is dotted with references to other agreements -- Rambouillet, the G-8's agreed principles and the agreement between Milosevic, Finnish President Marrti Ahtisaari and Viktor Chernomyrdin last week.

Above all, it invokes Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, the crucial clause authorizing the use of force because of a threat to international peace and security. Even more galling, under pressure from Louise Arbour, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, it also enjoins all parties -- including NATO -- to cooperate fully with the tribunal. Interestingly, it calls for the demilitarization, not the disarmament, of the Kosovo Liberation Army and other Albanian forces. The only thing the Serbs get out of it is an end to the bombing.

The United Nations will look after the civil side, which is charged with setting up an autonomous administration and holding democratic elections in Kosovo. It does not say what will happen when the Albanians vote overwhelmingly for parties wanting independence, but that would be a separate issue. However, when the resolution mentions the United Nations role, "pending a final settlement," in developing "substantial autonomy and self government" it refers to the Rambouillet accords. This particular piece of hypertext, although fudged, was sold to the Albanians on the basis of an implied promise of a referendum after three years.

The "security" presence "with substantial NATO participation" will report to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who will in turn report to the Security Council -- thus putting a thin blue veil of United Nations cover over what is otherwise fundamentally a NATO operation.

Having NATO as the "security presence" will enforce the resolution's demand that the Yugoslavs "put an immediate and verifiable end to violence and repression in Kosovo" and withdraw "all" their forces. Afterwards, some will be allowed back -- but certainly not for the role seemingly envisaged by the Serbian negotiators on the Macedonian border, who want to check the papers of the returning refugees.

Since Serbian forces made a point of confiscating the documents of the people they were expelling, this is a transparently unacceptable attempt to legitimize the results of the "ethnic cleansing." Indeed, it was anticipated by the U.N. agencies, which are already preparing I.D. cards for the refugees affected.

The Russian role in Kosovo remains unclear. By the time they have made up their mind about the lines of command and started trundling in, NATO will have filled the vacuum, preempting the inevitable coziness and collaboration between the Serbs and the Russians. Any last hopes Belgrade had of a de facto partition are textually cleansed from this resolution.

To avoid the Bosnia-style impasse between the peacekeepers and the United Nations, the U.N. special representative will only "coordinate closely with the international security presence." The implication is that there will be no U.N. veto on the trigger finger. Even so, it will be important to have a special representative who all sides feel they can trust.

An obvious choice would be Ahtisaari, the Finnish president who put the squeeze on Milosevic in Belgrade. Officially his term as president is not up until next year, but those who know him consider that his sights were always set on the international arena, for which the presidency was just a launch pad. Offered a prominent enough role, he could well resign his presidency early.

He is supported by Madeleine Albright, who persuaded him to take up the role of negotiator -- even though he had turned down a similar request from his former colleague Annan. The secretary of state, never especially enamored of the United Nations, was reputed to be unhappy with Annan's choice of Swedish conservative Carl Bildt as one of his representatives during the war. She thought that Bildt had been altogether too conciliatory to the Serbs during his time in Bosnia and turned to Ahtisaari to bypass him, and the United Nations as well.

However, some people with long memories at the United Nations wonder about Ahtisaari's suitability for the job. While his oversight of the end of the South African presence in Namibia is billed as a great success, it was a little less triumphant for several hundred Namibian members of SWAPO, who crossed the border from Angola to come to vote. The South Africans (Apartheid variety) panicked Ahtisaari into letting the murderous "koevoet" anti-guerrilla troops out of their barracks. They lived down to their reputation by taking very few prisoners and leaving a lot of corpses. The Kosovars should watch him carefully.

However, with all those caveats, looking at the strength of the resolution, and the determination of the NATO forces, it is a complete defeat for Milosevic. The Serbian population of Kosovo, like that of the Krajina, will probably, and wisely, take the road back to Serbia. And in five years, there will be an independent Kosova.