Talks on the status of Kosovo, the breakaway Serbian province in its south, will finally begin in a few hours seven years after NATO intervention forced the Serbian army to withdraw:

Formal talks to decide the future status of Kosovo begin in Vienna on Monday involving political leaders from Serbia and Kosovo itself.

Kosovo, technically still part of Serbia, has been run by the international community since the end of the war in 1999.

These are the most important talks over its future since Nato bombing forced the Serb army out in 1999.

They are being brokered by United Nations Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

People claim that the Bush administration had no plan for Iraq, but we helped the Iraqis form a representative government and held three national elections in less than half the time that the United Nations has sat on Kosovo. After bombing the Serbian army and forcing them to withdraw, the UN did nothing to address the status of the Kosovars for seven long years. In that time, ethnic violence has claimed the lives of dozens as the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians both jockey for position and power in advance of the talks.

In fact, NATO has just beefed up its forces, which tells everyone that they expect violence to escalate once again.

This demonstrates why the UN has little use in actual problem resolution. The UN "solution" to every crisis is to enforce the status quo, even if that means no solution at all. It should have never taken seven years just to get started on a resolution to the Kosovo question.

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