As unproductive as Belgrade's offer was, Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo was unable today to muster a meaningful counterproposal. Ethnic Albanian officials here said this decision was partly based on a political calculus by Rugova that emotions are still too raw among the Albanians to sit down with Serbs, after last week's government-sponsored violence led to the deaths of more than 60 ethnic Albanians, including women and children. But Rugova's failure to present an alternative proposal also reflects what many political analysts here say is his passive leadership style and preference for steering clear of the Serbian leadership. In addition, Albanian and U.S. officials have expressed concern that if Rugova does not shift gears quickly, the absence of progress could promote new violence. The Kosovo Liberation Army, a pro-independence rebel ethnic Albanian group that was targeted by Serbian police in last week's crackdown, issued a statement this week criticizing Belgrade and Rugova, and called on Albanians to join its guerrilla movement.
Extreme passivity breeds extreme violence .
But when something is too quiet, it is not politics. Bakalli said he would have preferred a more outspoken and somewhat more confrontational approach than that taken by Kosovo's Albanian leadership. Some analysts ascribe Rugova's difficulties to the fact that he entered public life as a dissident intellectual, rather than a politician. As a student in the 1970s, he wrote articles that were gently critical of the Communists' control of cultural and educational institutions. But he was more concerned with political theory than grass-roots activism.