The Russians flex their 200-men muscles in an enclave in the Pristina airport. Yugoslavia looks upon the developing East-West choreography with a profound lack of interest. The Serb forces are withdrawing together with tens of thousands of Serb civilians, the new refugees in this never-ending saga. This, despite the FACT that Milosevic could have dragged the war on indefinitely without incurring too much damage either to his military or to his regime. Had he done so, NATO would have been the first to blink. Why did Milosevic surrender? Why so suddenly and so surprisingly? Why did he surrender when the West and NATO were on the verge of breaking apart (recall the acrimonious public exchanges between Blair, Clinton and Schroeder just prior to the auspicious Serb capitulation)? This is very reminiscent of the German surrender in 1918. The forces in the field felt victorious. The politicians wavered. The result was a sense of betrayal and backstabbing exploited by the corporal-Fuhrer Hitler. Sherlock Holmes used to say: "When you eliminate the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth." And what remains is a secret deal. A hidden agenda. A missing protocol. It is a wild reconstruction of bizarre events. It is improbable. But Milosevic's surrender was impossible - so it must be the truth or a close approximation thereof. I think that the only reasonable explanation to this week's events is the following: Milosevic agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and to turn it over to NATO for a limited period of time. NATO (not too eager to remain in the province and police it forever) agreed to disarm the KLA and transform it into a docile police force cum political party. It agreed, in other words, to do Milosevic's bidding and dirty work. The KLA agreed not to pursue its anti-Serb, pro-independence strategy. Coming from Rugova, such a policy would have been judged treasonable. The KLA was the only force, which could have delivered the climbdown. Serbia agreed to recognize the KLA as THE legitimate force in Kosovo once demilitarised and converted. It actually agreed to support the KLA against the now discarded Rugova. The KLA needed Serbia, a natural ally in the absence of others. The KLA and NATO agreed to let Serbia back into a KLA-dominated Kosovo later. The exact form of the final political-military arrangement has not been made clear. But it always was evident that it must - and will - include Serb sovereignty and military presence in the province. Kosovo's political future remained undetermined: a province? An autonomy? In a federation? A confederation with Serbia and a more independent Montenegro? No one knows, not even the main players. But the Serbs and the KLA and NATO are in cahoots. There is more to the "capitulation" than meets the eye.