But these Machiavellian arguments are not the ones that Kosovar politicians use in public.
Western governments lavished praise on the Albanians for their generosity towards their Kosovar cousins.
Moreover, Kosovar independence would likely spur irredentist movements among the Muslim minorities in all Balkan states.
Among the Kosovar Albanians (including the 500, 000 or so still sheltering in neighbouring countries), the thirst for retribution is strong.
Al Gore, America's vice-president, announced that the United States would allow as many as 20, 000 Kosovar refugees into the country.
The deal is also good for Kosovo's Serbs who pay for both Serbian and Kosovar number plates and car insurance.
ECONOMIST: Serbia and Kosovo strike a small deal with big implications
This may help explain the Yugoslav government's announcement on September 28th that its campaign against the Kosovar separatists was at last over.
Kosovar Albanians number about 2 million - about 90% of the population.
Although the West is now rattling its sabres at Serbia, a few days ago it was directing its admonitions at Serbia's Kosovar foes.
He became known outside Kosovo when he formed part of the Kosovar Albanian negotiating team at internationally-sponsored peace talks at Rambouillet, France, early in 1999.
Perhaps most important, a western intervention that involved facing down the Kosovar guerrillas as well as the Serbs would have been hard to conceive, military and morally.
There is possibly more detail about the internal politics of the Kosovar diaspora, and their highly complex relations with the Albanian motherland, than most general readers will need.
Meanwhile, nine-tenths of the Kosovar Albanians have lost their homes.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of destitute Kosovar Albanians line the promenade.
In Kosovo in 1990, he helped to found a Social Democratic Party whose manifesto was less nationalist than that of Ibrahim Rugova, the veteran leader of the Kosovar cause.
Many senior Kfor men say that the close former relations between the Americans and the Kosovar Albanians make it hard to explain now to Albanians that things have changed.
The Americans are still investigating an incident two weeks ago in a village near the Macedonian border, when a morning of mortar-fire wounded ten Kosovar civilians, and killed three people.
They argue that, if and when Yugoslavia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, falls from power, serious talks aimed at finding a compromise between Yugoslav sovereignty and the Kosovar desire for independence can begin.
The spotlight on Kosovo ensures help for Kosovar refugees: all Kosovars flown to Britain will be given benefits, allowed to work and will be able to claim permanent asylum if they want it.
And certainly the work that I was able to do around the world, going to more than 82 countries, negotiating with governments like Macedonia to open their border again, to let Kosovar refugees in.
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According to Albanians who translate in Home Office asylum cases, the number of genuine Kosovar refugees arriving in Britain has dropped off in the last couple of months, while the proportion of Albanians from Albania has risen dramatically.
This Kosovar tycoon made his fortune as a builder in Russia and the former Soviet Union and has plastered Kosovo with posters of the Kremlin and other buildings he worked on, stating how many Kosovars he employed on each.
He made such a powerful impression at the talks that he succeeded in sidelining veteran leader Ibrahim Rugova - who was more in favour of passive resistance to Serbia - and was appointed leader of the Kosovar Albanian negotiating team.
Whether they favoured the pacifist approach of Ibrahim Rugova, their unofficial president, or reckoned that only force would drive the Serbs away, the shrewder leaders of the Kosovar community calculated that the brutishness of Slobodan Milosevic was playing into their hands.
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