Last night, for the second time in two days, panelists at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) discussed the international crisis in Kosovo.

The moderator of the panel, Kalypso Nicoladis, an assistant professor of public policy at KSG, called "US Foreign Policy, NATO, International Law and the War in Yugoslavia" a "rather biased" presentation.

All three panelists--Steven Burg, professor of political science at Brandeis University, Hurst Hannum, professor of international law at the Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Ziljan Schuster, associate dean of the Business School at the University of New Haven--were critical of NATO's intervention in Yugoslavia.

About 50 people heard the eight-minute presentations by each panelist, and the question and answer session that followed at KSG's Wiener Auditorium last night.

Burg used most of his time to focus on the political-diplomatic background of the Kosovo crisis.

He said a decision was made by American policymakers to withdraw from Bosnia by the fall of 1996 because of national interests, including the then-upcoming presidential election.

He also said Albanians knew an armed struggle was inevitable.

"The KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] certainly saw American intervention as a way to secure liberation," he said.

Even though Burg called the Serbians' persecution of ethnic Albanians "morally reprehensible," he claimed it was within their rights to wage war against an insurgent population within their state.