An overhasty shutdown, he acknowledges, would cause electricity shortages and disrupt people's lives.

ECONOMIST: An unusual civility brought to civil protest

And, while the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which monitors Kosovo on the ground, has closed ranks around Mr Walker and told him to stay, some European diplomats (especially French ones) were muttering that the American envoy might have been overhasty in his reaction to the Racak slaughter.

ECONOMIST: Kosovo on the brink, again