By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 13, 1998; Page A18

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, March 12—Reaching an accord on the proper title for Ibrahim Rugova, the leader of the majority ethnic Albanian party here, may be one of the biggest challenges in ending the ethnic conflict in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Rugova, 53, a literary critic and academic specialist in Albanian studies, refers to himself as the president of the Republic of Kosovo, an ethnic Albanian entity that his followers created in July 1990 when they declared independence from Serbia.

Although legally a province of Serbia, Kosovo -- where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs 9 to 1 -- has many of the trappings of a state, such as an elected parliament, a cabinet, and its own taxes, schools, and cultural programs.

But the government of Yugoslavia, which is dominated by Serbia, considers the idea of statehood for Kosovo absurd, and today it dispatched four officials to Pristina with an offer to begin a dialogue with the leaders of what it called the "Albanian minority" in Serbia. It said the discussion would not be about Kosovo's political status, but about the problems of its people.

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. They said this "go-slow" approach may cause several problems in the days ahead, including making it hard for the ethnic Albanians and the Serbs to meet a deadline of March 19 for beginning talks. That deadline was set Monday by members of the "contact group" of Western governments working on Balkan matters.

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 . . . especially when this passivity lasts seven years," said Magmut Bakalli, an ethnic Albanian who was chief of the Communist Party in Kosovo from 1971 to 1981. Until now, he added, "it has been extremely quiet here in Kosovo. But when something is too quiet, it is not politics. Politics is moving, making something."

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.

In 1988, Rugova's outspokenness led to his election as president of the Kosovo Writers' Association, a group that evolved the following year into the province's first independent political party. An election of a shadow government organized by Albanians in 1992 cemented his status as the head of the leading party and "president" of the republic. Last week, demonstrators in Pristina repeatedly chanted his name during protests against the police violence, indicating he remains a powerful moral force here.

But Rugova long has been considered a political recluse by many, including prominent Albanian journalists. They noted that last week he seemed to shun attention while the violence was underway. "He has never compiled any political program, and makes only an extremely generalized call for dialogue," said an editor of the Albanian-language daily, Koha Ditore.

Rugova and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic have negotiated directly only once, reaching an agreement in September 1996 that was meant to allow Albanian students to return to government-funded schools and learn in the Albanian language after a seven-year hiatus in which they studied at home or in centers. But the agreement left key details unresolved, and it has yet to be implemented.

When President Clinton's special representative for the Balkans, Robert S. Gelbard, met Tuesday with Rugova in Pristina, Gelbard emphasized the need for strong Albanian leadership to resolve the crisis before Serbs and ethnic Albanians become even more polarized. But Rugova said that special Serbian security forces should first be demobilized and hinted that he may want to proceed first with a new presidential election later this month, which would renew his mandate and give him a stronger hand in the talks.

In the end, however, many Albanian officials look to Washington to provide leadership. A spokesman for Rugova's party said today, for example, that no discussions can be held without a mediator that Washington has approved or without assurances from a third party -- such as NATO or Washington -- that they will help guarantee any accord is fully implemented.