Kosovo's Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci met Wednesday with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and accepted a loan package to his struggling nation, The New York Times reported.

Kosovo, once the preoccupation of Washington, has been largely off the radar screen in recent times. Eleven years after NATO drove out Serbian forces and two years after Kosovo declared independence, the young nation is struggling to consolidate its position on the map and looking for American help.

Prime Minister Hashim Thaci came to town for perhaps Kosovo’s most important week since assuming statehood. But most important, he wanted to be in Washington on Thursday when the International Court of Justice ruled that his country's 2008 declaration of independence was valid, a decision that is fraught with divisive potential in Europe.

But the continuing tension in the Balkans serves as a reminder of just how challenging and long-lasting the American enterprise of nation-building really is. Even after the fighting is long over — and there are still about 1,480 American troops in Kosovo as part of a 9,900-member international force — the project is not really done.

“Peace-building is a complicated and difficult contextual business, one that takes a good deal of time and effort,” said Daniel P. Serwer, a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace who hosted Mr. Thaci for a speech. “We have enough experience to know that, but we always seem to forget it.”

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