Another Cease-Fire In Bosnia -- Too Late?

If they ever go into effect, cease-fires in what was once Yugoslavia tend to be a passing fad; roughly 30 have come and gone since the civil wars began in June 1991. Nonetheless, leaders of the Serb, Croat and Muslim communities of Bosnia-Herzegovina, conferring in London through intermediaries (they refused to talk face-to-face) arranged one more truce, which was supposed to begin this Sunday evening. Even on the off chance that it holds, will there be enough of Bosnia left to call a country? The answer probably is no.

While world attention has centered on Sarajevo, the Serbs and Croats who already control most of Bosnia have been taking over more of what had been - left outside their grasp. A Serb offensive in northern Bosnia last week linked two pieces of territory to form the "Derventa corridor" -- a continuous belt of Serb-held territory running all the way from Serbia proper through the town of Derventa to Serb-populated zones of Croatia. At the Croatian end, the Serbs fired a 155-mm artillery shell that slammed into a soccer stadium crowded with refugees on the Croatian side of the Sava River, killing 13 people and injuring 60. In eastern Bosnia, Gorazde was the only sizable town still in Muslim hands, and it was under Serb assault and siege, its streets reportedly littered with corpses. Fighting around the southern town of Mostar, the chief objective of a recent Croat offensive, also intensified. Sarajevo went without power or water for 48 hours after Serbs blew up power lines. Though service was restored, the shutoff illustrated how tight a vise the besiegers have clamped on the city.

Two incidents raised the possibility of U.S. and Western involvement in the fighting, if it resumes. Four Yugoslav planes buzzed two American warships in the Adriatic. Though no shots were fired, three of the planes turned back only after American radar had locked on to them -- a preliminary step to shooting. In Sarajevo a Canadian member of the United Nations peacekeeping force exchanged fire with a Serbian sniper, who was killed. Some Western officers fear that similar incidents could trigger a kind of unplanned, back-door military intervention. But the Western powers are still determined to avoid deliberate intervention, and soon nothing may be left for intervention to save anyway. Mladen Klemencic, a military analyst in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, speculates that the Serbs agreed to a cease-fire because they "are satisfied with the military results they have achieved. They have their corridor, so their job is finished." (See related story on page 47.)