Maybe Next Time

By Bruce W. Nelan

It looked like the latest Administration flip-flop: Bill Clinton once again sliding away from a hard policy decision on Bosnia. Under pressure from Congress last August, he had pledged to ask the U.N. Security Council "to terminate the arms embargo" on Bosnia and Herzegovina after Oct. 15 if the rebel Serbs did not agree to accept an international peace plan by then. The deadline was fast approaching when the President went to U.N. headquarters last week to deliver a state-of-the-world address. His only reference to Bosnia was a call for strong action to save Sarajevo from threatened "strangulation" by besieging Serbs.

Despite his previous bouts of support for lifting the embargo, Clinton was not really eager to do so for a number of practical reasons. He faced opposition in the Security Council from Russia, France and Britain. NATO was warning him against a nasty internal split. Nor did he need a noisy diplomatic crisis so close to the November elections. And then along came Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic to give the U.S. the perfect out. The day after Clinton spoke, Izetbegovic stepped up to the same U.N. rostrum and announced he would agree to a resolution that would "defer" an end to the embargo for six months.

It had all the feel of a put-up job. The Bosnians have been demanding the West lift its embargo on armaments for almost three years, arguing that it hurt them much more than the well-armed Serb aggressors. Now they were suddenly putting off their demand when they were so close to achieving it, conveniently letting Clinton off the hook. Surely Washington had forced the Bosnians to ask for a delay.

Administration officials insist they did not do so -- directly. They say the Bosnians decided to ask for the delay on their own when Izetbegovic realized the U.S. could not win a Security Council vote to lift the embargo, and after France and Britain told the Bosnians flat out that if the embargo went, so would their 9,200 peacekeeping troops.

But U.S. officials do not deny that they -- as they put it -- helped the Bosnians understand the dangerous implications of lifting the arms embargo. Almost as soon as the promise to Congress was made, Administration officials set about undermining it. They began a series of meetings in Sarajevo in which U.S. Ambassador Victor Jackovich and American military officers pointed out the problems to Izetbegovic and his ministers. The military officers estimated it would take up to a year to train the Bosnians to use the tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery they need. The long time lag between the weapons' arrival and the Bosnians' training would leave them extremely vulnerable to snap Serb offensives, especially in the embattled eastern enclaves and Sarajevo.

Two weeks ago, Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic suggested to Secretary of State Warren Christopher that the effect of any embargo lifting be deferred for six months. The most convincing reason for postponement, in the end, was the stern British and French warning that they would pull out if the embargo were to be lifted. London and Paris maintained that letting in more arms would intensify the war and threaten the survival of all the U.N. forces on the ground. "If we leave," declared a British U.N. spokesman, "all the others leave too."

The hard fact for the Bosnian government is that its embattled enclaves, such as Zepa, Srebrenica and Gorazde in eastern Bosnia and Bihac in the west, are wholly dependent on humanitarian aid flown in by the U.N. and delivered by peacekeeping troops. If the embargo were lifted and the blue helmets left, U.N. officers in Bosnia warned, the Serbs would immediately seize those enclaves and might even attack Sarajevo. "We think we may prevent these attacks by postponing the lifting," says Kasim Trnka, the new Bosnian ambassador to Croatia and a former Cabinet Minister.

So after three years of bravado, the Bosnians have apparently accepted the fact that, for now, peacekeepers are more important than the prospect of future arms shipments. But after swallowing that bitter truth, the Muslim-led Bosnian government now faces a future almost without choices. The Western allies have in effect backed away from intervention and put their faith in the blockade Serbia has imposed on its Bosnian brethren to bring about a settlement. The Bosnian battlefield is locked in a bloody stalemate, and the negotiating table offers no prospect of forcing the Serbs -- who occupy 70% of Bosnia -- to accept a peace plan that would allow them to keep only 49%. The war now seems endless.

And Clinton is not entirely freed from tricky policy decisions. The legislation that forced his promise to try to lift the embargo stands, and he is still obliged to consult with Congress. In light of Izetbegovic's compromise, however, Clinton intends to ask Congress to extend the deadline.

Meanwhile, the U.S. must still introduce some sort of resolution at the Security Council. Izetbegovic has insisted that it call for an end to the embargo in principle, setting an effective date certain six months from now. Given the opposition from Russia, Britain and France, no such measure is likely to pass. Given the facts on the ground that forced him to accept this postponement in the first place, though, Izetbegovic may be relieved if the Security Council simply says it will think about the matter again in six months.

With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/Washington, Thomas A. Sancton/Paris and Alexandra Stiglmayer/Travnik