LOUDER THAN WORDS

By Kevin Fedarko

"A man with no arm came into my shop, the blood gushing from his stump. Then he ran away. I saw the torso of a woman. She was still moving, but her legs were gone. The other day I saw something similar in a film. A beast cut a young man in two, torso and legs. One was a movie, the other is our reality here in Bosnia. We are like a flock of little chickens squeezed into this cage of a town, chirping for help."

Those were the reflections of Ferid Durakovic the day after a Serb mortar shell landed near his food store in Sarajevo last week, killing 43 people and wounding more than 80. Others recalled hands and feet tossed among odd bits of clothing, torsos strewn amid fresh vegetables, wet scraps of flesh clinging to the stone walls of nearby buildings. It was another savage attack on a city that has seen too many, and everyone in Sarajevo knew it would go unavenged, like all the rest.

"After I pickle [fire] the bomb off, I don't have to worry about watching the flir [forward-looking infrared sys tem ] because I can watch for triple-A [anti-aircraft artillery] and other things as my whizzo [weapons system officer] holds the laser on the target all the way in." U.S. Marine Captain Erik Swenson, speaking here, is the pilot of an F/A-18 Hornet (call sign: "Lumpy"), and he could hardly be more different from a Sarajevo shopkeeper. But he and Ferid Durakovic are intimately linked. Starting last Wednesday morning, Captain Swenson-in his first taste of combat-and dozens of other nato pilots began bombing the Serbs in retaliation for the massacre Durakovic had witnessed. "I saw explosions 30 or 40 miles away," said Swenson. "They seemed to be everywhere, like popcorn going off." What no one thought would ever happen finally had.

Last week was one of the most remarkable in the 41-month-old Bosnian struggle. On Monday the Serbs committed their atrocity. Then from Wednesday through Fri day, NATO conducted the largest combat operation in its history, finally pounding the Serbs after endless bluffing. By Friday, a diplomatic breakthrough had occurred, with all parties agreeing to meet in Geneva this week for preliminary peace talks. After years of war and "ethnic cleansing," the brutal dialectic of aggression, retaliation and reconciliation seemed to have been telescoped into a matter of days. There is still a long way to go, and all hope could yet be dashed-on Saturday the Bosnian Serbs' continued recalcitrance triggered a new nato ultimatum: lift the siege of Sarajevo, or be subjected to yet another round of air strikes. But all of a sudden the chances for a settlement in Bosnia seem better than they have been since the wars there began.

Earlier in the summer the Western allies had warned unequivocally that a Serb attack like the one last Monday would provoke a massive response. But previous NATO bluster had led Serbs and Muslims alike to conclude that the alliance was all bark and no bite. Even after the shell had hit Sarajevo, vacillation appeared to be the likely outcome as the U.N. insisted on sifting the evidence to make sure the Bosnian Serbs were indeed the culprits. Then bad weather and a protective shift of British peacekeepers further delayed the nato attacks. As the hours ticked away, it seemed as if the West had once again issued an empty ultimatum.

When the response finally came, however, it was just what NATO had threatened. Shortly after 2 a.m. Wednesday, the first sortie of planes began bombing Bosnian Serb positions around Sarajevo. Artillery units of the rapid-reaction force, a multinational contingent assigned to protect U.N. convoys and peacekeepers, joined the attack. nato planes also struck Bosnian Serb targets near Gorazde and Tuzla, two other U.N. "safe areas." The warplanes focused first on the Bosnian Serbs' sophisticated air-defense network. Then they turned to ammunition depots and factories in Lukavica and Vogosca, surface-to-air missile sites throughout Bosnia, and the Bosnian Serb artillery sites ringing Sarajevo.

Early on Thursday the bombing slowed due to poor weather, but it picked up late in the day. The sorties were then halted as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Richard Holbrooke began urging a pause, worried that further attacks might backfire by making the Serbs more recalcitrant. In all, 506 sorties were flown; the Serbs shot down only one plane, a French Mirage 2000C. The two crew members ejected, but their fate is unknown. The operation was regarded as a success, but officials soon tempered their exultant initial reports.

The groundwork for last week's raids had been laid two months earlier, when the U.N. "safe havens" of Srebrenica and Zepa were overrun by the Bosnian Serbs. The inability of nato and the U.N. to prevent the fall of either town, despite their pledges to protect it, galvanized the allies' resolve to ensure that nothing like that would happen again. "The fall of Srebrenica was a blow to the credibility of the West, and we are the leader of the West," said a senior State Department official. "If we didn't respond with U.S. leadership, the situation was going to unravel." Added a senior White House official: "This was a turning point for the President."

That new interest in exercising American leadership abroad dovetailed with an upcoming international conference in London. Called in response to the Srebrenica and Zepa debacles, the conference seemed likely to be yet another windy session in which the U.S. and European diplomats would issue meaningless threats. The chairman of this conference, however, was to be Britain's newly appointed Foreign Minister Malcolm Rifkind, who had arrived in Washington on a regularly scheduled visit just as Srebrenica was falling.

Rifkind and U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher spent the better part of two days together. They talked intensively about Bosnia and eventually agreed on a plan that would call for "substantial and decisive air strikes" if the Bosnian Serbs threatened the U.N. safe haven of Goradze. Once the conference was under way, it took 24 hours to convince the allies that the West had to change the way it did business. That effort eventually bore fruit in the form of several new moves, most of which were hammered out in a series of follow-up nato meetings in Brussels. Perhaps the most important change was insistence that the so-called dual-key arrangement, which gave U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali veto authority over nato air strikes, be scrapped. (Accordingly, the U.N. chief did not learn of last week's bombings until just after the air strikes began, when a note was passed to him as he dined with friends at his Manhattan residence.)

For nearly three weeks the Serbs avoided testing the nato ultimatum, but meanwhile several developments had altered the situation in the war zone. First, in a stunning five-day blitz, the Croatian army retook Krajina, a breakaway region that for three years had been controlled by rebel Serbs. This offensive dramatically illustrated a new balance of power. "For the first time since 1991 somebody else other than Bosnian Serbs was gaining territory," said a senior State Department official. Second, the U.N. peacekeepers were redeployed to less vulnerable positions. For years the French and the British had objected to the use of force because it would place their peacekeepers on the ground in danger (the U.S. has no peacekeepers in Bosnia). With the peacekeepers now better protected, force was much more palatable.

And then last Monday the Serbs' shell landed in Sarajevo . Riding to work that morning, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who was running the State Department while Christopher was vacationing, heard the first radio report of the shelling. Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of Defense William Perry and General John Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were also on vacation; Washington was being run by deputies. While the President monitored events from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Talbott convened an 8 a.m. meeting in his office, certain that what he faced was "a test of the London rules," according to a senior aide.

Talbott then placed a call to Holbrooke, who had been dispatched to the Balkans on Aug. 14 to promote a new peace initiative the Americans were pursuing. Hol brooke was in Paris preparing to embark for Belgrade to meet with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Talking on their secure line, Talbott and Holbrooke concluded that the U.S.plan would have no credibility if Washington stood by and allowed the shelling to go unpunished. Talbott then telephoned the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo requesting confirmation that the mortar attack had come from the Bosnian Serbs. By 1 p.m. Washington time the embassy had reported back: it appeared certain that Bosnian Serbs were responsible.

By Tuesday morning, consensus for a retaliatory attack had formed among the nato allies. But U.S. officials knew they faced a major difficulty. What about Holbrooke and his diplomatic team, which was getting ready to lobby Milosevic? If NATO launched air strikes, would Milosevic, the Serb strongman, react with anger and dismiss Holbrooke's overture? After conferring on the phone, Talbott and Christopher decided that the air campaign could cripple the diplomatic initiative, but that Washington had no choice. "Diplomacy was dead without the force," said a State Department official. By 7 p.m. Washington time, the first warplanes were launched in the direction of Bosnia.

When Holbrooke landed in Belgrade on Wednesday, the bombs had already been dropping for nine hours, and he had no idea whether Milosevic would even agree to see him. Back in Washington, Talbott and his aides were also worrying about how Holbrooke would be received. At 7:30 a.m. Washington time, they were intently watching cnn. When cameras showed Milosevic smiling and shaking hands with Holbrooke on his arrival, they slumped back in their chairs relieved. "He's smiling! Milosevic is smiling!" one exclaimed.

He had good reason to be. Milosevic whisked Holbrooke to the presidential palace in Belgrade, where he handed the American envoy a document signed by top Bosnian Serb leaders, including political leader Radovan Karadzic, military commander Ratko Mladic and Patri arch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church. "Look," said Milosevic, in what for him must have been a moment of supreme satisfaction. "I now speak for Pale." Translation: the Serbian President did what he had boasted he could do-he had delivered the Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table. Moreover, he could control the Serb side of the negotiations. According to the document, Milosevic would choose three of the six members of a Serb delegation to any peace talks, and was also authorized to cast the tie-breaking vote.

Over lunch Milosevic later told a stunned Holbrooke how he had forged the idea of a joint negotiating delegation. He claimed, in fact, to have paved the way for this weeks earlier, when Karadzic and Mladic had flown to Belgrade to meet with him immediately after the Croatia offensive. Having been encouraged early on by Milosevic in their bids to establish a satellite Serbian state, the Bosnian Serb leaders were looking to him for support as Croatian President Franjo Tudjman's troops steamrolled through Krajina and into Bosnia during the early weeks of August.

By this time, however, Milosevic's calculus had changed. Since May 1992, Yugoslavia has been chafing under economic sanctions imposed by the U.N. For months Milosevic had been trying to make some deal to get those sanctions lifted. Discussions of such a deal have hinged on Milosevic's willingness and ability to make his Bosnian Serb clients negotiate a peace. Always more of an opportunist than a true nationalist, Milosevic has for some time appeared willing to sell out his brethren Serbs for the sake of unshackling himself from sanctions.

"Either you join with me and we do it together," he reportedly told the Bosnian Serbs when they met, "or the deal gets done anyway, without you." As the document Milosevic showed Holbrooke attested, the Bosnian Serbs had capitulated, effectively signing their negotiating authority over to him. In Karadzic's case, the decision reflected his growing political weakness; in Mladic's, it was simply a reaffirmation of his close ties to Milosevic. What is interesting about this breakthrough, if indeed that is what it turns out to be, is that it was not triggered by NATO's air strikes. While last week's bombs no doubt concentrated minds in Pale, Milosevic had apparently secured Bosnian Serb cooperation before the planes ever took off.

By Friday afternoon Holbrooke had managed to win agreement from Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia to send their foreign ministers to Geneva this week to join representatives from the so-called Extended Contact Group--including the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Russia--in beginning peace talks. "These negotiations will be complicated, and they will be difficult," said State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns. That, no doubt, is an understatement.

According to a secret White House memorandum circulating in Washington last week, a copy of which was obtained by TIME, Holbrooke's plan includes a number of specific proposals. The No. 1 problem is the map, the division of which is predicated on the principle, established last July by the Contact Group, that Bosnia will technically remain one nation but will be internally divided, with 49% of the land going to the Bosnian Serbs and 51% going to the Croat-Muslim federation. While it now appears that all parties, including the Bosnian Serbs, have agreed to the proportions, Holbrooke said that everyone has a different version of which land goes to whom.

The main sticking points include the fate of Gorazde, the remaining enclave that the Bosnian government holds in the east. It is the "safe area" that the London meeting vowed in particular to protect, but it would be isolated in Serb territory. Another potential stumbling block concerns partitioning Sarajevo to allow the Serbs to control a part of the capital. The Bosnian Serbs made this a condition of their turning over negotiating authority to Milosevic, but the Bosnian government rules it out.

Croatia has reportedly backed the overall deal, but now that the Bosnian Serbs'have been hurt militarily, Bosnia's Muslims may be less willing to accept a plan that calls for de facto partition of their country. Might this not be the time to fight on and regain lost ground? "They're going to have to swallow hard to sign up to the deal," says a Pentagon official. As encouragement, the White House wants to provide American economic incentives for the region that could total as much as $1 billion over three years, $500 million of which may be earmarked exclusively for the Bosnian Muslims.

There is also another deal--the one between Milosevic and the U.N.What does he get for his trouble? As outlined in the secret memo, once the Serb delegation signs a Bosnian peace agreement, the U.N. economic sanctions would be "suspended." As long as Belgrade keeps the Bosnian Serbs on track toward a peace settlement, the suspension of sanctions would be renewed every 60 days by a U.N. Security Council vote. When the peace agreement is finally implemented, Milosevic would then get a "complete lifting" of the sanctions.

There will be many, many obstacles, but let's imagine all parties agree to a peace plan. America would then have avoided its nightmare scenario--sending in 25,000 soldiers to help U.N. forces withdraw from Bosnia while the war is on. That's great, but there is a catch. The Clinton Administration has also pledged that if a peace accord is signed, the U.S. will send 25,000 troops to Bosnia to help enforce it. No doubt that is a safer mission than covering a U.N. retreat. Still, at his office in Naples, U.S. Admiral Leighton Smith, who is in charge of nato's Southern Command, has two documents, each of which is two inches thick and marked "nato Confidential." One outlines the American plans for the U.N. withdrawal; the other is the U.S. plan for enforcing the peace agreement. They are virtually the same.

--Reported by Greg Burke on board the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, Massimo Calabresi/ Belgrade, Bruce van Voorst/ Bonn and Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/ Washington

With reporting by GREG BURKE ON BOARD THE U.S.S. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, MASSIMO CALABRESI/ BELGRADE, BRUCE VAN VOORST/ BONN AND MARK THOMPSON AND DOUGLAS WALLER/ WASHINGTON