Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 3, 1993 TAG: 9305030086
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MATTHEWS THE BALTIMORE SUN
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The United States committed itself in February to helping enforce any peace agreement accepted by Bosnia's warring Serbs, Croats and Muslims.
If the hard-line Bosnian Serb parliament approves the peace plan Wednesday, it will test U.S. resolve in backing that enforcement promise.
The military options being set forth by the United States - bombing Serb artillery and supply lines and lifting the arms embargo on outgunned Bosnian Muslims - may prove far less dangerous than the peacemaking mission American forces would join if the Serbs go along with the peace plan.
The question of how to implement the peace plan "obviously is going to have to be considered again very urgently" in consultations with U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher this week, a West European diplomat said Sunday in Washington. "This will concentrate minds."
The plan, drafted by Lord Owen, the European Community negotiator, and former U.S. Secretary of States Cyrus Vance, the U.N. envoy, calls for the Bosnian Serbs to trade the 70 percent of Bosnian territory they control for 43 percent.
If the plan moves ahead, President Clinton will have to confront several questions. Among them:
How much military pressure is he prepared to exert to make sure the Serbs surrender territory?
On Saturday, Christopher implied that the Serbs could avoid American bombs simply by stopping the shelling of cities, honoring a cease-fire and allowing humanitarian aid to move forward.
Will a U.N. peacekeeping force be equipped and empowered to make the Serbs abandon towns and villages they refuse to leave voluntarily? And if not, will the United States let the Serbs keep this territory, effectively shredding the punitive provisions of the Vance-Owen plan?
What will be the U.S. role in a peacekeeping force? U.S. officials have refused to state on the record that ground troops would be deployed, dismissing such questions as hypothetical.
But Vice President Al Gore acknowledged Sunday that this is "within the range of possibilities," and Pentagon officials and NATO planners have gone much further, preparing for a force that includes a full American division, with tens of thousands more troops on rotation in a commitment lasting for years.
If fighting resumes and the peace plan collapses, will the United States withdraw its peacekeepers? Owen said Sunday that as part of a U.N. force, the United States could in fact withdraw without compromising its "virility."
The overriding question that the United States and its allies will face, a European diplomat said, is one of "is there a peace there to keep, or one there to enforce?" The greater the difficulty in enforcement, the more "we will back where we are at the moment."
Clinton has yet to specify publicly the limited military steps he plans to pressure the Serbs into accepting the peace plan if they balk after Wednesday. He has publicly distanced himself even further from the longer-term implications of his commitment in February.
In signing the peace plan, Karadzic bowed to pressure from the Yugoslav government and the threat of American air strikes.
His endorsement came after months of on-again, off-again talks in which he seemed intent primarily on buying time so his forces could seize more territory.
The Associated Press supplied information for this story.
by CNB