Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 4, 1993                   TAG: 9305040471
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AMERICA AND BOSNIA

Even if peace were to come tomorrow, the horrors of Bosnia would reflect a failure by the international community to head off the explosion of violence before it occurred.

And that's the optimistic view, based on the mighty big "if" that something resembling peace indeed is in store.

That hope was triggered over the weekend by recalcitrant Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Kardzic's endorsement of the Vance-Owen peace plan to which the other warring parties have already signed on. The self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb parliament is to meet tomorrow to consider the plan.

Kardzic's endorsement came one day after President Clinton let it be known, via Secretary of State Warren Christopher and other administration officials, that the United States intends a get-tough policy unless Kardzic's forces agree to a cease-fire and allow humanitarian relief to get through unimpeded to the suffering Bosnian Muslims,

In consultations with European allies, administration officials said, the United States will recommend air strikes against Serb military positions and supply lines in Bosnia, and perhaps also against Serbia proper. The United States also will ask the United Nations Security Council to lift the arms embargo in Bosnia, an embargo that proved porous for the aggressors while disarming aggression's victims.

Moreover, the threat of an international military response comes at a time when Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is said to be pressing his patron Kardzic to cool off. Economic sanctions against Serbia have grown tighter, Serbian assets abroad have been seized - and Boris Yeltsin, strengthened by his referendum victory a week and a half ago, has made it clear that Serbia shouldn't count on his Russian government as a friend.

But cease-fires have been agreed to before, with no discernible effect on the slaughter. The behavior of Serb forces in Bosnia doesn't create great confidence in the quality of their word.

Even assuming strongman Milosevic in fact has calculated that a cease-fire is now in Serbia's (or, perhaps more importantly, his) interest, can he control Kardzic? And even assuming the same of Kardzic, can he control the diverse units nominally under his command?

The plan itself poses problems.

Serb advances have altered the military landscape since the plan's patchwork of ethnic enclaves was cobbled together. Will the Serbs peacefully trade the 70 percent of Bosnia's land area they now control for the 43 percent envisioned in the plan?

Even at 43 percent, it will amount to Serb success in acquiring new territory by violent aggression. Will this be taken as an informative precedent by other bad actors of the world?

Nor does the plan deal with Serb minorities in Croatia, or with Kosovo, the next region of the old Yugoslavia that advocates of a Greater Serbia may have their sights set on.

From such doubts arises the fear that the plan's provision for international peacekeeping forces, including U.S. troops, could involve them in a fearsome ground war.

Even if that never happens, however, the Balkan tragedy will have done great damage - reintroducing into Europe the specter of genocide, creating misery for millions of people, leading America and the West into a situation where military threat seems the only persuasive agent of diplomacy.

If some sort of peace is on the way in the Balkans, the world can breathe at least a small sigh of relief. But the Balkans aren't the only hot spots on the globe, and ways must be sought to maintain peace before rather than after so much blood is spilled.