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

DATE: FRIDAY, June 18, 1993                   TAG: 9306180108
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: VIENNA, AUSTRIA                                LENGTH: Medium

NATIONS ADMIT FAILURE IN BOSNIA MUSLIMS URGED TO ACCEPT PARTITION

International mediator David Owen, conceding his U.N.-backed peace plan is dead, Thursday urged the Muslim-led Bosnian government to accept a proposal from its Serb and Croat enemies to divide the embattled country into three separate entities.

Owen's advice, endorsed by the Clinton administration, was a significant turnabout in the process of negotiating a solution to the 14-month-old war. Until now, the United States and its allies on the U.N. Security Council have sought to broker an outcome that would not allow Bosnia's partition along strictly ethnic lines.

Now, the Western powers appear resigned to leaving the beleaguered Bosnian government - recognized by the United States and most European countries in April 1992 - to work out just such a partition with Serb and Croat adversaries.

The United States, which has virtually dropped out of the peace talks, "could support a process that led to an agreeement bargained in good faith by all the parties," State Department spokesman Michael McCurry said.

The confession to failure of 10 months of U.N. and European diplomacy over the Bosnian conflict came the day after a new peace plan was proposed in Geneva by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who has backed the Bosnian Serbs in their refusal to remain under unified Sarajevo government authority, and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, who has backed Bosnian Croats in their parallel demands.

The plan would divide the country into three ethnically homogenous areas, reflecting on paper what has happened during the fighting and "ethnic cleansing" that has separated Bosnia's communities over the months.

State Department officials said they were unsure about whether the new plan means formal dismemberment of Bosnia or some form of federation.

Without international support, the Muslim-led government based in the Serb-besieged capital of Sarajevo seems threatened with extinction together with the unified Bosnian state. Owen seemed resigned to the death of his own peace plan for the division of Bosnia into 10 semiautonomous provinces within a unified Bosnian state.

"Time moves on and, sadly, as it does so, the situation deteriorates," Owen said. "We have seen the provisional map torn up in front of our very eyes by all three sides in the last few months."

While he felt the attacks on the plan he and Vance, representing the United Nations, had devised were "false," he said, there was no use standing on vanity. "We've got to stand up to the bloody realities of the situation," he said.

by CNB