U.S. Joins in EC’s Squeeze on Yugoslavia

The United States on Saturday joined the European economic sanctions against Yugoslavia and will co-sponsor a U.N. resolution that could lead to an oil embargo, President Bush said. But he expressed skepticism that the measures would bring an end to the ethnic bloodshed there.

The step was the strongest yet by the United States to bring pressure on the warring Serbs and Croats, whose battles have taken thousands of lives. But Bush said any suggestion of the use of force by the West is “too far ahead of the power curve.”

“We’re not talking about force. We’re talking about economic sanctions. We’re just not there yet,” he said at a news conference.

Bush addressed the problems of Yugoslavia in the context of growing nationalism in Eastern Europe--one of three elements that he warned bear the seeds of danger. The others, he said in a speech, are an inability to move into a period of peace following the Cold War and a failure to meld divergent forces into cooperative trade agreements.

His address, at the conclusion of a meeting of the European Community, was one of his most extended public discussions of challenges posed by the turn toward democracy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union over the last two years.

“The collapse of communism has thrown open a Pandora’s box of ancient ethnic hatreds, resentment, even revenge,” Bush said, warning that “democracy’s new freedoms” could be used “to settle old scores.”

Bush’s announcement on Yugoslavia followed by one day the European Community’s decision to impose economic sanctions on that country. The EC called on the United Nations to declare a global oil embargo against the Balkan nation in an effort to cut off fuel for military vehicles. The measures were aimed primarily at Serbia, which the EC has declared the aggressor in the war with breakaway Croatia.

Announcing his decision to join that effort, and to strengthen the existing embargo on arms shipments to Yugoslavia, Bush said, “Measures must be taken to hold accountable those who place their narrow ambitions above the well-being of the peoples.”

Still, stressing doubts that economic pressure will halt the fighting, the President said, “I don’t think anyone can predict that sanctions alone will solve the problem.”

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested that the United States had been “roped into” supporting the relatively mild European Community measures.

“It may help,” he said, without much conviction. “We have to go along with it, because we’ve said we support the EC. If you do the oil (embargo) thing, it may have a ripple effect.”

He said there had been no discussion within the Bush Administration of a military role for the West. Any such effort, he said, would have to come from the Europeans.

The sanctions imposed Friday by the 12-nation Economic Community and joined Saturday by the United States immediately suspend trade concessions, ban imports of Yugoslav textiles and strike Yugoslavia from a list of aid recipients in Eastern Europe. But a wider effort, built around a U.N. oil embargo, is seen by many as necessary to expand the relatively limited reach of the effort. Yugoslavia imports its oil from the Middle East--from nations that are not parties to the new economic embargo.

Stating that the United States “strongly supports” the European Community’s efforts, Bush said in his speech that no one need fear “national pride.” But he said, “We must guard against nationalism of a more sinister sort--one that feeds on old, stale prejudices, teaches people intolerance and suspicion, and even racism and anti-Semitism; one that pits nation against nation, citizen against citizen.

“There can be no place for these old animosities in the new Europe,” he said.

Bush also called for a greater opening toward the Soviet Union and its individual republics, through humanitarian aid, trade and investment, and warned that “A harsh winter, hard times lie ahead, and desperate times breed demagogues.”

He warned Europe of the dangers of repeating in 1991 the errors of 1919--the beginning of the post-World War I era when “naive isolationism” gave rise to the horrors of Adolf Hitler and then the Cold War.

Equating the current problems with the situation then, “with the world’s great democracies divided and distracted, a Europe divided between victors and vanquished, oblivious to unexpected dangers,” Bush said: “The question we face today is not so different than the one our ancestors faced in 1919. For our part, we knew how to wage the Cold War. But do we know how to wage the peace?”

Answering those who, he says, have “greeted the end of the Cold War with a chorus of ‘Come Home, America,’ ” Bush said, “Nothing could be more shortsighted--for Europe, for America, and for the world.

“We must heed the hard-won lessons of this century if we are to seize new opportunities in the next,” he said.

At the same time, he reserved a role for the United States in the changing Europe as it moves toward greater unity.

With an eye on both those in the United States questioning the cost of a continued American military commitment to Europe after the collapse of communism, and Europeans skeptical of American influence here, Bush said, “A more confident and cohesive Europe will, we believe, want the United States to remain engaged.”

The address and news conference completed the President’s four-day European trip. The journey began in controversy over his extensive foreign travel--he announced 12 hours before leaving Washington that he was postponing an Asian tour at the end of the month--and then focused, first at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Rome and then, here in the Netherlands, on the challenges and dangers presented by the dramatic move toward freedom in the once-monolithic Communist sphere.