Bordering on Sheer Insanity

The United Nations’ peace plan for Serbia and Croatia is in deep trouble. That plan, agreed to by leaders of both sides, called for the withdrawal of all combatants from disputed territory and the installation of a U.N. peacekeeping force. But as Carol Williams reports in today’s Times, a renegade Serbian leader, Milan Babic, has now refused to allow U.N. Undersecretary General Marrack Goulding to deploy foreign forces in Babic’s regional stronghold. Goulding in response has left Yugoslavia and put the peace mission on indefinite hold.

That so decisive a role has been played by Babic, president of the breakaway Serb Krajina Republic, rather than by Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia, or Veljko Kadijevic, the commander of the Yugoslav Federal Army, is a measure of the disintegration of the Serbian front.

Milosevic, as his support weakened, was willing to call U.N. occupation a victory: At least the surrendered territory would not be ruled by Croatia. But Babic, who with good reason feared a Croatian counteroffensive, called that a betrayal. As for the army, what it has sought, more than the fortunes of any Yugoslav nation, even Serbia, is the preservation of a civilian base large enough to support it in the style to which it became accustomed under communism. If Milosevic moves against Babic, and such a move may be imminent, the greater Serbo-Croatian war will have spawned a Serbo-Serbian mini-war.

Croatia, meanwhile, confirming Serbian fears, has broken the U.N. agreement both by demanding a direct role in U.N. administration of Serb-controlled areas and by otherwise insisting on explicit U.N. recognition that the disputed territory is and will remain a part of Croatia.

The next move seems clearly to rest with the European Community and, above all, with Germany. The Croats--German clients, in effect--must be made to see that if Yugoslavia was not sacrosanct, then neither are the borders that Yugoslavia drew. Against the day when arbitration redraws those once-internal borders, strict compliance with the original U.N. terms is indispensable. As for Serbia, Milosevic, the reluctant friend of the U.N. agreement, deserves better than Babic, its sworn enemy. Official Serbia should be encouraged to seek EC recognition, at which point EC mediation may come back to life, and with it the U.N. plan.