Bush Still Balks at Balkans Force : Bosnia: As issue reaches campaign, he demands access to camps but is cautious on sending U.S. combat troops.

President Bush demanded Friday that international inspectors be allowed into detention camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but drawing a contrast with Gov. Bill Clinton’s call for U.S.-backed air strikes to halt the warfare, he said he remains reluctant to involve the U.S. armed forces in the conflict.

“There are a lot of voices out there in the United States today that say use force, but they don’t have the responsibility for sending somebody else’s son or somebody else’s daughter into harm’s way. And I do,” Bush said in his second hastily called meeting with reporters in two days.

As for Clinton’s call for the use of air strikes by the United Nations with U.S. support, Bush said, “I have no problem with his offering advice on these matters, but I am not going to get engaged in the political arena when we are trying to do something that really has a tremendous humanitarian aspect.”

Also Friday, the Pentagon reversed its earlier assurances that there would be no U.S. military presence in the former Yugoslav republics, announcing that as many as a dozen Air Force cargo specialists will be flown from Rhein Main Air Base in Germany to Zagreb, the Croatian capital, to load and unload airplanes carrying humanitarian aid.

Officials said crews now performing those duties have created problems by failing to load aircraft properly.

Pentagon officials said the team, the first U.S. military contingent to stay in the war-torn region, will not include combat troops or specialists in airfield security. While they are trained to use weapons, their role in Zagreb will be limited to logistical support. Still, they could come under fire, presenting the Bush Administration with the difficult choice of pulling them out and abandoning their role or sending in reinforcements.

Bush’s news conference at the White House presented him in a presidential setting, focusing on issues of war and peace--he said he saw a glimmer of hope for the economy in the one-tenth of a percentage-point drop in the unemployment rate.

He also used the occasion to maintain pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, saying that “he is going to comply with the U.N. resolutions, and that is just going to happen.”

A new U.N. weapons inspection team arrived in Iraq on Friday, and its leader affirmed his right to inspect any site in the country, countering Baghdad’s threat to bar the inspectors from all government ministries. It was the first such visit since the standoff last month that ended when inspectors were finally allowed inside the Agriculture Ministry to look for evidence of the Iraqi nuclear and chemical weapons program.

Commenting about reports of Serbian atrocities in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the President said: “The world cannot shed its horror of concentration camps. The shocking brutality of genocide in World War II, in those concentration camps, are burning memories for all of us, and that can’t happen again. We will not rest until the international community has gained access to any and all detention camps.

“I do not want to see the United States bogged down in any way into some guerrilla warfare--we lived through that once--and yet I have a lot of options available to me, and I will contemplate every one very seriously,” Bush said. Whatever steps he took, he added, would be carried out “in conjunction with the United Nations.”

In what remains of Yugoslavia, Prime Minister Milan Panic said he would order Serbian officials in Bosnia to close the detention camps within 30 days--although he has no direct control over the Serbian militias there. Bush called Panic’s plan “a move in the right direction.”

The potential impact of the war on the presidential race was raised at the morning meeting of the Bush campaign’s senior staff Friday, one campaign source said, with some officials suggesting that Bush portray Clinton as too ready to take a hawkish position. But another source insisted that Bush and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft have put the brakes on efforts to exploit the conflict for political purposes.

With military tensions rising, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney pointed to Bush’s wartime service as he introduced the President at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the World War II battle for Guadalcanal in the Pacific theater.

“He knows what it was like to serve his nation far from home, to take enemy fire, to see shipmates die,” Cheney said. “He knows the risk of taking action and the even greater risk when you fail to act. President Bush has carried with him into his career of public service the lessons of that war.”

For his part, Bush insisted at the news conference that his recently toughened approach to the tragedy in Bosnia had not been spurred by Clinton’s call for more aggressive action.

“Absolutely no,” he said. “This is not a political matter. This is a matter of humanitarian concern. I will not engage the other (side) on this particular issue. We’re trying to handle it in a sound way with sound foreign policy as a backbone to it, so that’s the end of that one.

“I’m going to keep on these foreign policy issues and try to keep them out of the political arena, the jockeying, the instant statement,” Bush said before leaving for a long weekend at his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Me., where he will meet Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy contributed to this story.

LOCAL RESPONSE: Los Angeles Jews call for intervention in Bosnia. B1