NEWS ANALYSIS : West Seeking Consensus on Halting Balkan Horrors

After a year of ethnic bloodshed and atrocities that have evoked images of Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Cyprus and the Nazi Holocaust, a gathering in London this week to draft a Western response to the horrors in Yugoslavia has invited another disturbing comparison: Munich.

It was in Adolf Hitler’s Bavarian stronghold in 1938 that Western European diplomats sacrificed Czechoslovakia to sate the Nazi leader’s territorial appetite, only to be confronted later with a hungrier aggressor encouraged by the West’s policy of preserving its own peace at any price.

Some Western government leaders, diplomats, human rights monitors and local observers of Yugoslavia’s deadly destruction worry that the international conference opening Wednesday appears disposed toward half-measures that may come back to haunt them.

“It smells like Munich,” Belgrade military analyst Milos Vasic warned of the London meeting, at which senior officials of the European Community, the United Nations, humanitarian relief agencies and wealthy democracies like the United States will seek to define their political objectives in the war-torn Balkans.

Amid international outcries over civilian massacres and the largest forced migration in Europe since World War II, the foreign mediators will strive for a consensus on how they might roll back Serbian territorial advances in Bosnia-Herzegovina--and, more important, whether they want to.

“The precedent is rather dangerous, of carving up and selling out a member country of the United Nations,” said Vasic, a Serb who has been highly critical of the Belgrade leadership’s support for Serbian rebels in Bosnia and Croatia. “I’m afraid the whole story will be swept under the carpet somehow and the fait accompli (of Serbian occupation) will be acknowledged.’

British Prime Minister John Major, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the 12-nation EC, has called the session to coordinate international policy on the whole Balkan crisis, although the focus is expected to be on the humanitarian nightmare in Bosnia.

The human rights monitoring organization Helsinki Watch issued a detailed report this month accusing Serbian forces of massacres, summary executions, burning of villages, hostage-taking and mistreatment of prisoners in Bosnia. It claimed that “sufficient evidence exists to warrant investigation” of war crimes charges against Serbian political and military leaders.

The United States and other Western countries have publicly denounced the Serbian aggression that has driven as many as 2 million non-Serbs from their Bosnian homes and deeded over more than two-thirds of the republic to ethnic Serbs who make up only 31% of the population.

But some Belgrade-based diplomats representing those same publicly outraged governments say the sentiment in their home offices is “the less we have to get involved, the better.”

A wide range of options for influencing the conflict is expected to be discussed in London, including:

* Deployment of troops to guard aid convoys to areas under Serbian siege.

* Establishment of havens for those targeted by the Serbian policy of “ethnic cleansing.”

* Expansion of the U.N. presence in Bosnia to secure and monitor heavy weapons.

* Lifting of the U.N. arms embargo imposed on all former Yugoslav republics to allow the Bosnian government to better arm itself against attack by the vastly superior weapons of the Serbian forces.

* Air strikes against strategic Serbian military targets to reduce the fighting power and potential for the war to spread to other volatile areas.

U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and President Bush, involved in a tough reelection fight, are wary of becoming embroiled in a protracted and costly war like Vietnam. They have called on the international community to define its objectives before wading into a conflict it could make worse.

But some European leaders more discomfited by the war in their back yards warn that failure to halt and punish Serbian aggression would send a dangerous message to those tackling other nationalist conflicts, such as those in Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union. Neighboring Austria, Italy and Hungary have been especially supportive of harsher measures.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in an article published earlier this month, wrote that “waiting until the conflict burns itself out will be not only dishonorable but also very costly: refugees, terrorism, Balkan wars drawing in other countries and worse.”

Noting that Serbia has so far defiantly ignored all diplomatic pressures, Thatcher called for a serious threat of force.

German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel has called on the conference to convene an international tribunal to try Serbian military and political leaders for “genocide” against Bosnia’s non-Serbs. He also reaffirmed his government’s call for consideration of military intervention.

Major’s government has reacted cautiously to proposals for armed involvement while at the same time rejecting Serbian territorial gains achieved by force.

“The idea that simply because you or your friends have occupied swaths of territory, the world simply packs up and accepts that, will be shown to be wrong,” Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd told the London daily Independent in an interview published Sunday.

Foreign Development Minister Linda Chalker, however, has pushed the notion of havens for the Muslims within Bosnia, arguing that it would then be easier, on the basis of proximity, for the displaced to return to their homes whenever the war ends.

Muslim leaders who have been appealing for armed intervention against the Serbs say havens would easily become ghettos for victims of “ethnic cleansing” and preserve the Serbian lock on most Bosnian territory.

Radovan Karadzic, Serbian leader in Bosnia, proposes an immediate cease-fire and negotiations with the Muslims and Croats over division of Bosnian territory among the three communities.

Karadzic and other officials of his unrecognized Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina hint they are willing to trade off a few of their holdings but insist on keeping at least 50%.

The Bosnian leadership under Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic has steadfastly refused to negotiate with the Karadzic forces, accusing them of organized terrorism in expelling non-Serbs and seizing their land for an ethnically pure corridor to link the republic of Serbia with Serb-occupied territory in Croatia.

After a visit to Sarajevo last month, Hurd said the Muslims would have to take part in such talks.

At least 8,000 people have died in Bosnia-Herzegovina since Serbs began rebelling against that republic’s Feb. 29 vote for independence. The actual death toll is thought to be much higher. U.S. officials estimate that at least 35,000 have died.

Serbs insisting on union with Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia also rebelled against Croatian secession last year, sparking a war that took 10,000 lives before a U.N. peacekeeping mission began. Fighting has subsided since 14,000 U.N. troops arrived earlier this year, but Croats contend that the U.N. presence is serving to cement the Serbian hold on one-third of Croatia.

Some Western diplomats based in Belgrade see their governments’ interest in forcing the Bosnian Muslims to negotiate for territory from their current disadvantageous position as likely to reward Serbian aggression by allowing Serbs to bargain with chips they took by force.

“The focus at this conference should be on responsibility for the violence and concretely holding Serbian authorities and their allies--the Bosnian Serb and Croatian Serb extremists--responsible for their crimes, rather than trying to get their victims to cut a deal,” said one Western envoy with expertise in Bosnia.

He expressed concern that some governments appear vulnerable to veiled threats that Serbs might retaliate against U.N. peacekeeping troops or other foreigners in the Balkans if confronted with military intervention.

“I hope we don’t make the mistake of thinking we have to negotiate with them or else something worse will happen,” the envoy said of the radical Serbian factions.

Acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a former ambassador to Yugoslavia who will represent the United States at the London conference, last week reaffirmed that Washington considers Serbia the “fundamental aggressor.”

Eagleburger said he will push for further sanctions against the Belgrade government but said he has low expectations of what could be accomplished at the three-day meeting.

In Belgrade, Yugoslav Premier Milan Panic said before leaving for London that he is determined to make peace at the conference. He also condemned “ethnic cleansing.”

But Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, the nationalist strongman accused by the West of sparking the civil war to build a Greater Serbia, has warned that any foreign intervention will backfire against European security. Karadzic observed that “there are 10 million Serbs and they will probably act strongly if there is any attempt (at the London conference) to condemn them.”

Even moderate Serbs have reacted with alarm at the prospect of armed intervention, saying it would be adventurism aimed at soothing public outrage over disturbing pictures from Serb-run internment camps and widespread reports of Serbian forces raping, looting and, in some cases, murdering their ethnic foes.

“There is an attitude in America, somewhat slowed by Western Europe, of ‘Let’s do it to the Serbs! Let’s fight the Serbs and Milosevic,’ ” observed Predrag Simic, director of the Institute for International Politics and Economy here.

“At least half a million foreign troops would be needed” to deter ethnic fighting in Bosnia, he said. “One should remember that during World War II, the Germans had 19 divisions in this region and still couldn’t pacify it.”

Supplying arms to the Muslims might balance the fighting field in Bosnia, but Simic contends that any attempt by the West to help the Muslims would entice other Yugoslav ethnic groups who feel victimized by the Serbs--primarily the 2 million Albanians in the province of Kosovo--to rebel against Serbian rule in hopes of similar supportive intervention.

What is needed, the academic argues, is a sort of benign occupation by delegations from stable Western countries to teach the basics of democracy to the people of the Balkans who have lived for centuries under repressive rule.