Conferees Blast Serbia; Bosnia Decries Inaction

World leaders unanimously condemned Serbs for ethnic slaughter in the ruins of Yugoslavia on Wednesday, but their reluctance to order outside military intervention was denounced as “shameful” by the leaders of embattled Bosnia-Herzegovina.

While Acting U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger sought to portray a conference on the crisis in the Balkans as a decisive response to international outrage over atrocities, several European leaders warned that only direct military action would halt the bloodshed. German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel branded the Serbian campaign against Bosnian Muslims “genocide.”

The conference, called to hammer out a consensus on how to intervene in the deadly situation, is certain to tighten economic and political sanctions against the Serbian-dominated remains of Yugoslavia.

But after a year of shattered cease-fires and carnage, some argued that the declarations fell far short of the action needed to halt the killing.

“What is happening here is genocide, and this we condemn before the world community,” Kinkel told the conference, indirectly accusing Western leaders of shirking the difficult task of saving Bosnia. “The community of nations will pursue all crimes no matter who has committed them. Let no one believe that these atrocities will be forgotten.”

Kinkel reiterated his call for war crimes trials against Serbian aggressors.

Acknowledging an internal dispute within the U.S. government, American officials confirmed that the State Department’s senior expert on Yugoslavia had resigned in protest over what he saw as the Administration’s timid approach to the conflict.

Nevertheless, the Americans insisted that the largest international gathering to date on the year-old war in the former Yugoslav republics was “well on its way to a significant success.”

The meeting has served to deprive Serbian leaders from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia of equal standing with the elected governments of those republics. In addition, the assembled officials of the 12-nation European Community, the United Nations and influential Western democracies voiced demands for expulsion of the rump Yugoslav state from the United Nations and other international bodies.

On the periphery of the conference, U.N. Undersecretary General Marrack Goulding sought and received commitments from several U.N. member states for participation in armed escorts of humanitarian relief convoys into besieged areas of Bosnia. U.S. sources said they expected more than a doubling of the current 1,600 troops assigned to the Bosnian relief mission.

The Americans also noted that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic sat impassively throughout the barrage of charges that he instigated the Serbian rebellions in other republics through proxies and clandestine supplies of arms and paramilitary forces. The American participants expressed hope that the chorus of accusations would compel Milosevic to change policy, but other delegates pointed out that he has shrugged off similar criticism in the past.

Serbian forces have seized more than two-thirds of the independent republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, provoking battles that have killed tens of thousands in less than five months and driven nearly 2 million--mostly Muslim civilians--from their homes by means of a policy known as “ethnic cleansing.”

“The civilized world simply cannot afford to allow this cancer in the heart of Europe to flourish, much less spread,” Eagleburger said.

Evoking the memory of hundreds of thousands of Serbs killed by pro-Nazi Croats during World War II, Eagleburger said, “it is Serbs, alas, who are most guilty today of crimes which mimic those of their former tormentors, and which violate the sacred memory of ancestors who suffered at their hands.”

He warned that Serbs face a “spectacularly bleak future” unless they abandon the destructive course on which their leaders have set them.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hikmet Cetin cautioned the conference participants that they were dealing with the symptoms, rather than the illness, of the Yugoslav crisis and avoiding the necessary prescription for peace in the region.

“The problem we are facing in Bosnia is no civil war, nor is it a humanitarian crisis. It is one of aggression, the unbridled use of force, the attempt to gain territory through the use of force and ethnic cleansing,” Cetin said. “It also involves crimes against humanity and a deliberate design to wipe out an entire community through murder or forced displacement.”

Joining Austria, Germany and a number of other countries represented at the British-sponsored conference, the Turkish official appealed for a lifting of the U.N. arms embargo against Bosnia to allow the fledgling government of the breakaway Yugoslav republic to arm its troops and defend itself.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic pushed for an end to the arms embargo, arguing that his U.N.-member nation could defend itself if released from the trade shackles placed on all six former Yugoslav republics last year with the intention of slowing the Serbian arms buildup. He asked for foreign-led air strikes to eliminate the Serbian rebels’ stockpiles of planes, tanks and heavy guns, but said he had never requested U.N. ground troops.

“We do not ask for 150,000 to 300,000 soldiers, which is an argument used by some of those who oppose helping Bosnia-Herzegovina and who are attempting to frighten European governments and the public,” the Muslim president said, seeking to allay Western fears of becoming embroiled in another protracted war like Vietnam. “We have enough men ready to fight for liberation of the country, but they need weapons.”

Izetbegovic and his foreign minister, Haris Silajdzic, argued that Western condemnation of Serbian nationalists had repeatedly failed to deter them from their drive to build a Greater Serbia by forcibly overrunning territory in neighboring republics.

Silajdzic said that a U.N. Security Council resolution passed earlier this month authorizing the use of force to protect humanitarian aid convoys into Bosnia-Herzegovina had inspired hope among those defending the war-ravaged republic, but that Western commitment to the aid effort had “dwindled.”

“I must say this is inexcusable, when they have a legal right to help people and they still don’t want to do that. It is shameful,” Silajdzic said.

Referring to the verbal assault on Belgrade authorities for their support of the rebellious Bosnian Serbs, Silajdzic repeated his longstanding warning that “mere condemnations” will not be enough to halt the sieges of Sarajevo and other cities.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials confirmed a report originally published by the Washington Post that George D. Kenney, the Balkan desk officer at the State Department, had resigned from the foreign service to protest the failure of the Bush Administration to support the use of military force against Serbia.

In response to Kenney’s accusation that the London conference was intended to disguise the world’s failure to act, one senior official said, “I think he’s wrong. . . . I don’t think there is any basis before the conference is over for saying it is a failure and a sham.”

However, another senior official said later, “Everybody is frustrated” about the continuing conflict, and added, “I have to say I rather admire somebody who resigns on principle.”

In New York, it was announced that Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel and officials of the World Jewish Congress will meet the leaders of the former Yugoslavia’s warring factions today to win approval on forming a commission to probe human rights abuses, the British news agency Reuters reported.

Israel Singer, the WJC’s secretary general, said the group will meet the leaders of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and of the rump Yugoslav federation in London. The idea for the commission, Singer said, originated with Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic.

* SHELLS FOR SARAJEVO: Serbian militiamen pounded Sarajevo with the heaviest bombardment in weeks. A8