Eagleburger Outlines New Serbia Action : Embargo: Aim of economic measures is to make Belgrade ‘cry uncle,’ but he warns that even that may not be enough.

Acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger says that new Western measures to tighten the economic embargo on Serbia should be in place within the next few weeks, with the aim to “bleed the Serbian economy until they cry uncle.”

But even that may not be enough to end the fighting in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Serbian militias are fighting to take over territory inhabited by Croats and Muslims, he cautioned.

“I think (the conflict) is with us for some time to come, and unpleasantly so,” Eagleburger said.

In an interview this week, Eagleburger outlined a series of concrete actions the United States and other Western countries plan to pursue in the former Yugoslavia, centering on stepped-up economic pressure against Belgrade.

He said the Bush Administration is willing to send Customs Service agents to countries around Serbia to help enforce the international trade sanctions, and he suggested that wealthy Arab countries could send aid to Romania to help that country in the effort.

“The only long-term way to bring it to an end is just to bleed the Serbian economy until they cry uncle, and I think we can do that over the winter,” he said. “. . . Serbia is in the unique position of being able to be closed off economically pretty well if you can make the sanctions work.”

But he also said that the ethnic Serbian militias fighting in Bosnia may not be immediately susceptible to such economic pressure.

“Even if the Serbs (within Serbia) gave up tomorrow and stopped supplying Bosnian Serbs, there’s going to be a long aftermath of turmoil in Bosnia,” he said. “I think that’s going to diminish . . . but it is going to take time.”

Eagleburger’s comments appeared to reflect a new, more serious resolve on the part of the Bush Administration to bring the Bosnian conflict under control. Earlier, Washington had left the problem largely to the countries of the European Community.

As the conflict has worsened--and as international diplomatic efforts have failed to halt the fighting--officials have expressed increasing fear that it could set a pattern for other ethnic conflicts.

At an international conference in London last week, Western countries set up a framework of “working groups” to try to bring the conflict under control. The conference called on militias in Bosnia to give up their heavy weapons, urged the United Nations to put monitors in the area and directed former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and former British Foreign Secretary David Owen to make the economic sanctions work.

A senior U.S. official said that the most critical immediate issue is stopping supplies from reaching Serbia by way of the Danube River, along which barges reach Belgrade from Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.

“We’re going to be pressing very hard with each of the riparian states that they be much more forceful with their policing of the Danube--boarding ships, boarding barges, breaking open seals and looking at things,” the official said. “I would hope within the next couple of weeks you’d begin to see that one really begin to bite, certainly within the next month.”

But not everyone believes the economic measures will be enough.

“Sanctions have never really worked,” said George Kenney, the State Department official responsible for Yugoslavia who resigned last week to protest the Administration’s approach. “Sanctions, for us, are an excuse: We appear to have done something, but in reality we’ve done very little.”

Instead, Kenney argued, the United States and its allies should use their air forces to attack Serbian artillery batteries and should arm and train the Bosnian forces. Eagleburger has rejected that proposal, saying last week that thinking of that kind “is to some degree what led us into Vietnam.”