Listen to What Bosnia Wants : Not armed intervention, but a chance to defend itself

Last week, the foreign ministers of 36 member nations of the Islamic Conference met in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, to press for military intervention in Bosnia. According to a Times report, a Saudi Foreign Ministry official said: “The Muslim countries are willing to provide whatever ground troops are necessary” to relieve Muslim victims of “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia. The preference in the conference was for direct military intervention; but failing that, some Arab sources favored a large influx of cash from Muslim countries for Bosnian arms purchases.

Meanwhile, according to another news report, senior Bush Administration officials were planning to introduce a U.N. resolution calling for enforcement of an existing, unenforced ban on flights over Bosnia. Serbia has violated this ban with impunity and, according to recent widespread reports, has used its complete control of the air to attack targets on the ground.

Enforcement of the no-fly zone would presumably fall to NATO or at least to some of the NATO countries. (President Bush has recently invited France and Britain to join the United States in placing civilian monitors in Kosovo, a measure aimed at deterring Serbian “ethnic cleansing” operations against ethnic Albanians in that province.)

Will the British and the French, prodded again by the United States, take up this enforcement task? One can only hope so. It would be preferable to enforce the no-fly zone now than to see Islamic Conference troops landing in Europe later.

We urge speedy enactment of armed enforcement of the no-fly rule. At the same time, we urge the members of the Islamic Conference, who rightly call for an end to the arms embargo, to concentrate their efforts--and their considerable financial resources--on that aspect of the Bosnian challenge rather than on direct military intervention.

Armed enforcement of the no-fly rule, joined to a revocation of the arms embargo, could turn the Bosnian war from a quick, brutal victory for Serbia into a no-win situation for that aggressor. It is just this combination that the Bosnian leadership itself has publicly requested.