Eagleburger Condemns West’s ‘Dithering’ on Bosnia : Diplomacy: He says Muslim nations may not support actions against Iraq because of failure to act in Balkans.

Openly irritated by the foot-dragging of some U.S. allies, Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said Thursday that the world may have “dithered” away its best chance to stop the bloody Yugoslav ethnic war.

Eagleburger predicted that the U.N. Security Council eventually will authorize military action to enforce the “no-fly zone” over Bosnia-Herzegovina but said the debate on it has already gone on far too long.

“Having dithered as long as we have, we’ve lost a good bit of the impact already,” he told reporters aboard his jet while returning from the Paris signing of a global treaty outlawing chemical weapons.

Eagleburger’s remark was a damaging admission. The Bush Administration advocates enforcement of the no-fly zone primarily to demonstrate to Serbia and Serbian militias in Bosnia that the West means business in its condemnation of the bloody practice of “ethnic cleansing”--the Serbs’ ejection of non-Serbs from Serbian-controlled areas. With that message diluted, much of the purpose of the exercise is gone.

Eagleburger admitted that he does not know how much the delay will affect Serbian intentions in Kosovo, a province of Serbia where 90% of the population is ethnic Albanian. U.S. officials have warned that, if Serbs attempt to drive out Albanians with the sort of murder, rape and pillage that marked ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the result could be a full-blown Balkan war, drawing in Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and ultimately Greece and Turkey.

Because of the high stakes in Kosovo, the United States and its allies have warned that they would intervene to block ethnic cleansing there.

But American officials are concerned that the failure of the international community to act in Bosnia may convince the Serbian authorities that they can get away with anything they want to do anywhere in the former Yugoslav federation.

Eagleburger acknowledged that the West’s failure to stop atrocities in Bosnia, where Muslims are the most frequent victims, has complicated American efforts to retain the support of countries with a Muslim majority for such actions against Iraq as Wednesday’s air attack.

He said that Turkish Foreign Minister Hikmet Cetin, at a meeting earlier in the day in Paris, complained that it was growing more difficult to gain support in the Turkish Parliament for Iraq raids “because there wasn’t a more forceful action being taken in Bosnia.”

The U.N. Security Council voted last September to ban military flights over Bosnia, but it required a second resolution to enforce the provision. Only the Serbian side in the complex ethnic war has access to air power. The American call for enforcement has been blocked by several countries, including Britain.

Eagleburger said that Russia, unenthusiastic about enforcement all along, now wants to delay action long enough to determine if a Bosnian peace pact, tentatively accepted this week by the three warring factions, will work.

For his part, Eagleburger said the plan to divide Bosnia into 10 largely autonomous provinces “is some progress, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, at first rejected the plan because he said his community demands a sovereign state. But he later relented and agreed to accept the proposal, provided that his “parliament” approves.

The Bosnian Croat community accepted the formula; the Muslim-led Bosnian government tentatively approved it, though it complained that several provinces would fall under Serbian control as a consequence of ethnic cleansing.

Eagleburger is known to be unenthusiastic about the proposal--mediated by former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, representing the United Nations, and former British Foreign Secretary Lord Owen, representing the European Community--because it seems to reward ethnic cleansing.

On Thursday, Eagleburger expressed doubt that the pact will ever take effect. “They are all liars,” Eagleburger said of the Bosnian political leaders, regardless of their ethnic affiliation.

He also complained that Israel’s refusal to permit more than 400 deported Palestinians to return home “puts the Israelis and us and a lot of other people in an awkward spot.” While conceding that Israel had “a damn good cause” to take action against Muslim extremists, he said the deportation was the wrong response. “This situation just can’t go on,” he said.

Eagleburger said that the longer the crisis goes on, the more likely it becomes that the Security Council will be asked to invoke sanctions against Israel. The council has already condemned the deportations without taking punitive action.

It is widely assumed that the United States would veto sanctions against its closest Middle East ally. But Eagleburger said he is pressuring Israel to head off U.N. action by returning the Palestinians to Israel, even if it is just to jail them.