Guns Speak Louder Than Words : U.N., Vance and Owen keep talking, Serbs keep fighting

Peace talks often begin while war still rages. But it is crucial that the negotiations in Geneva about the future shape of Bosnia-Herzegovina be recognized as negotiations during a war rather than as a peace agreement that has ended a war. There is no peace in Bosnia. There is no peace agreement in Geneva.

There is, at most, agreement by the Serbs, Croats and Muslims of Bosnia to take a plan developed by U.N. Envoy Cyrus Vance and his European Community associate Lord Owen as a white paper, a basis for future discussion. But at the very hour when President Alija Izetbegovic accepted this plan, Serbs were shooting civilians in his capital, Sarajevo, as hunter might shoot deer in a game preserve. Before the plan can be implemented, that shooting will have to stop, and talk will not stop it.

The Bosnian Serbs, through their leader, Radovan Karadzic, initially insisted on formally conceded political autonomy, including the right to union with Serbia should they choose it. Then, after a stage-managed intervention by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Karadzic accepted the plan subject to ratification by his “parliament” in Pale. On Tuesday, debate in Pale, full of mockery for the United Nations, focused on how to make the Vance-Owen plan function as the Vance plan did a year ago in Croatia. Then, it served to consolidate Serb conquests while freeing Serbia to concentrate on its new military engagement in Bosnia. Now, as then, the Serbs need not challenge the letter of the law so long as they can control events on the ground.

Croat sovereignty in the U.N.-occupied areas of Croatia may remain the letter of the law, in other words, so long as the Serbs can make it a dead letter. The Vance-Owen cantonization plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina may be publicly adhered to so long as the Serbs can privately disregard it. The earlier success of Serb aggression in Croatia depended in good measure on Serb success in buying off the West with the right kind of talk. So it may be again in Bosnia.

Even on paper, the Vance-Owen plan goes far in ratifying Serb aggression. The Serbs, 30% of the population, are assigned 50% of the land. They now control, militarily, 70%. The debate in Pale has centered on how much more territory would have to be assigned to the Serbs for them to have the contiguous state they wish. They may get it. The United Nations may serve, once again, as de facto collaborator, freeing Milosevic for new aggression in Kosovo or Macedonia. On the other hand, the mood of revulsion rising in Western as well as Muslim nations at a peace plan that rewards aggression while making no provision whatsoever for civilian safety may, belatedly, prompt the kind of military intervention that could make a later round of negotiations less a grim charade than the current round.