Clinton to Press Active U.S. Role in Bosnia : Policy: President’s nominee as U.N. ambassador calls Balkans crisis his ‘highest priority’ in foreign affairs.

President Clinton plans to convene an early, Cabinet-level review of American policy toward Bosnia-Herzegovina aimed at stepping up efforts to stop the fighting and deliver humanitarian aid there, officials said Thursday.

“This is clearly the highest priority of the President in the National Security Council’s agenda. . . ,” Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We will, in fact, be meeting on this subject very soon.”

Other officials said Clinton is clearly leaning toward a more active American role in the Yugoslav crisis, as he promised before his election in November. During the presidential campaign, Clinton said he would be willing to use American air power to protect humanitarian aid and that he would consider ending the international arms embargo on Bosnia.

But more recently, Secretary of State Warren Christopher has struck a more cautious tone. In Senate hearings last week, Christopher said the Clinton Administration would act to protect delivery of aid and to enforce a “no-fly zone” over Bosnia.

But he refused to specify how and said he was uncertain what the “ultimate objective” of attacks on Serbian military positions would be.

Clinton already has received papers from transition aides that recommend stepped-up diplomatic and economic pressures on Serbia and--if those should fail--”a graduated series of military steps” like air strikes against Serbian military facilities, one adviser said.

The new Administration is moving ahead to plan a more assertive policy, despite the Bosnian factions’ tentative agreement to a U.N.-proposed peace plan, because senior officials do not believe the pact can work.

In a meeting with aides, Christopher “expressed doubts about whether it can realistically be achieved--whether they can, in fact, find an agreement,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

He said the new Administration still supports the efforts of Cyrus R. Vance, the former U.S. secretary of state and present U.N. envoy, and Lord Owen, the European Community negotiator, to broker a compromise among Bosnia’s ethnic Serbs, Croats and Muslims, but is uncertain of their chances.

“I think this is pretty much what the last Administration said,” he added.

In her confirmation hearing, Albright, who has been named a member of the National Security Council as well as U.N. ambassador, said that Clinton and his aides consider the need for more action in Bosnia to be a pressing concern.

Replying to questions from Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), Albright said she has been “totally horrified” by Serbian attacks on civilians of other ethnic groups in Bosnia, a campaign described by some as “ethnic cleansing.”

“I think how, years ago, as a student of history, when I studied the League of Nations,” she told the committee, “how I would say, ‘How could they have stood around and done nothing?’ We cannot sit around and wait to be judged on this issue 50 years from now.”

The Czech-born Albright, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, said: “I have watched with some amazement that the Europeans have not taken action. I believe that we must . . . press our European allies on this.”

Citing the U.N.- and EC-sponsored Geneva conference, which is trying to mediate a Bosnian peace, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said there is a possibility a cease-fire would end up rewarding the Serbs’ “ethnic cleansing.” He said the American government must decide whether it wants to tilt toward such a treaty or toward punishing the aggressors.

“Your comments are right to the point,” she told Lugar. “We are so desperately frustrated.”

Edmund S. Muskie, a senator for many years and a former secretary of state, introduced Albright, his former legislative assistant, to the committee. She was lavishly praised by both Democratic and Republican members and appears headed for overwhelming, if not unanimous, committee approval.