U.S. Won’t Back Efforts to Revive Bosnia Plan

Secretary of State Warren Christopher refused Monday to join efforts to revive at the United Nations a deadlocked peace plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina that would divide the embattled republic into 10 largely autonomous provinces.

Western mediators Cyrus R. Vance and Lord Owen told reporters after an hourlong meeting with Christopher that the new Clinton Administration wants time to complete a policy review before deciding if it will support the Bosnia proposal cobbled together during five months of peace talks in Geneva.

“He said it was an interesting plan which he wants to look at more closely in certain specific respects and to fully understand it,” Vance said. Owen added that the mediators were not disappointed at their failure to win Christopher’s immediate approval.

However, in an interview with CNN that preceded the meeting, Owen said U.S. backing is essential to the attempt to restart the negotiations, which collapsed Saturday. And he chided the United States for dominating the debate about the ruined Yugoslav federation without sending its own troops into the beleaguered U.N. peacekeeping force there.

“Why don’t they come in?” he said regarding the assignment of American forces to the “blue helmet” U.N. contingent. “It would be a hell of a help.”

Vance, who was secretary of state in the Jimmy Carter Administration when Christopher was his deputy, represents the United Nations in the Bosnia peace talks. Owen, a former British foreign secretary, represents the European Community.

The mediators broke off the Geneva negotiations after the Bosnian government and the Bosnian Serb faction refused to sign the peace plan. They went to the United Nations seeking new sanctions from the Security Council to pressure the parties into accepting the proposal.

Owen said the differences over the plan are “fixable” if the world community gets behind the proposal.

The European Community did support the plan. Foreign ministers of the 12 member nations endorsed it when they gathered in Brussels on Monday to consider their options for pressuring the armed factions to end the conflict.

Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen of Denmark, which currently holds the rotating EC presidency, said, “We believe the comprehensive peace plan put forward by Owen and Vance has a chance to succeed.”

The EC has been debating the possibility of a complete isolation of Serbia and its ally, Montenegro, by cutting road and rail links, postal service and telecommunications. But Petersen said, “We deliberately have postponed any action on this point to give peace a chance.”

He noted that the EC did not blame only Serbia for the violence.

“We agreed also that Croatia must immediately cease its aggressions,” he said.

The ministers also considered a report on rape in the former Yugoslav republics, which concluded that the crime “has been perpetrated on a wide scale in former Yugoslavia, in such a way as to be part of a clear pattern. The great majority of the many thousands of victims have been Muslims.”

While noting that there were “many and disturbing reports of rape of Croat and Serbian women and children, as well as sexual abuse of men in detention camps,” it reported that the most “reasoned estimates” put the number of Muslim women raped at about 20,000.

It said a repeated feature of Serbian attacks on Muslim towns and villages was the use of rape, often in public, or the threat of rape, as a weapon of war to force the populace to leave their homes.

The report urged the EC to help in providing physical and psychological health care for rape victims, and that EC member states admitting Bosnian refugees should streamline visa procedures.

Christopher, asked about Owen’s comments at his first press conference as secretary of state, said the United States believes the world community should take “stronger steps” to stop the fighting, but he added: “We have not yet contemplated the use of ground forces with respect to that situation.”

When a reporter asked if he was ready to support the Vance-Owen peace proposals, Christopher said: “We’ve been supportive of the process in the hope that the parties would come into agreement. . . . That’s as far as I’m prepared to go this afternoon.”

Turning to another trouble spot, Christopher said that he and U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali are close to agreement on a timetable for the United States to withdraw its forces from Somalia and turn peacekeeping operations over to the United Nations.

“I had a good discussion with the secretary general, and we are thinking very much alike on the subject,” Christopher said of Somalia operations. “We believe it’s time to begin the transition. The secretary general’s report will be soon issued, and I would anticipate that there will be a resolution for (an enhanced U.N. force) in the relatively near future.

“The secretary general and I had a meeting of the minds on that subject, in which the United States will be fully participating in the transition and be helpful in the period after the transition,” he said without providing additional details.

There have been reports of strained relations between Christopher and the secretary general over the Somalia operation and the possibility that Boutros-Ghali may offer the United Nations’ top management position, traditionally reserved for an American, to a European diplomat. But Christopher went out of his way to hail Boutros-Ghali, raining praise on him at every opportunity.

The secretary general announced Monday that he is sending 280 additional U.N. peacekeepers to strengthen U.N. military headquarters in Somalia. In a report to the Security Council, Boutros-Ghali said he was adding 30 officers to the U.N. military headquarters in Somalia and sending 250 soldiers from Pakistan to a U.N. force of 634 already there.

Times staff writer Joel Havemann, in Brussels, contributed to this report.