U.S. Fears U.N. Bosnia Plan Is Unworkable

The Clinton Administration fears that the current U.N. peace plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina is unworkable and would draw U.S. military forces into an unwinnable mission, officials said Tuesday.

Those misgivings lay behind the Administration’s decision to withhold U.S. support from the plan, negotiated by former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and former British Foreign Secretary Lord Owen, and to urge them to try to negotiate a better plan.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher told Vance and Owen of his misgivings in a meeting in New York on Monday, saying he had “difficult questions . . . regarding the feasibility, practicality (and) enforceability of the plan that they have put forward.”

Vance, representing the United Nations, and Owen, representing the European Community, complained Tuesday that the U.S. position is becoming an obstacle to their efforts. “You’ve got to ask the United States: What else are you going to do?” Owen said.

But a senior Administration official defended President Clinton’s caution.

“All of us working on this issue have very strong concerns about the situation (in Bosnia),” he said. “But there have been cases in the past where a new Administration has come in and, because they cared so much about an issue, they made mistakes--by letting their desire to act quickly interfere with the necessity of acting wisely.”

As a result, the enthusiasm that Clinton and his aides showed during last fall’s presidential campaign for a more assertive policy in Bosnia has largely melted away. During the campaign, Clinton said he favored lifting a U.N.-imposed arms embargo from Bosnia and suggested that he favored using American warplanes and helicopters to attack the heavy artillery of Serbian militias there. But in recent weeks, his aides have quietly backed away from those ideas, which drew opposition from Russia, Britain and France.

Clinton advisers are still looking at actions they can take in the former Yugoslav federation, the officials said, beginning with steps to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians during the winter.

(A U.N. relief convoy in southwest Bosnia was shelled Tuesday, apparently by Serbian artillery, the British news agency Reuters reported. One person was killed, prompting the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to suspend the operation.)

Advisers to Clinton also are searching for ways to help Vance and Owen negotiate a better deal, as their talks with Bosnia’s Serbian, Croatian and Muslim factions resume this week in New York after stalling last week in Geneva.

Vance and Owen have proposed a settlement that would divide Bosnia into 10 provinces--three mostly Serb, three mostly Croat, three mostly Muslim and one mixed--and give the country a weak central government.

Clinton Administration officials say they have two objections to the plan. One is a question of principle: The plan would award the Bosnian Serbs control of some areas where they used murder and terror to drive others out, a tactic the Serbs dubbed “ethnic cleansing.”

The Administration’s second objection is more practical and carries more weight in policy discussions: Most U.S. officials believe the United Nations will ask for American troops to help enforce any settlement. But they also believe the current plan won’t succeed in stopping the fighting in Bosnia.

“There are still going to be a lot of people with guns in those hills,” one State Department official said.

As a result, they fear that committing U.S. troops to peacekeeping duty in Bosnia could lead to a disaster like the American deployment in Lebanon in 1982-1984, when hundreds of U.S. service personnel were killed.

U.S. officials haven’t spelled out what changes they want in the U.N. peace plan but have merely said they hope Vance and Owen can improve it.

“We’ve supported the process,” State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said. “We think that the process should continue with the parties meeting in New York.”

He noted that the State Department has issued a visa to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to attend the talks, even though Christopher’s predecessor, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, publicly named him as a “war criminal” who should be tried by an international tribunal.

“The negotiators felt it was important that he be here to participate in U.N. activities,” Boucher said.

In remarks to reporters in New York, Owen defended his plan against charges that it gave too much land to the Serbs.

“We’re rolling them back from land they control now,” he said.

He called on the Administration to persuade the Bosnian Muslims “that they must now make this very painful compromise.”

And he added that he believes U.S. ground troops should be sent to help enforce the plan.

“One of the best things President Clinton could do to demonstrate his commitment to Bosnia, to add credibility to a peace settlement, (would be) to have some Americans on the ground,” he said.

Vance said he understood the new Administration’s desire to study the issues, but he urged Clinton to reach a clearer position soon.