America From Abroad : Allies Fret While Clinton Fiddles Over Bosnia : A chance for peace may be lost. And Europe can’t afford a Vietnam-style quagmire, many say.

As the new Clinton Administration continues to weigh its policy alternatives regarding the ongoing warfare in Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere in the former Yugoslav republics, many European officials are deeply concerned that Washington may somehow drag them into a Vietnam-style quagmire in the Balkans.

These officials see the Bosnia peace plan negotiated by former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and former British Foreign Secretary Lord Owen as the best of a number of bad alternatives and fear that President Clinton, in his eagerness to find a better solution, may instead scuttle the only viable approach.

And they are increasingly worried that Clinton may press forward on campaign pledges to crack down hard on Serbia without fully appreciating the long-term military consequences.

“There are perhaps 200,000 armed men in Bosnia, and to sort it all out, it is not unreasonable to suggest the need for a half-million troops to disarm them all,” British military historian John Keegan said. “Well, that all begins to sound like Vietnam.”

Ironically, the European concerns are the mirror image of the Clinton Administration’s view. It sees the U.N.-sponsored Vance-Owen approach as doomed to failure because it tends to reward the aggressors in the conflict.

Over the weekend, U.S. Defense Secretary Les Aspin was in Europe consulting with diplomats there on the situation. The new Administration said at the weekend that it will unveil its own peace initiative within a few days--one meant to produce a settlement more acceptable to the Muslims of Bosnia. The Vance-Owen plan would partition the republic into 10 cantons--three predominantly Muslim, three Serbian, three Croatian and one mixed--under a weak central government.

Administration officials say they hope their effort to come up with a better alternative can be carried out without any direct U.S. military action--putting aside for the time being, at least, proposals for air attacks on Serbian forces that Clinton made during the campaign.

But the Europeans are clearly unconvinced.

“The big question mark is why Clinton and (Secretary of State) Warren Christopher are delaying approving this desperately needed (Vance-Owen) plan,” said Col. Michael Dewar, deputy director of London’s prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“Maybe they haven’t been properly briefed yet, but from this side of the Atlantic, their failure to deal with the Vance-Owen plan is almost more worrying than if they had a specific reason for not endorsing it.”

The 12-member European Community has approved the Vance-Owen plan, which also has the support of Russia, even though the negotiators acknowledge that it may take up to three times as many troops as the more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers now engaged in the former Yugoslav republics to police the boundaries of the 10 proposed Bosnian provinces.

The American failure to endorse the plan threatens to disturb Washington’s relations with Britain and European allies, who consider the plan imperfect--but the best that could be cobbled together after months of arduous negotiations.

Further, the Administration’s delay is seen in Europe as serving to increase the reluctance of Bosnian Muslims to go along with any plan that would give Serbian ethnic groups a part of the republic.

The United States frequently complains, with good reason, that members of the European Community long ago should have led the way in dealing with fragmented Yugoslavia, by intervening militarily if necessary.

The Europeans counter that there are good reasons for them to shy away from sending the troops.

“Our armed forces are already stretched,” British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said recently. “We cannot be everywhere and we cannot do everything. To impose and guarantee order in the former Yugoslavia would take huge forces and huge risks over an indefinite period--which no democracy could justify to its people.”

As Hurd points out, Britain currently deploys more than 80,000 troops abroad, including those in Germany and Northern Ireland, and therefore would be hard-pressed to find additional troops to police the Vance-Owen plan.

Currently, the British have 2,600 troops in U.N. contingents in the former Yugoslav republics, France has nearly 5,000 and seven other EC members have units attached to the United Nations.

Among those European nations, France has seemed to be most active in supporting the Muslim position in Bosnia, though in recent weeks the ardor in Paris for intervention has appeared to cool.

“France will not go into former Yugoslavia as some have demanded, with its army, risking the lives of its soldiers, in a purely French military adventure, or anything like that,” President Francois Mitterrand said last month. “I don’t want France isolated outside the United Nations, launching a military action.”

And a proposal by Foreign Minister Roland Dumas to send French-led military convoys to liberate prisoners in Serb-run Bosnian camps has picked up no support from the rest of the government.

But the French chief of staff, Adm. Jacques Lanxade, has reportedly presented a plan to Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for a force of 20,000 troops--5,000 French, 5,000 British and 10,000 Americans--to clear a safety zone around Sarajevo, the besieged Bosnian capital.

Germany, with the largest army in Western Europe, has been precluded from sending troops to Yugoslavia by its constitution, which, politicians say, rules out the use of its army outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization area.

This constraint has embarrassed Chancellor Helmut Kohl, as it did when Germany could not join the allies in the Gulf War. Kohl is also hampered by his partnership with the Free Democrats, who warn they will leave the government if German airmen participate in any NATO-enforced air embargo of Serbia.

The German hands-off position rankles London and Washington, but until the Bonn Parliament amends the constitution, Germany cannot be counted on for extra-NATO missions.

With the major European powers cool on military intervention in Bosnia, the smaller nations show no eagerness to commit troops.

Italy, for instance, strongly supports an independent Bosnia and tighter restrictions on weapons traffic, but would follow a European or U.S. anti-Serb lead--and will make its air bases available for NATO if asked.

Commented Dewar of the International Institute for Strategic Studies: “Shocked by the scenes of brutality and suffering in Bosnia, people demand military intervention by the U.N., or by NATO or by a Western coalition. They believe that armed force could quickly and easily separate the warring factions and impose peace. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that.

“Separating the combatants would be an immensely complex business; it would probably require the use of considerable force and almost certainly cause more bloodshed, not only to combatants but also to the many innocents caught up in the fighting. The most likely outcome of international military intervention would be more deaths and increased misery for the survivors.”

With the weight of European opinion solidly against military intervention, the question is raised: What can be done in Bosnia and the rest of the former Yugoslav republics?

Certainly, most observers believe that the embargo against Serbia could be tightened, especially choking off incoming oil supplies along the Danube River from Ukraine.

While some in Europe urge arming the Muslims, that is far from a unanimous position. Opponents argue this would only widen the war and bloodshed and would not be accepted by the Russians.

Owen said arming Muslims would be “absurd and damaging,” adding, “If you lift the embargo for Bosnia, you lift it for the whole of Yugoslavia, and you would be pouring fuel on the flames.”

Other specialists in the United States have called for “surgical” air strikes against Serbian gunners in Bosnia or attacking bridges and other communication lines inside Serbia itself. But air power has its limits, and as Powell has said, “A few smart bombs are not going to change a thousand years of history.”

Another military analyst pointed out: “It is one thing to attack targets in a free-fire zone like Iraq during the Gulf War. But the Serbs and the Croats have positioned their guns in populated areas, and you risk killing a lot of innocent civilians to take out an artillery piece.”

That brings most European officials back to the Vance-Owen peace plan. “It has many faults,” a British diplomat said, “but it is the best thing we have at present and might have a fighting chance.”

Times staff writers Tyler Marshall in Berlin, Rone Tempest in Paris and William D. Montalbano in Rome contributed to this article.

* British Troop Deployments (Autumn, 1992) More than 80,000 British soldiers serve in various capacities around the globe; 65,000 more are stationed at home. “We cannot be everywhere and we cannot do everything.” complains British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. He says Britain would be hare pressed to commit more troops to police peace in the former Yugoslav federation.CANADA: 400 BELIZE: 1,200 NORTHERN IRELAND: 19,400 GIBRALTAR: 130 WESTERN SAHARA: 15 FALKLAND ISLANDS: 500 BRITAIN: 65,000 UGANDA: * ANGOLA: * NAMIBIA: 70 GERMANY: 48,000 SINAI: 10 ZIMBABWE: * YUGOSLAVIA (former): 2,300 CYPRUS: 3,900 PERSIAN GULF: 20 MOZAMBIQUE: * TURKEY: 30 BRUNEI: 700 HONG KONG: 4,600 CAMBODIA: 50 * 200 (total in four nations) Source: London Times