NEWS ANALYSIS : U.N. Envoys Fault Clinton on Bosnia : Diplomacy: Handling of crisis seen as hesitant and clumsy. But Vance and Owen welcome the U.S. initiative.

A mood of annoyance and irritation is festering among ambassadors and officials here over what they regard as the Clinton Administration’s hesitant, clumsy handling of the Bosnia-Herzegovina crisis.

The United States, according to this view, has undercut the work of a well-known American statesman, former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, and it may have made it more difficult for the United Nations to forge some kind of a peace agreement.

“I am astonished,” said a European ambassador on the Security Council, “and I feel a good deal of disquiet.”

This mood of disquiet is heightened by a feeling that the Administration took a great deal of time to come up with a policy that, in general, differs little from the proposed peace agreement of Vance and former British Foreign Secretary Lord Owen.

“Frankly, it has been very annoying,” a European diplomat said.

But in public, Vance and Owen said they welcomed the American policy announced in Washington by Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

The two negotiators praised “the decision of the American government to take an active role in the former Yugoslavia and to back their political commitment with a readiness to enforce a comprehensive settlement.”

Frederick Eckhard, a U.N. spokesman, said Vance and Owen had taken the negotiations from Geneva to New York in hopes that powerful members of the Security Council could pressure the warring parties to accept the proposed agreement.

“We have said that Vance and Owen took the process as far as they could,” he told reporters, “and they were going to count on other parties to push it to its logical conclusion.”

In short, according to this view, the United States has now put its weight behind the Vance-Owen plan before the council. “It is our assumption that the Vance-Owen plan is on the table,” Eckhard said, “and the United States will have to enter the negotiations within the Security Council.”

Taking the most positive view of the frustrations caused by the American search for a new position on Bosnia since Clinton’s inauguration, a diplomat said, “If strong U.S. support results in an agreement being reached, it is a small price to pay.”

Although some U.N. officials were relieved that the Administration did not squelch the Vance-Owen peace process, uncertainty lingered over the most novel element of the policy announced by Christopher: the appointment of Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew as a special envoy to the Bosnian negotiations.

Some officials feared the warring parties will now assume that all bargaining starts anew. “If he’s going to go and negotiate with all three parties again,” said a U.N. official, “then we will all have a long wait.”

Officials of the Muslim-led Bosnian government, who have refused all direct negotiations with the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats in New York, obviously hope to get a more sympathetic hearing from Bartholomew than they have from Vance and Owen.

The officials say that a map drawn by negotiators, which divides Bosnia into 10 provinces, rewards Serbs for their aggression.

U.N. officials, in fact, believe that the long delay in the formulation of the American position encouraged the Bosnian government to refuse to take part in direct negotiations with the other two sides in New York.

The uncertainty over American policy toward Bosnia has made the debut of Madeleine Albright difficult in her first two weeks as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Quizzed by reporters about U.S. policy, she has done little more than suggest that their questions must wait until the Administration completes its policy review. But foreign diplomats, meeting here in private, have described the former professor as an insightful questioner and a thoughtful analyst.

At a Crossroads

International mediators have for months sought to find a formula to stop the ethnic warfare in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Inset shows how the U.N.-EC plan would divide up the country among ethnic groups.

Profile: Reginald Bartholomew

New post: President Clinton’s special envoy to the former Yugoslav federation

Old post: U.S. ambassador to NATO

Career: Ambassador to Lebanon from 1983 to 1986. In September, 1985, he helped facilitate release by pro-Iranian Lebanese extremists of the Rev. Benjamin Weir, one of six American hostages then held in Lebanon. Prior to his NATO job, Bartholomew was undersecretary of state for international security affairs.

Hometown: Portland, Me.

Age: 56

Personal: Married; four children

Education: Bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College; master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago