Military Plans Will Proceed, Clinton Asserts

President Clinton welcomed Bosnian Serb acceptance of a peace accord for Bosnia-Herzegovina but said Sunday he will proceed with plans to use military force in Bosnia until the Serbs prove they are serious about implementing the agreement.

“We have yet to determine whether the Serbs are serious about peace,” Clinton said in a brief White House statement issued hours after Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic’s reluctant acceptance of the peace plan was announced in Athens by European Community mediator Lord Owen.

Karadzic’s decision to sign the accord is “a positive step” but one that must also be viewed with skepticism in light of the many cease-fires the Serbs have broken over the course of the yearlong conflict, Clinton said.

“We will judge intentions by actions,” the President said, adding that Secretary of State Warren Christopher will continue his consultations with European allies on the “measures we will take if the Serbs do not act in good faith.”

Clinton sent Christopher to Europe to brief other North Atlantic Treaty Organization governments on the military steps he decided to take after meeting Saturday with his senior advisers.

The White House still has not announced what those measures would be, but congressional leaders briefed by Clinton on Sunday confirmed that they would include air strikes against Serbian military positions in Bosnia and a drive to exempt Bosnia’s besieged Muslims from the U.N. arms embargo now in effect against all of the republics of the old Yugoslavia.

Administration officials conceded that Christopher faces a difficult task in trying to forge a consensus on lifting the arms embargo, a step Britain and several other NATO allies fear may only intensify and widen the Bosnian conflict.

They added that the Europeans seemed more likely to support the use of air power and said that preparations for air strikes against selected Serbian military positions would go forward in spite of the Athens agreement.

Amplifying on Clinton’s brief White House statement, Vice President Al Gore said that “nice-sounding words” and a mere “signature on a piece of paper” are not enough to reverse the Administration’s decision to intervene in the Bosnian conflict.

Interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gore listed three conditions that he said the Serbs must meet to forestall military action: immediate compliance with a cease-fire, an end to the siege of Sarajevo and other Muslim areas and cessation of all interference with U.N. relief convoys.

“We can hope that this is a breakthrough, but again all we’ve seen is a signature. We have not seen changes on the ground,” Gore said, adding that the Serbs must take “concrete steps” to prove their sincerity by complying with a truce.

In Moscow, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin conferred by telephone with Clinton shortly after Karadzic signed the so-called Vance-Owen plan, which Bosnia’s other warring factions have already accepted. The plan is named after Owen and U.N. special envoy Cyrus R. Vance, who drafted it during many months of mediation among the Bosnian warring factions.

Along with the threat of military force, pressure by Yeltsin--who last week warned the Bosnian Serbs that Russia would no longer support their rejection of the Vance-Owen plan--was seen by U.S. officials as a key factor in persuading Karadzic to sign the agreement.

The Russian news agency Interfax said that Yeltsin and Clinton spoke about the “definite progress” made in Athens and agreed to continue coordinating their efforts “to resolve the conflict.” The Russian report made no mention, however, of Clinton’s threat of force, which is a sensitive subject for Yeltsin because of the support the Serbs enjoy among nationalist lawmakers in the Russian Parliament.

Clinton also briefed key lawmakers Sunday on the latest developments in the Bosnian crisis and received strong endorsements from both Democratic and Republican congressional leaders.

“He’s doing precisely the right thing,” Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said of Clinton’s decision to proceed with the plans for military intervention. “Who can trust the Serb regime? Let’s go ahead and have Christopher try to round up support with the allies just in case there’s any backing off,” Dole said on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

“We have to keep the drumbeats of possible American and allied intervention sounding because that’s the one sure way . . . to get the Serbs to not only sign this agreement but literally to carry it out,” Senate Armed Services Committee member Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) added.

But while the lawmakers said that they supported Clinton’s attempts to step up the pressure on the Serbs, it was clear that no congressional consensus has yet emerged over U.S. military intervention in Bosnia.

“You have to keep the military option very alive. . . . But it would be a grave mistake to bomb right now,” said Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN’s “Newsmaker Sunday.”

Hamilton’s concern, shared by many others, is what would happen in the event that air strikes failed to destroy the Serbs’ heavy artillery or dissuade them from continuing with their campaign of “ethnic cleansing” aimed at wiping out Bosnia’s Muslims.

Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), interviewed on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” conceded that Congress, like the American public, is deeply divided over military intervention in Bosnia.

Times staff writer John-Thor Dahlburg, in Moscow, contributed to this story.