Stalled by Allies, U.S. Puts Bosnia on Hold for Week

Accepting diplomatic defeat at the hands of its own allies, the Clinton Administration admitted Monday that it has failed to win Western European approval for stronger steps to end the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and said it is shelving the problem for at least a week.

Bosnia “is in kind of a holding pattern for the moment,” said White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers. “The President is working to build a consensus for action. I don’t think we are expecting any action in the immediate future.”

Myers said during a campaign-style stop in Cleveland to pitch the Administration’s economic plan that President Clinton had discussed Bosnia and other issues with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin for about 10 minutes Monday morning and planned to consult by telephone with other European leaders later in the week.

But, she said, Clinton is not planning any public statements on Bosnia this week and hopes to turn his, and the nation’s, attention away from the Balkan problem and back toward his domestic economic programs.

Other officials said the Administration will continue diplomatic efforts to sway the reluctant Europeans toward a more forceful policy in Bosnia. Washington wants to lift the arms embargo against Bosnia’s embattled Muslims and to bomb selected Bosnian Serb targets, but European governments have so far refused to go along.

Administration officials conceded Monday that the allies would not agree to any further steps until after the Bosnian Serb people vote Saturday and Sunday on whether to accept an international peace plan for the war-torn republic.

Senior Administration officials last week denounced the referendum as a delaying tactic and said it would not affect the Administration’s determination to employ military means to try to end the slaughter in Bosnia.

But on Monday, State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher conceded that the Administration was bowing to a desire by European leaders to delay any further action until after this weekend’s vote.

“As a practical matter, they are making clear in our consultations that some of them wish to await the results of this referendum before . . . they agree with us on the specific further steps that we can take,” Boucher said at a briefing.

Boucher insisted that Secretary of State Warren Christopher, during a tour of European capitals last week, had secured allied agreement that stronger measures are needed to end the Bosnian conflict. But the spokesman conceded that the United States, Britain, France and Russia remained poles apart on what to do.

“It is clear from the secretary’s consultations last week that the allies agreed with us that should the Bosnian Serbs reject the peaceful course, that stronger measures would be necessary and indeed would be taken,” Boucher said. “We have not yet agreed on precisely what measures those should be.”

Last week, the allies assured Christopher of their general support of U.S. policy in Bosnia. But when he then tried to win their approval of specific actions, they balked, a State Department official said.

“If the allies don’t want to be pinned down on specific measures, the likelihood of making progress is pretty slim,” he said.

“We have made a commitment to act multilaterally, and that limits what we can do,” he added.

A senior Administration official traveling with Clinton said European governments seemed to be looking for excuses not to make a decision.

“It’s hard to get the allies to move off the dime,” the official said, noting that they are unwilling to act before the referendum and are waiting to see whether Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic will keep his promise not to send the Bosnian Serbs more military aid.

“All of the impetus now is against action,” the official said.

In Brussels, meanwhile, European Community foreign ministers once again fell short of endorsing military action against the rebel Serbs, calling instead on the United States and Russia to send troops to protect civilians in six U.N.-designated “safe areas” in Bosnia.

The EC itself offered no troops; Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen observed that the 12-nation group has no soldiers of its own--but that Britain and France have some of their forces on the ground as peacekeepers.

The EC ministers also offered to send civilian monitors to the border between Serbia and Bosnia to test Milosevic’s promise to halt the shipment of arms to his ethnic Serb allies in Bosnia.

In their communique at the end of their one-day meeting, the EC ministers excluded no options--including military force--in their effort to stop the fighting in the former Yugoslav federation.

“We see the need for multilateral action under U.N. auspices,” Helveg Petersen said.

British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said air strikes might ultimately be used.

“It is clear that the Serbs will not be left in quiet enjoyment of all the territory they’ve occupied by force,” he said.

Lord Owen, the EC’s prime mediator in the Balkans, urged the foreign ministers to concentrate not on military intervention but on the peace plan negotiated by himself and U.S. diplomat Cyrus R. Vance, representing the United Nations.

“You don’t want military action to be seen as a solution to the problem,” Owen said. “It is not.”

The EC ministers reaffirmed their support for the Vance-Owen peace plan, which would divide Bosnia into 10 provinces (three controlled by Serbs, three by Croats and three by Muslims, with joint control of the area around the capital of Sarajevo).

Times staff writers John M. Broder and Doyle McManus in Washington and Joel Havemann in Brussels contributed to this report.