A Way Out of the Horror? : French-Russian approach to halting the genocide

Is a breakthrough at hand in the Balkans and, with it, a major turning of the diplomatic page? French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev have offered, respectively, a memorandum and a U.N. Security Council resolution on “safe areas” in Bosnia. If their ideas converge and gain support in Washington, there is just a chance that the slaughter in Bosnia may come to an end and that, simultaneously, European leadership may return to Europe.

In language of unusual specificity, the French memorandum outlines three military options--two called “light” and one “heavy.” By strengthening U.N. ground forces in Bosnia (UNPROFOR), ideally with both Russian and American participation, the proposal would guarantee the safety of seven listed towns, including five already declared “safe areas” by U.N. Resolution 824.

The French proposal does not set out to reconquer territory. It does recognize, however, that humanitarian assistance is itself an intervention that can require force to be effective.

So long as no provocation occurs, there is to be no exchange of fire. But ground and/or air responses will follow “shelling of safe areas by the forces of one of the factions, armed incursion into safe areas or impediment of free movement of UNPROFOR and humanitarian convoys under protection.”

The prewar Muslim population of Bosnia was 1.8 million. Because of ethnic cleansing, fully 1.15 million people (doubtless including some Croats and even Serbs) are crowded into the seven listed towns, according to the French memo. Guaranteeing the safety of those towns would all but stop ethnic cleansing cold.

The Russian safe areas resolution duplicates the French memorandum in all but one crucial regard. The French proposal, despite a passing obeisance to the rejected Vance-Owen peace plan, reads in the main like the new departure that it is. The Russian resolution, by contrast, presents the creation of safe areas quite explicitly as stage one in the imposition of Vance-Owen.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who has expressed cautious interest in the French memo, opposes the Russian resolution because of its connection to the massively rejected Vance-Owen plan. However, if the Russians can disconnect their resolution from Vance-Owen, a path may lie open for American acceptance.

The Europeans cannot have U.S. ground-force participation and Vance-Owen as well. The Americans cannot have any role--never mind a leadership role--in the Balkans if they rigidly rule out the use of U.S. ground troops in advance.

But there is now an alternative to Vance-Owen. And 25,000 Bosnian Serb irregulars, starved for supplies and even for food, are not likely to inflict heavy losses on a force joining the United States to all the Western allies plus Russia. Bosnia is not Vietnam. The new option emerges as quite probably the lowest-risk, lowest-cost option available.

Can Secretary Christopher help turn this nascent consensus into a mature consensus? If so, he will halt a genocide that has appalled the world while, with recovered grace, passing the baton of European leadership back to Europe. Equally, he will return his President, with a cleared mind and conscience, to the domestic agenda that led him to the White House in the first place.