Once Scorned, Haven Plan Gets Grudging Acceptance : Balkans: Diplomatic realities override fears that the areas would become mere refugee camps for defeated Muslims.

A European ambassador, walking out of a Security Council meeting this week, was taken aback when a reporter asked him whether the proposed U.N. “safe areas” in Bosnia-Herzegovina would end up as nothing more than squalid, festering refugee camps like those of the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip.

The ambassador protested but could come up with little evidence to dispute the contention. Finally he pronounced: “The difference is the Vance-Owen plan. That is our ultimate objective. The enclaves are a temporary measure. We intend to push the Serbs back.”

“Safe areas” are the most fashionable proposal rushing through capitals and U.N. corridors these days as a way of bringing the carnage and horrors of the Bosnian civil war to an end. Although President Clinton has expressed some skepticism, the Russian and French governments, supported by almost every other country on the Security Council, are pushing for a peace plan now that includes the areas--or, as the diplomats prefer to call them, “safe havens”--as an indispensable element.

But there is a great deal of confusion about what diplomats mean by safe havens and how they intend to set them up. Moreover, there is a widespread suspicion that the establishment of enclaves would amount to a certification of the defeat of the Muslims and of the success of the Bosnian Serb policy of “ethnic cleansing.”

At present, 1,145,000 Muslims are under siege in seven towns of Bosnia: 500,000 in the capital of Sarajevo, 310,000 in Bihac, 200,000 in Tuzla, 80,000 in Gorazde, 30,000 in Srebrenica, 15,000 in Foca and 10,000 in Zepa.

In a memorandum presented to the Security Council, the French government has proposed that U.N. troops move into these towns--all declared safe areas--to make sure that humanitarian supplies reach them and to stop the Serbian onslaught against them. If necessary, according to the memorandum, the U.N. troops would be authorized to use force against the Serbs if the aggressors shelled or marched into the towns or if they tried to waylay relief convoys.

The French memorandum proposes three options: a symbolic force of several dozen observers, a light force of 8,600 troops or a heavy force of 35,000 to 40,000 troops. These would be in addition to the 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers already in Bosnia to facilitate the supply of humanitarian aid.

The French envision the heavy force being strong enough to seize heavy weapons from the Serbs and push their troops back if that is the only way to stop the aggression. According to the French, the light force might be sufficient to deter Serbian aggression if it included both U.S. and Russian troops to enhance its “credibility.” But while the Russians have agreed to commit troops to such a venture, Clinton insists that he will send no troops to Bosnia unless a peace agreement is signed first.

Under the French plan, the power of the troops would be augmented by NATO planes that could bomb Serbian troops and artillery that persisted in harassing the Muslims.

U.N. sources say that the Russians, British and French are leaning toward adopting a resolution authorizing a light force but that several smaller countries on the Security Council, who still call themselves the “nonaligned” despite the end of the Cold War, want a heavy force sent to Bosnia.

The problem with the image of safe areas is that it seems at first glance like a recipe for protecting pockets of a defeated people after the victorious Serbian army has slowed down, sated with more territory than it needs.

But British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, after meeting with Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on Friday, tried to obliterate this image. “Our purpose is to prevent the horror from spreading and to contain the war,” he told reporters. “This is a realistic plan not for accepting the situation but for improving it.”

To underscore this, the British, French and Russians intend to present the havens resolution as part of a peace package--which may be ready next week--that also includes creation of a war crimes tribunal, the dispatch of monitors to the Serbian-Bosnian border to make sure that Serbia is really halting the supply of oil and arms to the Bosnian Serbs, and a pledge to implement the peace plan fashioned by special U.N. envoy Cyrus R. Vance and the European Community’s Lord Owen.

But Bosnia’s Serbs have rejected the Vance-Owen plan, which would reduce their control of Bosnia from 70% to 42%, and it is difficult to imagine the United Nations forcing them to give up huge tracts of territory short of a war.

Ironically, when the idea of creating safe areas was first proposed, the Americans, British and French derided it as an insignificant move. But now the Europeans have decided to push safe areas as just about the only new idea left.