President of Bosnia Rejects Plan : Balkans: Muslim leader denounces the West’s proposal for safe areas as ‘absolutely unacceptable.’ But the intended targets, the Serbs, seem pleased with the idea.

A U.S.-European effort to break the cycle of violence racking Bosnia-Herzegovina was rejected Sunday by the embattled Muslims it aimed to protect and heartened the Serbian rebels who were supposed to be chastened by the latest moves to restrain them.

Bosnia’s Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, denounced the initiative announced in Washington on Saturday as an attempt to force his people onto “reservations” and warned Bosnians that the defense of their country is now in their own hands.

“This new plan is absolutely unacceptable for us,” Izetbegovic said in an open address to his war-ravaged country. “We are not going to waste time any longer in futile negotiations.

“The aggressor is not going to withdraw from the occupied territories,” the president said in dismissal of the Washington peace plan, “and our people who have been evicted will not be allowed to return to their homes.”

Bosnia, which formed the integrated, multiethnic heart of the former Yugoslav federation, has been divided and largely destroyed by 14 months of armed Serbian rebellion against a vote for independence by the majority Muslims and Croats.

Serbian rebels have conquered and “ethnically cleansed” 70% of Bosnia and have refused to endorse any peace plan that would compel them to relinquish their spoils or allow the return of the more than 1 million non-Serbian civilians they forcefully expelled.

Last week’s rebel rejection of the peace formula drafted by U.N. envoy Cyrus R. Vance and Lord Owen of the European Community prompted the new proposal from Washington from U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and the foreign ministers of Russia, Britain, France and Spain.

Their “Joint Action Program” appeared more to the Serbs’ liking--a sign that the measures intended to rein in the Serbs may have missed the mark.

In comments to Western news agencies, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic praised the initiative as a “more realistic” approach to the Bosnian crisis and lauded President Clinton for ignoring those who advise air strikes against rebel artillery and arming of the outgunned Muslims.

“I think he is going to be a great President because he rejected the advice of all these warmongers who wanted to push the U.S. Administration into a Bosnian civil war, another Vietnam,” Karadzic said from Pale, his rebel stronghold just east of Sarajevo.

House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), in an interview on CNN’s “Newsmaker Sunday,” also backed Clinton for “not just jumping in doing something precipitous.”

But the reaction in Washington, as well as in Sarajevo, was primarily critical of the latest plan, which calls for the creation of safe areas for the Muslims but offers little hope of restoring government control over other parts of the republic.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican who had promised bipartisan support for military intervention when Clinton threatened it two weeks ago, lambasted the plan as “writing off Bosnia as a state.”

“This new plan, which is hardly new, offers little, if any, hope of ending the war in Bosnia,” Dole said in a statement issued in Waterville, Me., expressing deep disappointment at the Administration’s about-face.

Dole reiterated his support for lifting the U.N. arms embargo that has prevented the Bosnian government forces from obtaining weapons for the country’s defense, arguing that it would be “the least we can do” to allow a U.N.-member country to protect itself.

New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, from Clinton’s own Democratic Party, condemned the plan announced by Christopher and his European colleagues as “legitimating genocide.”

“The world that watched has committed a grave sin,” Moynihan, interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said of the West’s failure to curb Serbian aggression.

The political blows against the proposals mounted as the Bosnian government accused the West of encouraging new attacks on civilians with “impermissible procrastination.”

Sarajevo Radio reported a fierce Serbian artillery barrage against the northern town of Maglaj, claiming that “the earth under this completely devastated town is shaking with explosions.” It said that more than 2,500 shells had fallen on the town in the previous 24 hours and said the streets were strewn with dead and wounded.

Shells continued to crash into Sarajevo as well, killing three and wounding dozens. At least 12 people were killed by Serbian shelling Saturday during one of the most relentless bombardments of the Bosnian capital in recent weeks.

At least 150,000 people--mostly Muslim civilians--are dead or missing from the past 14 months of conflict.

* ESCALATION RISK: Bosnia mission could escalate if Serbs resist, analysts say. A6