U.N. Authorizes Use of Force in Bosnia Havens

An international effort to protect outgunned Muslims in war-torn Bosnia won approval Friday when the U.N. Security Council voted to use heavily armed military forces to safeguard six areas from their Serbian rebel attackers.

But the resolution authorizing force to make havens of the areas still controlled by Bosnia-Herzegovina’s embattled government was vague about how many troops would be committed. It also left unanswered where the soldiers would come from and how much the new operation would cost.

Nor are there any guarantees that the warring parties in Bosnia will endorse it or permit its implementation. Even the Bosnian government, whose citizens it is designed to protect, has argued against it, saying it would create permanent refugee camps without resolving the basic conflict and allow the international community the illusion that it has found a solution when much stronger action is needed.

Besides the additional ground troops, the resolution authorizes the use of air power to deter attacks on the havens, to monitor the cease-fire supposedly in effect between Serbs and Muslims and to protect the delivery of U.N. humanitarian relief supplies to civilians.

The six areas to be protected are the predominantly Muslim enclaves and towns of Bihac, Gorazde, Zepa, Srebrenica, Tuzla and the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. In more than a year of fighting, Serbian rebels, aided by Serbs in Serbia itself, have captured about 70% of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bosnian Croats have seized much of the remainder.

Some of the areas specified in the resolution are swollen with Muslim refugees from the fighting and “ethnic cleansing,” while the populations of others, on the verge of falling to Serbian attackers, have dwindled.

A May 28 U.N. report said that all the areas were suffering shortages of water, food and fuel, that civil violence and disease were on the rise and that conditions were deteriorating.

The council’s vote, coming after nearly two weeks of intense negotiations, appeared to dishearten outspoken advocates of stronger action to protect the beleaguered Muslims. Even the measure’s main sponsors--France, Britain, the United States, Spain and Russia--said it is only a stopgap measure to hold down the death toll from ethnic violence in Bosnia while diplomats work on a long-term peace plan.

The measure had grown out of a European response to the Clinton Administration’s now-abandoned proposal to lift an arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslims and use air power to protect them against Serbian heavy weapons.

Despite a stronger vote than expected--13 of the 15 council member-nations were in favor of it, and Venezuela and Pakistan abstained--ambassadors who debated the resolution sounded halfhearted about it.

“Let me speak plainly. The United Nations voted for this resolution with no illusions,” said U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright. “It is an intermediate stop--no more, no less.”

Looking haggard after several days of intense negotiations, Bosnia’s U.N. ambassador, Muhamed Sacirbey, expressed frustration with the resolution. Without naming the United States specifically but referring to “the world’s one superpower,” he obliquely criticized the Clinton Administration for not going through with its earlier vows to protect Bosnian Muslims by fighting to lift the arms embargo.

“There has been a lack of will, or real leadership,” he said in bitter tones. “What motivates at least some of the co-sponsors is a diplomatic cover to mitigate the need and responsibility for more resolute and comprehensive measures,” he said.

The resolution passed Friday was devised in a May 22 meeting in Washington among Secretary of State Warren Christopher and the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Spain and Russia. It ran into resistance from several other council members--mainly Muslim Pakistan, Morocco and Djibouti, and Cape Verde and Venezuela, which make up the council’s so-called nonaligned bloc.

Those countries had argued for delaying a vote until U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali reports how he would implement the plan. But Britain, France and the United States pushed for Friday’s vote, mollifying the nonaligned with a clause that calls on Boutros-Ghali to come up with an implementation plan within seven days “if possible.”

In abstaining, Pakistan’s ambassador, Jamsheed Marker, complained that the resolution “still does not address certain core issues,” including details of implementation and setting a deadline for Serbs to accept a now-moribund peace plan drawn up by former U.N. envoy Cyrus R. Vance and British diplomat Lord Owen, representing the European Community.

Without such details, “the safe areas may become refugee camps in perpetuity, encircled by Serbs who would continue to exercise complete control on movement of people and goods,” Marker warned.

Sacirbey said that Srebrenica already was an “open concentration camp where disease, hunger and despair have replaced bullets as the tools of genocide.”

U.N. peacekeeping officials said that producing rules of engagement for the new troops protecting the six enclaves would be a major challenge. They noted that the resolution speaks only vaguely of extending the mandate of U.N. troops in Bosnia “to deter attacks against the safe areas.”

A key official involved in preparing the report requested by the Security Council said actual and not merely symbolic defense of the safe areas could require more than 15,000 additional troops, at a cost of more than $1 billion. It would take at least seven to eight weeks to set up so large a U.N. force, he said.

U.N. officials said they believe there is no taste on the council for such a costly commitment.

A recent memo from France, the resolution’s principal sponsor, spoke of needing 5,000 to 10,000 additional troops.

There are already 23,000 U.N. troops, from 35 countries, deployed throughout the former Yugoslav republics. More than 10,000 soldiers of the U.N. force are in Bosnia, and most of those are from Canada, France, Britain, Spain, Ukraine and Egypt.

Despite its abstention, Pakistan offered to send more than 3,000 troops to serve in the force that would protect the safe areas. Pakistani diplomats said there is intense domestic pressure to respond to the killing of Muslims in Bosnia.

U.S. officials in Washington reiterated Friday that America’s military role in any plan to protect the havens would be relatively modest. It would not involve ground troops, they said, but U.S. warplanes would be available to help protect U.N. forces in the havens and to evacuate them in case of trouble.

Pentagon officials said the United States most likely would provide A-6 attack planes and A/F-18C and F-14 fighters from the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, which is in port in Greece but is scheduled to return soon to the Adriatic Sea.

Also on tap are Air Force F-15C fighters and C-130 transport planes from various allied air bases in Italy, and members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit stationed aboard the amphibious assault ship Saipan, now in the Adriatic.

Military sources said even this level of involvement contains some risks for U.S. forces--notably the hazards of bad weather and rugged terrain common in Bosnia and the risks of long-term commitments in the region.

The Administration has been backing away from involvement in the ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslav federation ever since its own proposals about lifting the arms embargo for the Muslims and using air power were rejected by its European allies.

Secretary of State Christopher said Thursday in an interview on the “Today” show on NBC that the United States has stopped pushing for more aggressive European protection of Bosnian Muslims because the conflict there “does not involve our vital interests,” now that the Cold War is over.

State Department spokesman Joe Snyder said Christopher will discuss the havens’ implementation with European Community foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Wednesday and with NATO ministers in Athens on Thursday.

Times staff writer Art Pine, in Washington, contributed to this report.

TROUBLE IN BELGRADE: Recent events suggest Serbia could face its own civil war. A21

U.N. Protection Plan

There are 9,000 U.N. troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, some of whom will be redeployed to the safe areas, where they are to guard Muslim civilians and curb Bosnian Serb attacks.

What the Safe Havens Resolution Means

A look at the meaning of the safe areas resolution the U.N. Security Council adopted Friday: GOALS OF MISSION

-- Deter attacks on safe areas.

-- Monitor the cease-fire.

-- Promote the withdrawal of Bosnian Serb soldiers from the areas.

-- Occupy “some key points on the ground.”

-- Deliver humanitarian aid to civilians. NEXT STEPS

-- Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has seven days to report to the council on how the plan will be implemented

-- The council will then adopt his recommendations and actually launch the operation

-- Boutros-Ghali will officially ask countries to contribute troops and weapons

-- In two months, Boutros-Ghali is to report back to the council on implementation.