U.S. Expert on Bosnia Quits

A top State Department expert on Bosnia resigned Wednesday, expressing sharp disagreement with Clinton Administration policy toward the embattled republic.

Marshall Freeman Harris, who was responsible for day-to-day monitoring of the conflict in the former Yugoslav republic, said in his resignation letter that the Administration was wrongly pressuring Bosnia’s Muslim-led government to accept a partition of the country that would chiefly benefit the Serbs, said two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The New York Times quoted the resignation letter in its editions today as saying the U.S. push for air strikes was too little and too late and represented an abandonment of the Administration’s position that Bosnia should be preserved as an independent state.

Bosnia’s Serbian, Croatian and Muslim factions have tentatively agreed to a partition plan that would end 17 months of fighting. But the negotiations in Geneva are constantly on the verge of collapse over the details of the division.