Accepting the Ugly Reality in Bosnia : Serbs have won; to deny that prolongs the killing

The catastrophe in the former Yugoslavia is sufficiently confusing, and depressing, that it was possible to glide by weekend news stories that a U.N. convoy carrying food for the many trapped and dying Muslims in the city of Mostar was halted not by Serbian national forces but by Bosnian Croats.

Don’t fail to note that fact. It’s totally germane to the basic truth about the bloody crisis in that ill-fated land. The whole of the problem is not simply Serbian aggression. Therefore any resolution will require three parties to cooperate.

In fact, the general Serbian population, especially in Belgrade, also has suffered. The U.N. embargo voted by the Security Council to retaliate for Serbian aggression is exacting a terrible toll on innocent civilians, especially sick children. This is one embargo by the international community that hasn’t leaked like a sieve--a tribute to the degree of world consensus underlying the U.N. resolution but a fact that is hurting a lot of innocent people.

Many Serbian-Americans, making the humanitarian argument, call for ending the embargo against Serbia. The Times agrees that that time has come--but only if the cease-fire and peace resolution reached in Geneva is adhered to faithfully and without deceit by Belgrade and its Serbian allies in Bosnia. To argue strongly that the fighting must end, as The Times does, is hardly to argue an anti-Serbian position. On the contrary, Serb forces have eaten up, by dint of military conquest and vicious ethnic cleansing, about 70% of Bosnian territory; even after the Geneva peace accord they would wind up with well more than half the land. Indeed, our call for a complete end to the hostilities could also lead--and should indeed lead--to the lifting of the cruel but regrettably necessary sanctions against Belgrade.

Keep in mind, though, that the Geneva deal also requires the assent of the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims, who find the division of Bosnia a bitter pill to swallow. But swallow it they must, because President Clinton, who brandished the mighty air-strike sword over Sarajevo, can only do so much by himself: Among most NATO allies, public support for sending half a million or so European ground troops to Bosnia is slender indeed.

Basically, the war has been won by the Serbs. That’s the ugly reality. But a reality it is. And anyone denying it any longer, whether Muslim, Serbian or Croatian, is condemning the former Yugoslavia to even further devastation.

The end is here now, if only the parties will face the truth. Let the world hope that they do. The time for peace has come.