Bosnian President Renews Plea to Lift Arms Embargo

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, hinting that the Somali embroilment could work to his advantage, renewed a plea to the United Nations on Thursday to allow arms to flow into his country so his troops can roll back Bosnian Serb forces.

The U.N. peacekeeping problems in Somalia, Izetbegovic told a news conference, had cast doubt on American promises to send U.S. troops to police a peace agreement in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Without a guarantee of enforcement by American and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops, he said, his government will not sign a peace agreement.

That left one alternative, in his view: “We must be allowed to arm and defend ourselves.”

In a speech to the General Assembly and in the later news conference, the Bosnian president also made it clear that the partition plan proposed by former British Foreign Secretary Lord Owen and former Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg was unacceptable.

Almost all U.N. diplomats agree that there is no chance that the Security Council will lift the arms embargo. Such action will surely continue to be vehemently opposed by Britain, France and Russia--all with a veto on the council.

“I did not have any clear guarantees that the American troops will be dispatched to Bosnia,” Izetbegovic said. “I only had assurances and statements of some influential people in the Congress and in the Senate. . . . But I have to say it was before the tragedy in Somalia occurred. It’s most probable now that many of the attitudes have changed.”

Izetbegovic told the General Assembly that his government would accept the Owen-Stoltenberg plan only if the Bosnian Muslim area were “viable geographically, economically, politically and defensively” and the Serbian forces were required to “surrender control of the territories where they have slaughtered and expelled civilian populations.”

Making it clear he did not believe that these conditions had been met, he said: “Please do not threaten us into accepting this inequitable peace plan.”