U.S. Cautiously Backing New Bosnia Peace Plan : Balkans: The European proposal would gradually lift sanctions. Painful issue of peacekeepers is revived.

The Clinton Administration, reopening a painful policy debate over Bosnia-Herzegovina, has decided to give cautious support to a new peace plan proposed by the European Community, U.S. and German officials said Wednesday.

But the Administration is still worried that the European plan would lift U.N. sanctions against Serbian-led Yugoslavia too soon and is holding out for tough conditions before the trade embargo is suspended, the officials said.

At the same time, U.S. officials are glum about reviving the debate over Bosnia--and having to sell the idea of sending 20,000 or more U.S. troops to help carry out a peace agreement there.

“Our main concern is whether there is any prospect that this plan can work,” one official said. But he acknowledged that the political problem of winning support for the plan at home is “also a factor.”

The issue of deploying U.S. troops on peacekeeping duty abroad has been the thorniest foreign policy problem for the Clinton Administration, presenting a series of intractable dilemmas in Somalia and Haiti as well as Bosnia.

President Clinton pledged during his election campaign last year that he would do more than his predecessor, George Bush, to protect Bosnia against ethnic forces sponsored by neighboring Serbia and Croatia. But once in office, Clinton found that Bosnia presented only unpalatable alternatives. And after the Europeans rejected a U.S. proposal to lift the U.N. arms embargo against the embattled country, the Administration’s peacemaking effort shuddered to a halt.

A U.N.-European mediation effort led by former British Foreign Secretary Lord Owen and former Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg continued for several more months but it, too, ran out of steam in September.

Last week, European governments approved a new proposal for a peace plan that would ask Bosnia’s Serbs to give up more territory than they have agreed to--and, in return, would hold out the prospect of gradually lifting the economic sanctions against Yugoslavia.

Under the plan, as a senior German official described it Wednesday, Bosnia would be divided into three separate states, one for each of the country’s three ethnic-religious groups: the Serbs, Croats and Muslims.

The Serbs would agree to give up 3.7% more territory than under the Owen-Stoltenberg plan, a key Muslim demand that blocked agreement in September. That would give the Serbs about 49% of Bosnia’s prewar territory, the Muslims about 34% and the Croats about 17%.

If the Serbs withdrew forces and halted their attacks on Muslim areas, the United States and other U.N. Security Council members would agree to a gradual suspension of the economic sanctions against Serbia, beginning with a limited reopening of trade between Serbia and neighboring countries.

Finally, the United States and its allies would deploy an estimated 50,000 peacekeeping troops in Bosnia--not only to supervise the Serbs’ withdrawal but also to protect refugees, monitor human rights abuses and guard the borders of the new Bosnian state. Such a state would include several enclaves surrounded entirely by Serbian forces.

In its present form, the plan would not try to disarm the Serbs, Croats and Muslims--because, the German official said, the Serbs and Croats could easily get new weapons from their neighboring “mother states,” putting the Muslims at a disadvantage. But it would require all three ethnic mini-states to give up all artillery and other heavy weapons.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher was completing work on a formal U.S. response to the plan Wednesday evening, and he plans to discuss the proposal with European officials in Rome next week, officials said.

But senior U.S. officials said they already have persuaded the Europeans to make several modifications in the plan, including adding an explicit pledge not to pressure the Bosnian Muslims to sign if they reject the proposal.

And, in a sign of U.S. willingness to explore the plan’s prospects, the Administration has agreed to send its top Bosnia negotiator, Charles E. Redman, to a European-sponsored meeting with the three Bosnian factions in Geneva on Monday.

The Administration’s concerns focus on the Europeans’ proposal to lift some of the U.N. sanctions that have succeeded in pushing Serbia’s economy into a state of collapse--but have not succeeded in stopping the Bosnian Serb war effort.

“We still are very reluctant to see a premature lifting of sanctions,” State Department spokesman Mike McCurry said Tuesday. “We have said in the past that, if a settlement was being implemented, then discussion could begin on a suspension or lifting of sanctions.”

What the Europeans have proposed is offering the rump Yugoslavia a more specific deal than that, spelling out which sanctions would be lifted in exchange for a cease-fire and withdrawal.

“What we want is for everyone to agree to tell (Serbian leader Slobodan) Milosevic that if he behaves, there will be a reward,” said the German official, who was in Washington to try to win the Administration’s support for the plan.

“This would be a very, very tough deal for the Serbs,” he added. “It would be a gradual suspension of the sanctions. . . . And the moment someone breaks the agreement, the sanctions automatically go back into effect.”

Still, some U.S. officials worry that a partial suspension of the sanctions would be difficult to enforce, in part because Yugoslavia’s economically strapped neighbors--Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania--have wanted desperately to reopen trade.