Clinton Prolonged War, Owen Says

A Dutch magazine has quoted international mediator Lord Owen as saying that the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina would have ended long ago if former President George Bush had not lost last year’s election to Bill Clinton.

“If George Bush had won the American elections last year, then the war in Bosnia would have been over long ago,” Owen was quoted as saying in the latest edition of Elsevier magazine.

In an interview with Elsevier, Owen said that the Bush Administration had backed the peace plan that he drew up in 1992 with Cyrus R. Vance, the U.N. envoy who was then his partner in the mediation effort. The plan called for a single Bosnian state with 10 autonomous provinces based on ethnic groupings. Owen said President Clinton opposed the plan because it gave too much land to Bosnia’s Serbs and not enough to its Muslims.