Ex-Envoy to Yugoslavia Leaving State Dept.

Warren Zimmermann, a career diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, is leaving the Foreign Service, apparently in frustration at U.S. policy toward Bosnia-Herzegovina, sources said Thursday.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher confirmed late Thursday that Zimmermann “intends to retire from the Foreign Service.”

In his brief statement, Christopher said nothing about Zimmermann’s reasons for leaving his post as director of the State Department’s bureau for refugee programs. State Department spokesman Mike McCurry also declined to discuss the contents of Zimmermann’s letter to Christopher.

Zimmermann’s office said the veteran diplomat has decided not to talk to reporters for the time being.

But sources said Zimmermann, originally one of the officials who helped design U.S. policy toward Bosnia and other former republics of the shattered Yugoslav federation, has become increasingly disillusioned at the failure of the United States and the rest of the international community to take effective action to stop the brutal ethnic warfare.

Zimmermann would be the fifth State Department official--and by far the highest-ranking one--to resign in protest of U.S. Bosnia policy during the past 17 months.

“For 33 years, Warren Zimmermann has devoted his professional life to the meticulous and thoughtful promotion of American interests abroad, and he has earned the respect he enjoys here and overseas,” Christopher said.

The 59-year-old diplomat, who first joined the State Department in 1961, was Washington’s last ambassador to the former Yugoslav federation, leaving Belgrade in 1992 after the country had already been torn apart. He was named ambassador in 1989 by then-President George Bush.

As ambassador, Zimmermann played a role in setting Bush Administration policy toward the troubled Balkans. He later became a critic of Serbian aggression in Bosnia, but never publicly questioned the U.S. policy of avoiding military involvement in the region.

“He had been a faithful servant of a policy of non-involvement which did not begin with the Clinton Administration,” a congressional staff member said.

The four officials who resigned earlier to protest U.S. inaction in Bosnia were all relatively junior officers. Marshall Harris, Steven Walker and Jon Western stepped down last August. George Kenney quit in August, 1992.

Although the Clinton Administration once advocated allied air strikes on Serbian artillery positions, combined with relaxing a U.N.-imposed arms embargo to permit the sale of weapons to the Muslim-led Bosnian government, the U.S. government abandoned the plan when other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization opposed it.

McCurry said NATO chiefs of government are certain to discuss Bosnia during their summit next week.