U.S. Considers Ultimatum on Sarajevo Arms

The Clinton Administration and its European allies are moving toward a decision to lift the siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, by demanding the removal of all artillery from the city and surrounding territory and enforcing the demand with military power, senior U.S. and European officials said Monday.

President Clinton’s top foreign policy advisers have prepared a U.S. proposal for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that centers on an ultimatum to all forces in the Sarajevo area to give up their heavy weapons, including the Serbian artillery that has pounded the city for months, killing hundreds of civilians.

The plan, which also includes options for air strikes and other military action to enforce the ultimatum, was presented to President Clinton late Monday night in Shreveport, La., by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, a White House official said.

If Clinton approves the plan, as his aides expect, the United States will present it at a NATO meeting in Brussels on Wednesday.

In another step toward military action, Britain--which had argued against NATO air strikes--said that it is now convinced that some use of force is probably necessary. “The balance of risk and benefit has changed,” Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said, adding that the allies have moved “a step forward toward using force.”

France and Germany also joined in support of air strikes or other action against the Serbian guns. The European Union, which includes most of NATO’s European members, declared that the alliance’s goal should be “the immediate lifting of the siege of Sarajevo using all means necessary, including the use of air power.”

But Canada, another NATO member, said Monday that it is opposed to air strikes. So did Russia, which is a member of the U.N. Security Council but not of NATO.

The U.S. proposal does not call for immediate retaliation against the Serbs for Saturday’s attack--an idea officials considered but rejected.

Instead, the Security Council would formally demand that the Muslim-led Bosnian government and the Bosnian Serbs remove all “heavy weapons,” including tanks and artillery, from Sarajevo and its surroundings, one official said. NATO would develop plans to remove or destroy any heavy weapons that remained past a deadline, he said.

“The idea is to end the siege, and the main instrument of the siege has been the heavy weaponry,” he said. “The main difficulty is figuring out how to remove the weapons in a way that is effective and remains effective.”

The plan includes a proposal to provide U.N. forces in Sarajevo with advanced U.S. radar devices, which can pinpoint sources of artillery fire and direct air strikes or other fire against the guns.

If those devices are provided, they apparently would be manned by European troops, not by Americans. “We have not changed our policy of not putting U.S. troops on the ground,” one official said.

The immediate spur for the accelerated discussion of allied military action was Saturday’s artillery attack against an outdoor market in Sarajevo that killed 68 civilians and injured 200. But officials said that the tragedy was merely another step in a long escalation of Serbian bombardments that have made a mockery of the Western powers’ frequent warnings against attacks on Sarajevo.

Clinton, during a speech in Houston, decried the shelling of the marketplace as “an outrageous attack on innocent civilians.”

“Our government is talking with our allies about what steps ought to be taken in response not only to this outrage but to the possibility of future attacks on innocent civilians,” he said.

The President urged the allies to be ready to enforce their warnings with action. “I don’t think we should have any more empty threats,” he said.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher told reporters that NATO will “decide on a course of action, on an overall strategy, within the next few days.” And Defense Secretary William J. Perry, at the Pentagon, said the United States will give NATO “a concrete set of proposals.”

Perry noted that military planners believe bombing raids are often ineffective against artillery but added, “We’re trying to consider it in ways that minimize the problems and the limitations of air strikes.”

U.S. intelligence experts told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the artillery shell that hit the marketplace Saturday appeared to have been fired from a Bosnian Serb battery, based on its type and trajectory. “I’m no expert, but from what they showed us it looks like Serbs” were to blame, Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), the committee’s chairman, said after an intelligence briefing.

But Christopher and Hurd said that it is not necessary to pin down responsibility for the attack to move ahead with a plan to lift the siege. “I can’t say with authority where this particular attack came from . . ,” Christopher said, “but I am quite confident the pattern over the last several weeks has been a pattern of Serbian shelling (of) the Muslim areas of Sarajevo.”

Canada’s opposition could be a problem for NATO. Canada has 2,000 troops on the ground in Bosnia, and Canadian officials have said they fear that Serbian forces might retaliate against them if the allies mount air strikes. “An air strike is the very last resort,” Canadian External Affairs Minister Andre Ouellet said in Montreal.

And Russia’s position could make action difficult in the Security Council, where it is a permanent member. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei D. Kozyrev said that bombing Serbian positions is the “least acceptable option” for responding to the weekend attack and warned that air strikes “would lead to an escalation of the conflict.”

The United States and its allies hope to meet those objections by stressing that the NATO plan would apply equally to Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs and would give them a chance to remove their heavy weapons before any military action is ordered, officials said.

They said that if air strikes are launched, they will not be as retaliation for Saturday’s artillery attack or any other action but as a means of enforcing the heavy-weapons ban.

The U.S. proposal also includes a pledge by the Clinton Administration to become more active in negotiations toward a peace agreement among Bosnia’s Muslims, Serbs and Croats--something the Europeans had been seeking.

Peace talks sponsored by the United Nations and the European Union have come close to agreement on a three-way partition of Bosnia, but European nations said that without U.S. participation it is impossible to bring the talks to completion. The Administration had refused to join fully in the talks, partly because it did not want to appear to be pressuring the Bosnian Muslims toward accepting an unpalatable partition plan.

Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Moscow, Tyler Marshall in Brussels, Stanley Meisler at the United Nations, Paul Richter with Clinton in Houston and Shreveport, and Michael Ross and Robin Wright in Washington also contributed to this report.