U.N. Confident Plan Will End Bosnia’s Croat-Muslim Conflict

Applying the same mind-over-matter strategy that has restored peace in Sarajevo despite a shortage of enforcement troops, U.N. officials said Thursday that they are plunging ahead with an even more daunting step toward ending the Bosnian blood bath.

The civilian head of the U.N. Protection Force, Yasushi Akashi of Japan, confidently predicted after brokering a cease-fire between Bosnian Croat and government troops set to begin today that he had “no doubt it will be honored scrupulously.”

Seeking to build on the success of the tense but so far durable calm in Sarajevo brought on by a similar truce announced here two weeks ago, U.N. military and political leaders have worked out a four-step plan for repairing a deadly rift between Croats and Muslims. The two groups have been fighting over the scraps of Bosnian territory left after a massive land-grab by rebel Bosnian Serbs.

But trust between the Bosnian Croats and Muslims, who were allied against the Serb nationalist rebellion for the first year of the siege, has evaporated over the last 10 months of vicious fighting unmitigated by Western mediators’ plan for carving up the republic into three ethnic ministates along the lines of what territory each community holds.

The March 7 deadline proposed for the withdrawal of heavy artillery from the scattered Muslim-Croat flash points in central and southern Bosnia has been modeled after the formula used in Sarajevo, but it lacks the threat of NATO air strikes against violators--the stick that was seen as the prime motivation for partial Bosnian Serb compliance with the U.N. order for demilitarization of the capital.

The U.N. mission, which has 12,000 troops in Bosnia, is clearly stretched by the current focus of manpower on Sarajevo to monitor the cease-fire and keep up the pressure on Bosnian Serb rebels, who have yet to genuinely comply with NATO’s order.

Hundreds of heavy Serb guns remain within the 12-mile exclusion zone that NATO declared around Sarajevo, despite the deadline for withdrawal that expired early Monday.

A renewed U.N. appeal for 2,500 more troops to enforce the tense peace in Sarajevo was issued last week and has yet to draw any positive reply.

Likewise, a U.N. request last May for 7,600 soldiers to establish havens for embattled Muslims in six Bosnian cities attracted less than half the desired reinforcements, leaving the U.N. mission severely shorthanded and unable to deploy peacekeepers to several of the proclaimed safe zones that remain under siege.

How the mission will ensure compliance by the Bosnian government and Croatian forces fighting across a broad swath of central territory has yet to be explained by U.N. officials, who have already had to redeploy troops from other Balkans peacekeeping tasks to bolster the patrols in Sarajevo.

“The principles and mechanisms that were successful in Sarajevo are applicable” elsewhere in the republic, said British Lt. Gen. Michael Rose, commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia.

Rose has battled all this week to play down widespread Bosnian Serb violations of the NATO ultimatum, spotlighting instead the genuine reprieve from bombardment that has followed the cease-fire that he played a key role in brokering on Feb. 9.

Rose’s de facto policy is that threatened NATO air strikes against the remaining heavy weapons will be withheld as long as there is no resumption of the shelling that savaged this city of 380,000 for almost two years.

After announcement of the Muslim-Croat accord, Ante Roso of the Bosnian Croats and Bosnian army Chief of Staff Rasim Delic spoke optimistically of the agreement, which was brokered by Rose and Akashi.

But numerous cease-fires agreed to by Muslim and Croat leaders have fallen to pieces because of fighting by renegade elements on both sides.

Fighting along the Muslim-Croat fault lines has escalated in recent days, despite a general calming trend in most areas of the republic, which is now 70% in the hands of Bosnian Serbs, with the remainder split between the other two factions.

Mortar and machine-gun fire racked the central town of Vitez, site of a major U.N. base, and two humanitarian aid convoys came under attack from Croat-held positions near the town of Gornji Vakuf, U.N. spokesman Lt. Col. Bill Aikman said.

Intensified shelling was also reported from Bosnian Serb positions against the encircled Muslim enclaves of Maglaj and Bihac--two areas where the Serb armor withdrawn from Sarajevo is believed to be bolstering sieges not yet targeted by the U.N. mission’s step-by-step approach to an overall peace.

Maglaj has been described by the few aid workers who have managed to reach the city in recent months as the most desperate corner of beleaguered Bosnia.

No food or other relief goods have been allowed through the surrounding Bosnian Serb and Croat territory since Oct. 25. Widespread malnutrition has been reported among the Muslim community there.

More than 250,000 Bosnians are dead or missing after nearly 23 months of war that began when Serb nationalists rebelled against the republic’s vote for independence from Yugoslavia in March, 1992.