Lifting Balkans Arms Embargo

* Your editorial, “Evening the Balkans Odds” (April 1), hit the nail right on the head. Unfortunately, it will take strong leadership for that to occur. This is an area in which our President seems to be lacking regarding the former Yugoslavia. Lifting the arms embargo would allow the victims of this brutal genocide to fight for themselves and perhaps put the aggressor back in his place, but without strong leadership this war will go on endlessly.

President Clinton’s on-again, off-again, policy toward the Balkans sends a very strong signal to nationalist thugs across the world. So I would make it very clear to the Serbs, as well as other nationalists that if the security of a sovereign country is at stake, then we will do what we must to stop it. Anyone thinking that this is not the wave of the future best think again. World security will take a back seat as long as our President keeps his policy of indecisiveness.

LINDA HURLEY

Orange

* For two years I have been struggling with the enigma of the Bosnian conflict. I could not comprehend the U.S. policy of supporting the Bosnian Muslims instead of the Serbs. Serbs and Americans have been allies for at least a century. They fought on the same side in both world wars and have never experienced any conflicts in the past. The Croats and the Muslims, however, fought against the U.S. in World War II, and have exercised numerous terrorist attacks on the United States.

The only rationale for the current Western policy that I can surmise is that the West wants to appease Islamic interests by allowing a Muslim-dominated Bosnia while maintaining the Croats and Serbs in the same state as a dissolvent to Muslim fundamentalism. The alternative course of action, the division of Bosnia along ethnic lines, has led numerous analysts to predict that the creation of a poor Muslim state would result. This state, in the middle of Europe, would resemble the Gaza Strip in the Middle East and provide fertile and strategic grounds for Muslim terrorism. It’s hard to imagine that Western Europe and ourselves can support this.

However, to ask the Serbs and Croats to live in a constant struggle with Islamic fundamentalism is unfair and unachievable. If the U.S. had not made the mistake of offering recognition to Bosnia two years ago, there would be no Bosnia and no problem. Bosnians (Muslims, Croats and Serbs) would live together in a viable Yugoslavia with a comfortably low potential for Islamic fundamentalism. The only fair and logical step left is to either divide Bosnia along ethnic lines or re-integrate the territory back into Yugoslavia.

MARK GARIC

Huntington Beach