U.S. Hopeful Air Strikes Will Spur New Peace Talks

Clinton Administration officials were hopeful Monday that the combination of air strikes near Gorazde and a Russian diplomatic mission to the Serbian capital would provide the stick and carrot needed to get Bosnian Serbs to resume negotiating an end to the bloody civil war.

But they acknowledged the danger that their efforts could backfire, causing the Bosnian Serbs to try to grab more territory or leading the Bosnian government to wrongly believe that North Atlantic Treaty Organization involvement provides cover to try to recapture territory lost to Serbs earlier in the war.

“It’s ugly,” one senior White House official said.

Despite that risk, Clinton aides said that American officials think they had no choice but to carry out the air strikes, given that NATO has promised to offer protection to U.N. forces and there is now a U.N. commander on the scene, Lt. Gen. Michael Rose, in whom Washington has confidence.

Officials issued clear warnings to the Serbs that further attacks could be launched if Serbian aggression continues to endanger U.N. peacekeepers in Gorazde or in other Bosnian “safe havens.”

Defense Secretary William J. Perry, in a televised interview, said the Bosnian Serbs should not misread the limited nature of the NATO attack as a signal that future air strikes would also involve just a few craft. Speaking on the “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” Perry said, “NATO has well over 100 planes in this air fleet, so we have a formidable air armada there.

“So it would be a very big miscalculation for the Serbs to believe that this was a force which was limited to conducting an occasional close air support mission,” he said. “We can conduct much more than that if necessary.”

The Administration’s carrot-and-stick strategy depends on a successful effort by Russian envoy Vitaly S. Churkin, who has been meeting with Serbian leaders in Belgrade. Despite that, the Administration did not inform Moscow before launching the air strikes, leading to complaints from the Russians.

Asked about the complaints, President Clinton told reporters, “When these things occur, there’s often not a lot of time.

“We are trying to work very closely with the Russians,” he insisted. “They have a critical role to play if we are going to get these peace talks going again, and I hope we can.”

American officials took pains to insist the air strikes had taken place pursuant to U.N. procedures to which Russia had agreed--procedures designed to protect the lives of U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia--and were executed under tight deadlines that prevented full consultation with other nations.

The NATO response to a U.N. request for air support in Gorazde operated under “very great time urgency,” Secretary of State Warren Christopher said at a news conference. “This system is set up so that NATO can respond promptly. Lives are at risk.”

For his part, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, who spoke with Clinton on Sunday, offered a tepid response to the NATO air strikes. En route to Spain for an official visit, Yeltsin said, “I insisted and continue to insist that questions like air strikes on Serbian positions must not be decided without preliminary consultation between the United States and Russia.”

But Yeltsin stopped short of condemning the NATO attack on Serbian artillery despite mounting pressure from Russian nationalists, including ultranationalist leader Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, who see the Serbs as ethnic and religious brethren.

Russian Foreign Ministry officials were more critical of the NATO action. “A couple more strikes like this and we can kiss the peace process goodby,” an anonymous Russian diplomat told the Interfax news agency. In Madrid, Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev warned that “air strikes could bring not an end to war but its escalation.”

But aside from those remarks, the Foreign Ministry issued an official statement that set out a policy toward Gorazde that was almost identical to that put forth by Clinton and Christopher, including deployment of more U.N. peacekeepers in and around Gorazde and a withdrawal of Serbian forces from territory captured in recent days.

“A contingent of U.N. forces should be deployed, Serbian units should be withdrawn from their present positions, and this secure region should be demilitarized, including the disarmament of Muslim units operating there,” the ministry said in its statement.

At the State Department, Christopher said much the same thing, urging the Serbs to cease hostilities and withdraw to “their positions of March 30, the date on which this latest offensive against Gorazde began.”

For the last two months, Moscow and Washington have pursued a loosely coordinated effort in which Churkin tries persuasion with Serbian leaders--both in Bosnia and the neighboring republic of Serbia--while NATO provides the threat of force. Officials here believe that approach is their best hope for restarting peace talks, which they thought were close to reaching an agreement last weekend before the Serbian offensive in Gorazde.

At least some officials believe the offensive was staged precisely as a sabotage attempt by Bosnian Serb factions opposed to the talks. Asked about that, Christopher said he would “hope that they get in good communication” with the Serbian leadership in Belgrade “and they understand the determination of the United Nations and NATO in this situation.”

Elsewhere, the NATO action received largely favorable responses on Capitol Hill, indicating that Clinton will have a relatively free hand politically, at least so long as no American lives are lost.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), second-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime advocate of a more forceful American policy toward Bosnia, called the air strikes “fully justified” and said the “successful demonstration of force . . . should lay to rest the tired arguments that ‘air power alone’ is ineffective in the Bosnian crisis.”

His comments were echoed by senior lawmakers in both parties, including Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.).

Lauter reported from Washington and Goldberg from Moscow. Times staff writer Michael Ross, in Washington, contributed to this report.