NEWS ANALYSIS : U.N.’s Akashi Finding Timidity, War Don’t Mix

The diminutive, bespectacled bureaucrat who heads the U.N. Protection Force does not look like a man who could cause the world’s most powerful alliances to crumble.

But the credibility of the United Nations, as well as that of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, may well ride on judgments by Yasushi Akashi, the career U.N. functionary who has already twice capitulated to Serb belligerence on behalf of the rest of the world.

The 63-year-old Japanese diplomat--who authorized token NATO air strikes against the rebels one week, then recoiled when the Serbs struck back the next--is blamed by the U.N. military command here for compromising the security of peacekeepers and by humanitarian relief officials for abandoning thousands of civilians in Gorazde to a brutal fate.

Akashi has since been relieved of the authority to block NATO from launching air operations against intransigent Serbian positions around Gorazde. His standing within the U.N. hierarchy is also thought to have been diminished by an exchange of barbed words with Madeleine Albright, the U.S. envoy to the world body.

But he remains in the position of ultimate power within the U.N. mission. And there has been no change in the confused U.N. Balkans policy that would prevent a repetition of the disastrous handling of the Gorazde crisis, in which more than 700 died, nearly 2,000 were wounded, Serbian rebels captured half of a U.N. “safe haven” and all illusions of an imminent peace treaty were shattered.

The worst consequence of Akashi’s refusal to stand up to the Bosnian Serbs when they became defiant may be the blow it has dealt NATO’s reputation as a determined force for peace. “We didn’t do everything that we could have in Gorazde. That’s the bottom line,” observed one angry U.N. officer, who accuses Akashi of too narrowly defining mission objectives. “He looks too much at the letter of the resolutions and forgets about the spirit.”

The U.N. Security Council resolution passed last spring to designate Gorazde, Sarajevo and four other embattled enclaves as U.N. “safe havens” never spelled out the exact geographic coordinates of the largely Muslim pockets.

Akashi, who arrived at mission headquarters in Croatia in January already lamenting the dearth of troops and funding for its work, zeroed in on that lack of clarity to justify U.N. inaction when Gorazde was attacked.

When Serbian gunmen overran strategic high ground, penetrating deep into the enclave, Akashi said he was uncertain what part of the government-held territory was supposed to be protected by U.N. forces.

As the Serbs advanced on Gorazde city, the U.N. commander for Bosnia, British Lt. Gen. Michael Rose, called on Akashi on April 15 to authorize further NATO air cover so a wounded British officer could be extricated and the Serbian gunmen driven back.

But Akashi was then in the company of Bosnian Serb leaders in the rebel stronghold of Pale. Numerous U.N. sources, including officers in the central command, say they believe Akashi rejected air strikes out of fear he would be taken hostage in retaliation.

While that first conflict over the use of air power angered the Bosnian government and the U.N. military here, Akashi’s second veto of NATO air strikes upset the entire Western alliance. The 16-nation military bloc had threatened to bomb Serbian infantry and weapons left in central Gorazde after 2 a.m. Sunday. When Serbian forces were still shelling civilians, burning homes and blowing up utilities hours after the deadline, NATO wanted to inflict the punishment it had threatened.

Akashi, this time in Belgrade, capital of Serb-led Yugoslavia, to discuss NATO’s ultimatum, again rejected the use of air power, insisting: “We have achieved effective compliance.”

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali the next day announced that he was deeding to NATO the authority over matters of air power, cutting Akashi out of the decision-making loop.

But U.N. officers, Western diplomats and relief officials here warn that a fundamental clash between NATO and the United Nations persists and that Akashi remains committed to neutrality and endless diplomatic endeavors.

The dispute centers on Akashi’s fear that any use of force compromises the image of U.N. impartiality, while Washington and some NATO allies believe, after two years of fruitless negotiations and evenhanded conduct, that it is now time to take sides to end the conflict.

But Akashi’s recent role as head of the successful U.N. mission in Cambodia has made it difficult for the world body to replace him. “Everyone thought Akashi was a miracle worker because he headed the Cambodian mission, but that conflict resolved itself, despite him, not because of him,” one embittered aid official said.

Indeed, after a NATO warning in January that air strikes would be considered if Serbs continued to bar humanitarian relief flights into beleaguered Tuzla--another U.N. “safe haven”--Akashi organized a symbolic relief flight in mid-March that was supposed to be swiftly followed by a daily airlift of food.

“Relief for the suffering people of Tuzla is coming soon, certainly within three weeks and hopefully much sooner,” Akashi announced at a news conference six weeks ago, after flying 60 U.N. officials and a few cases of vegetable seeds into the city for the inaugural ceremony of an airlift that has yet to begin.

While Akashi seems to be emerging as the fall-guy for the latest setbacks suffered by the U.N. mission--one of the largest, most expensive in U.N. history--the academic-cum-diplomat, with 37 years in U.N. service, is clearly not alone in the matter of culpability.

Rose insisted, until it was too late, that the Bosnian Serbs had embarked on only a minor, tactical offensive in Gorazde, signaling to the advancing rebels that his mission didn’t much care. U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. John Shalikashvili have been accused of giving the Serbs a green light to overrun Gorazde by ruling out the use of Western air power during the first days of the siege.