Senate Votes Show Split on Arms to Bosnia

In contradictory votes underscoring the extent to which lawmakers remain divided over the bitter war raging in the Balkans, the Senate narrowly passed legislation on Thursday that calls for lifting the arms embargo against Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The vote showed the growing discontent with the Clinton Administration’s handling of the Bosnian crisis: 13 Democrats sided with the Republican initiative as the senators voted 50 to 49 for an amendment ordering the President to unilaterally lift the U.N.-imposed embargo, even if North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies do not agree.

But the “strong message” that disaffected Democrats said they wanted to send to Clinton was a muddled one--senators, just before, had voted by an identical 50-49 margin to endorse the President’s position that the embargo should only be lifted with the consent of the allies.

In the end, after weeks of closed-door negotiations and hours of often impassioned floor debate, two things were made clear by the Senate action, said a senior Senate foreign policy aide: “First, it is apparent that nobody likes what Clinton is doing when it comes to Bosnia. But second, it is just as clear that there is no consensus on what he ought to be doing.”

The bottom line, said Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), is that “there is not going to be any unilateral action . . . to lift the embargo” to give the poorly armed Bosnian Muslims a chance to obtain the weapons they need to repel Bosnian Serb attacks.

Noting that the legislation to which the amendments were attached is now flawed by conflicting directives, Mitchell said he sees “no chance of it becoming law.” Before it can be sent to the President’s desk, the measure also would have to win approval in the House, where Democratic leaders are expected to keep it from reaching the floor.

Ever since the siege of Sarajevo in January, the Senate has been wrestling with American policy options in the Balkans. An increasing number of Democrats have joined Republicans in voicing dissatisfaction with an Administration policy they characterize as vacillating and vague.

Although the senators are nearly unanimous in wanting to see the embargo lifted, there is no consensus on whether it should be ended unilaterally or, as Clinton maintains, only if allied nations with peacekeeping troops on the ground in Bosnia give their consent.

The latest debate was triggered by an amendment sponsored by Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) to lift the embargo unilaterally.

Fearing it would pass, Mitchell spent weeks trying to craft a substitute strong enough to keep disaffected Democrats in line without directly challenging the President. The alternative he finally offered directs Clinton to seek the allies’ consent for ending the embargo and to report back to Congress on the possibility of lifting it unilaterally if they refuse.

As much as the lawmakers want to lift the embargo, the United States cannot do so unilaterally without inviting other countries to disregard other sanctions that Washington wants enforced, Mitchell said in arguing against Dole’s amendment.

“We can’t take the position that others must participate in multilateral actions but the United States alone can pick and choose,” he said. “We can’t have it both ways.”

But having it both ways was exactly what the Senate sought to do, as it approved the rival GOP and Democratic leadership alternatives by identical margins. Further mixing the message, eight senators, all of them Democrats, voted for both amendments.

One of them, Sen. Richard H. Bryan (D-Nev.), said he did so because he feared that Dole’s amendment would lose and he thought that voting for Mitchell’s amendment first would at least allow him to go on record as favoring an end to the embargo.

Others, like Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), said they voted with Dole because they wanted to send the Administration a “strong message” that its Bosnia policy has been “anemic” and that it “must do better” in the future.

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), who supports the Administration on Bosnia, said the mixed message the Senate ended up sending was anything but strong. “It shows you the ineptitude of the United States Senate at times in giving direction on foreign policy,” he said.

Reaction from America’s allies was quick. Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister who was in Washington to confer with Administration policy-makers, warned that, if the United States were to lift the embargo unilaterally, it would end U.N. ground action and prompt a resumption of fighting in Bosnia

“It seems almost to me the worst solution,” Juppe told reporters.

At the same time, Juppe dismissed reports that Washington and Paris were split over what should be done in Bosnia, contending that the two governments were essentially in agreement on broad policy and “both think the time has come for a political settlement.”

He also warned that European governments might not be able politically to keep ground troops in the region much longer. “The time will come when the French public opinion . . . will ask, ‘What are we doing in Bosnia?’ ” he said--much as Americans did in Somalia.

At the United Nations, a report from Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali urged the Security Council on Thursday to make it clear in new resolutions that U.N. peacekeepers could play only a limited role in protecting Bosnian “safe havens.”

Boutros-Ghali’s report betrayed his frustration over what he said is the attempt by Bosnian Muslims to use the U.N.-designated safe areas as havens in which to regroup and mount attacks against Bosnian Serbs. He also sees a worldwide impression that U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia were mainly assigned to repel Serbian aggression against the Muslims.

The peacekeeping force, he insisted, “is neither structured nor equipped for combat and has never had sufficient resources, even with air support, to defend the safe areas against a deliberate attack or to hold ground.”

Throughout Bosnia, he noted, the United Nations has “found itself in a situation where many safe areas were not safe, where their existence appeared to thwart only one army in the conflict, thus jeopardizing (the United Nations’) impartiality, and where (the U.N.) role needed to be adequately defined in a manner that would be compatible with the rest of its mandate”--protecting humanitarian relief and guiding the parties to a negotiated settlement.

He proposed that the council redefine the safe areas to make it clear the intent “is primarily to protect people and not to defend territory and that (the United Nations’) protection of these areas is not intended to make it a party to the conflict.”

He also proposed that the council clearly set down realistic boundaries for the safe areas to ensure peacekeepers are not assigned to protect an area that is too large for them to do so.

On Thursday, battlefronts across Bosnia heated up ahead of a key meeting of frustrated foreign states trying to stop two years of bloodshed. The Associated Press reported that a U.N. military observer was killed and another seriously wounded when they came under fire near Sarajevo, the capital.

In another reported violation of the 3-month-old truce in Sarajevo, a Bosnian Serb soldier was fatally shot near Vrbanja bridge, linking Serbian- and government-held parts of the city. There was no U.N. confirmation of the report by the Bosnian Serb SRNA news agency.

In northern Bosnia on Wednesday evening, mortar fire cut electricity to Serbian-held Brcko, in an east-west corridor vital to Serbian supply lines. Both Bosnian Serb and government media reported shelling in the area Thursday. Reported military buildups by both sides around Brcko have fed speculation about an impending major battle.

Times staff writers Art Pine in Washington and Stanley Meisler at the United Nations contributed to this report.