French Pullback From Bosnia Sparks Fears

France’s decision to withdraw almost half its troops from the troubled U.N. Balkans mission has stirred fears of a Western exodus. It could leave a volatile mix of foreign peacekeepers with historic loyalties, which could draw them into the war’s deadly endgame.

The future of almost 3,300 British troops here was the focus of Wednesday’s visit to U.N. Protection Force headquarters by British Chief of Defense Forces Gen. Peter Inge.

A day earlier, the French Defense Ministry announced that it will pull out 2,500 soldiers by the year’s end.

Canada and Spain, the next-largest contributors to the Bosnian mission, have also threatened to leave unless a negotiated settlement is reached soon to end the conflict here that has killed 200,000 and left 2 million homeless.

But with battles intensifying across a wide swath of Bosnia-Herzegovina and chances for a peace accord receding far into the distance, the departure of soldiers sent by NATO countries appears increasingly likely.

Without the well-trained and more disciplined Western troops, the U.N. mission in Bosnia would be dominated by soldiers from Eastern Orthodox nations with historic ties to the rebel Serbs and by Islamic forces who openly sympathize with Bosnia’s aggrieved Muslims.

U.N. officers and Bosnian civilians worry that if the Western troops leave, having only forces whose countries clearly favor one faction could result in disaster.

“There is a chance for this to become an international war if it is not solved properly,” said Husajn Smajic, leader of Sarajevo’s moderate Islamic community. “Foreign troops will not be partisan as long as they are under the control of (the U.N. force here). But if the U.N. troops from the West withdraw, the Islamic forces here will surely not stand by idly and watch the destruction of Bosnia’s Muslims.”

And without the moderating effects of British, French and other West European forces, Russian and Ukrainian troops would be at great risk of siding with the Serbs.

Russia opened a Pandora’s box of partisan deployments in February when Deputy Foreign Minister Vitaly S. Churkin won the Serbs’ agreement to pull back heavy weapons from around Sarajevo by promising to deploy Russian peacekeepers to provide their traditional Serbian allies with “psychological comfort.”

Since then, the most generous offers of new troops for the U.N. mission in Bosnia have come from Turkey, Pakistan and Iran--the last a fundamentalist Islamic state that demands the right to defend Bosnia’s targeted Muslims.

Iran’s offer of 10,000 peacekeeping troops has, so far, been spurned by the U.N. Security Council. But 1,000 Turkish troops and almost 2,000 from Pakistan are due next month to bolster the 15,000 thinly spread U.N. forces in Bosnia.

“They all wear blue berets and come under a unified command,” U.N. spokesman Maj. Rob Annink said of the Islamic peacekeepers, stating the official line that the multinational mission is neutral. “But we have to think about where to put them--and it will not be on the confrontation lines.”

The Turks are to be deployed to central Bosnia to escort aid convoys and patrol reconciled Muslim and Croatian communities, said Annink, emphasizing that will make it unlikely that they will come into contact with hostile Serbs.

Despite having been accorded Russian patrols in their territory, Bosnian Serbs have vehemently protested the U.N. plan to deploy Turkish troops in Bosnia.

Serbia and Bosnia were both ruled by Ottoman Turkey for almost 500 years, leaving a legacy of resentment among the Serbs, whose forebears refused to convert to Islam and often suffered more severe repression than those who embraced the rulers’ faith. Most of those who today describe themselves as Muslim or Bosnian were Christian Slavs converted by the Turks.

Pakistani troops may be deployed to the eastern Bosnian “safe havens” of Srebrenica and Zepa, relieving European troops for relocation to more active battle zones, Annink said. But those assignments depend heavily on the U.N. mission’s overall troop strength, which has come into doubt with the French decision to at least scale down.

France is now the mission’s largest troop contributor, with 6,800 soldiers, or about one-fifth of the total force, deployed along political and ethnic fault lines in Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia.

The French contingent has sustained 20 deaths and more than 300 injuries, and a recent increase in attacks on U.N. forces has compelled Paris and other Western capitals to reconsider their commitment to the dangerous, expensive and ineffectual mission.

“No one is obliged to do the absurd,” French Defense Minister Francois Leotard said Tuesday. “Before the end of the year, there will be about 2,500 fewer French soldiers in former Yugoslavia.”

Almost 1,000 French troops are already pulling out of the Serb-occupied Croatian town of Glina; 1,500 more are to leave the mostly Muslim Bihac area in northwestern Bosnia later this year.

A Ukrainian battalion that planned to deploy to Gorazde has been reassigned to the Glina area, depriving peacekeepers in Bosnia of crucial reinforcements at a time when fighting between Serbian rebels and government troops is heating up across the republic.

Part of the French exasperation with the U.N. mission--shared by most Western officers here--is the labyrinthine civilian bureaucracy imposed on the military structure. When troops come under attack, they must seek backup through the civilian hierarchy, which administers the force from the distant Croatian capital of Zagreb.

Most requests for air cover from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have been rejected by U.N. Special Representative Yasushi Akashi or have been granted after so many hours of delay that the attackers have had time to finish firing and withdraw.

In other developments Wednesday:

* Bosnian Serb militia freed 11 French aid workers after their humanitarian group paid $44,000 in “bail” to win their release from nearly six weeks of captivity.

They had been held in Lukavica, a Serbian-held district outside Sarajevo, since April 8. Serbian leaders charged that the aid workers were trying to smuggle arms to troops of Bosnia’s Muslim-led government and threatened to put them on trial.

* Plans to test a Bosnian Serb cease-fire pledge at the Tuzla airport were canceled because civilian pilots refused to risk making supply flights. U.N. flights were suspended Tuesday when Serbian shells struck the airport in northeastern Bosnia shortly after a plane landed.