Warring Bosnia Factions Agree to 1-Month Truce

Rebel Bosnian Serbs and the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina grudgingly agreed Wednesday to a monthlong cease-fire, breathing some life into expiring hopes for an end to the most vicious conflict to rack Europe since World War II.

Croatian officials and Serbian insurgents also achieved a symbolic breakthrough in their standoff over the disputed Krajina region by agreeing to launch another effort to mend the ethnic rift dividing this country.

But on the shifting sands of Balkans diplomacy, few among the mediators and militants appeared to be building expectations of a lasting solution to the wars that have convulsed the former Yugoslav federation for three years and left 200,000 dead.

The truce agreement for Bosnia was accompanied by warnings from Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Radovan Karadzic that many previous pacts had called for a halt in fighting but “none of them worked.”

Bosnian Serbs, who hold 70% of Bosnia, had pressed for an indefinite truce, apparently with the aim of cementing their hold on occupied territory while partition talks bogged down.

Peter Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia, called the Bosnian agreement, reached in Geneva, “modest.” Citing the Bosnian cease-fire and the planned resumption of talks between the Croatian government and Serbian insurgents next Thursday, Galbraith--chief U.S. envoy for the Krajina dispute--said new opportunities have presented themselves for easing hostilities in the Balkans.

“It’s a modest step, but hopefully one that represents a change in the psychology of the conflict,” he said of the Bosnian cease-fire, which he described as an encouraging influence on the Krajina talks.

Even Yasushi Akashi, the usually optimistic U.N. special envoy, conceded that the fate of the Bosnian accord would depend on both warring factions displaying a rare degree of “good faith.”

Karadzic and the head of the Bosnian delegation, Vice President Ejup Ganic, had refused to meet face to face, forcing Akashi to shuttle from one to the other to wring the cease-fire deal out of the two sides. The Geneva talks were delayed for four days while U.N. officials sought to enforce a 6-week-old ultimatum for Bosnian Serb withdrawal from the protected enclave of Gorazde. The peace process was further hampered by escalating clashes along the more than 700 miles of front line traversing Bosnia.

Akashi had appealed to both the Bosnian government and the Bosnian Serb nationalists for a cease-fire that would run for four months--a duration that mediators considered long enough to allow the warring factions to reapportion Bosnian territory between them.

But Muslims and Croats--who have reconciled and proclaimed a new Bosnian federation after a bloody, yearlong falling out--warned that the Bosnian Serbs were probably stalling to stave off fighting during the summer months when the poorly armed but more numerous government troops gain some advantage.

Ganic, on a stop in Zagreb en route to Sarajevo, said the government stood firm in its insistence on a shorter truce, fearing the Serbs were trying to freeze the territorial status quo and push the Bosnian conflict out of the forefront of international attention.

Even President Clinton, who had earlier kept his distance from U.N. and European Union attempts to pressure the Bosnian government to accept defeat and partition, has now endorsed the allies’ strategy for bringing peace to the vanquished republic by carving it into ethnic pieces along borders drawn by force.

His speech before the French Parliament on Tuesday signaled a shift in U.S. policy, closing a gap between the international powers involved in Balkans peacemaking. But his words effectively removed the Bosnian government’s last cause to count on Western support for a more equitable peace.

“If you were a Muslim, you might now conclude that the best option is to stall and look for a military solution,” one Western diplomat observed, noting that U.N. calls for more peacekeeping troops to police the cease-fire are likely to fall on deaf ears in an international community already exhausted by the Balkan conflict.

The United States now expects an agreement on a proposal--namely a map outlining the division of Bosnia--in four to six weeks, said a senior U.S. official traveling to Istanbul, Turkey, with Secretary of State Warren Christopher. The goal is a territorial formula that will protect Bosnian interests and take natural boundaries into consideration, he said.

At the same time, he noted, “it won’t be a negotiable solution if it looks totally unreasonable to the Serbs.”

But that U.S. endeavor to appease the victimized Muslims and simultaneously compel the Bosnian Serbs to endorse a fair solution has proved elusive throughout the 26-month-old Bosnian conflict.

Akashi has appealed for 5,000 more troops to bolster the 15,000 already deployed in Bosnia. But a plea he made in March for 12,000 soldiers produced offers of fewer than 5,000, many of whom have yet to arrive. And without the foreign peacekeepers needed to patrol cease-fire lines, violations can be expected, causing the accord to eventually, if not immediately, unravel.

In the unlikely event the Muslim-Croatian alliance and the Bosnian Serb rebels work out a land split in the month following Friday’s start of the cease-fire, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has promised up to 50,000 troops to oversee implementation of the settlement.

But in view of the reluctance displayed by troop-contributing nations to continue exposing soldiers in the risky Balkans mission, mediators fear NATO likewise would be slow in deploying.

Times staff writer Robin Wright in Istanbul contributed to this report.