NEWS ANALYSIS : Croat-Muslim Pact May Be Unraveling

It was a shotgun wedding ordered by Washington that ended the war between Muslims and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and three months into the marriage there are growing signs that it may not last.

Hard-line politicians seeking to undermine the Muslim-Croatian reconciliation are overwhelmingly outnumbered by moderates desperate for peace in both Bosnia and Croatia. But Croatian President Franjo Tudjman remains resistant to the union with Bosnia, and U.N. and European mediators are pushing a peace plan that the alliance has doubts about. Additionally, Croatian nationalists appear to be merely tolerating the pact as a means of avoiding threatened sanctions.

Croatian media continue to refer to Bosnian Croat separatists by titles that were abolished by an agreement to create a federation between Bosnian Muslims and Croats. And nationalist supporters of discredited rebel leader Mate Boban remain in their posts, still referring to him as their president and to their proclaimed Republic of Herzeg-Bosna.

Rebel patrons in the Croatian leadership here have kept alive the supply lines to the nationalists headquartered in Mostar and continue to coordinate military and political strategy with the supposedly ousted leaders of the rogue Bosnian Croat state.

Bosnian Croat forces, known as the HVO, had been suffering tremendous battlefield losses in the fighting with Muslims before the federation deal was pressed on Zagreb and its proxies in Bosnia.

The yearlong war waged by Croatian nationalists to secure a Croatian ministate in Bosnia resulted in at least 10,000 deaths and the displacement of as many as 300,000 Croats.

U.S. diplomats convinced Tudjman that his country faced devastating economic sanctions unless it stopped backing Bosnian Croat separatism. They also promised reconstruction aid and investment as an inducement if Croats mended fences with Bosnian Muslims.

A truce was proclaimed in late February, and an agreement creating a Muslim-Croatian federation in Bosnia was signed March 1. The rapprochement has allowed the civilian populations to restore some sense of normalcy in most areas the two groups share.

But Croatian politicians and military leaders regard the federation accord as either a steppingstone to a confederation with Bosnia that would be dominated by Zagreb or a temporary maneuver to deflect the threat of sanctions.

When Tudjman paid his long-delayed visit to Sarajevo on Tuesday, he professed commitment to the new union and inaugurated a Croatian Embassy in the Bosnian capital. But once back on home turf, he pandered to the skeptical right wing by casting the visit as more gesture than genuine allegiance.

“This federation agreement was signed under pressure,” said Croatian parliamentary leader Josip Manolic, who recently broke with Tudjman’s ruling Croatian Democratic Union, the HDZ, in protest of its Bosnian policy.

“Some people still want to see the Washington agreement put into force, but a large segment of those in the HDZ are the ones who promoted the war option with the Muslims in the first place and they are undermining the agreement,” Manolic warned.

A joint Muslim-Croatian army has been proclaimed by the new federal leaders of Bosnia, but there has been little if any evidence so far of cooperation on the ground.

Bosnia’s Muslim-led government army has fanned out across a broad and strategic arc in the northeast of the republic. The troops are reported to be preparing for a series of offensives aimed at wearing down the already demoralized Serbian rebels, who have a huge advantage in heavy weapons but too few soldiers to hold the territory they have conquered.

The HVO has lately allowed the government unhindered passage through areas it commands in central Bosnia, and the halt in Croatian-Muslim fighting has freed troops for the move against the Serbs.

But political and military observers here note that the HVO units in the nationalist heartland of Herzegovina have not lifted a finger to help their reputed allies wage the campaign for liberation.

On the contrary, they have sought to undermine the government offensive by stirring up fears among Bosnian Croats that their communities would be at risk of Serbian reprisals if they back Muslims.

A mosque was blown up in the tense town of Vitez late last month, and U.N. troops have reported renewed fighting in one of the deadliest flash points of the Muslim-Croatian war, Gornji Vakuf.

When the new joint defense force mobilized troops for the northeastern campaign, Herzegovina forces under the command of Croatian hard-liner Gen. Ivan Andabak refused to join on the pretext of needing to defend the shattered Neretva River valley from a Serbian attack that never came, according to a Croatian journalist with close ties to the army.

Croatian military leaders decline to discuss their policy toward Bosnia with Western journalists, but their reluctance to give up on the idea of expanding Croatia is obvious in statements carried by state-run media.

Defense Minister Gojko Susak, a Herzegovina native who directed Croatia’s disastrous drive to conquer territory in Bosnia, told state-run television recently that the Washington accord was just an “interim solution.” Bosnian Croats would never be a minority, he insisted, because Bosnia was destined to be part of a confederation that Croatia would dominate.

Susak and other hard-liners appear to be banking on eventual fulfillment of a secret deal to divide Bosnia that was made by Tudjman and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 1991.

“Tudjman still believes in a fair deal with Milosevic,” said Slaven Letica, a political science professor at Zagreb University and a former senior adviser to the president. “He’s not stupid, or mentally disadvantaged. . . . It’s this phenomenon of dictators. They are seen as having all the power and being the force to contend with. The problem with Milosevic is he is becoming a self-sustaining politician.”

The Washington agreement creating the Muslim-Croatian federation in Bosnia reaffirmed that national borders should not be changed by force and held out the prospect of Bosnian Serb areas being induced to join, effectively preserving the territorial integrity of Bosnia.

But observers warn that subsequent moves by U.S. and other mediators trying to bring peace to Bosnia threaten to abolish that principle by legitimizing the Serbian rebel land grab.

Diplomats from the United States, Russia and the European Union are pressing the federation to accept an ethnic division that would give the Muslim-Croatian federation sovereignty over 51% of Bosnian territory, with the rest being deeded to Serbs who want their own state.

The current focus of international mediators on forging a peace treaty dealing solely with Bosnia risks fracturing the tenuous alliance by leaving it too small and economically inviable. And the division that proposes to give the Serbs control over most of western Bosnia and a corridor to Serbia along the Sava River complicates the chances for a negotiated settlement of the frozen war between Serbs and Croats in this country.

Much of the Bosnian land that would be given to the Serbs under the 49-51 formula abuts Serb-occupied territory in Croatia’s Krajina region.

Western capitulation to a separate Bosnian Serb state and securing of the supply route for Serbian insurgents who conquered one-third of Croatia in 1991 could encourage the rebels in this country to hold out for international acceptance of their own proclaimed independence.

The prospect for a protracted standoff between Krajina rebels and the Croatian government is again strengthening the hand of extremists who have long warned that the outside world cannot be counted on to broker a just solution.

Moderates in the Croatian leadership, such as Foreign Minister Mate Granic, are viewed as sincere supporters of the Muslim-Croatian alliance. Indeed, Granic was one of the main forces behind the pact and reiterated his backing during a European Union business forum in Switzerland on Saturday when he and Bosnian government officials assured mediators the federation would not block the major powers’ formula for a settlement.

But the moderate face Croatia presents at international gatherings often contradicts the harder line followed in domestic politics, where ardent nationalists like Susak appear to have more influence with Tudjman.

The international community needs to tackle instability in the Balkans in a comprehensive manner, because the settlement of one aspect of the conflict risks igniting or worsening another, warned Branko Horvat of the opposition Croatian Social Democratic Union.

Splitting Bosnian territory between the Serbian rebels and the Muslim-Croat federation abandons a key principle of Western democracy--that borders should not be changed by force. It also undermines the prospects for reuniting Croatia and leaves the Bosnian allies feeling duped by the federation deal, Horvat said.

“This is a classic example of how good moves by the international community are eventually neutralized by bad ones,” he said, referring to the federation agreement that is slowly losing what support it had in Croatia.