Britain to Quit Bosnia Force if Arms OKd : Balkans: But London will not veto any U.S. move at United Nations to lift weapons embargo against Muslim-led Sarajevo government.

Britain warned the United States on Monday that it will remove its peacekeeping troops from Bosnia if Washington insists on lifting the arms embargo against the Muslim-led Bosnian government.

Britain said, however, that it will not try to veto any U.S. move at the United Nations to end the sanctions but rather will abstain, on the grounds that the United States will go ahead with such an action unilaterally.

Following a vote by the U.S. Congress, the Clinton Administration has set a deadline of Oct. 15 for the Bosnian Serb rebels to accept an international peace plan that gives them 49% of the republic or see the weapons embargo lifted.

The Serbs overwhelmingly rejected the peace plan in a referendum last month.

“If the U.N. was to decide to start supplying arms to one of the combatants in this war,” said British Defense Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, “there is no way in which U.N. forces could remain in Bosnia on a bipartisan basis.”

Britain and France, which have the most troops serving under the U.N. peacekeeping mandate in the former Yugoslav federation, have opposed a lifting of the arms embargo.

Rifkind said lifting the embargo would reunite the Serbs--now divided by the blockade that authorities in Belgrade, capital of Serbia and the rump Yugoslavia, have mounted against their intransigent Bosnian ethnic kin--and invite Russian hostility.

In a weekend meeting, European foreign ministers condemned the possible U.S. decision to end the embargo.

German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel declared: “Lifting the embargo would give rise to incalculable risks and should only be considered as a solution of last resort. It should not be imposed unless we are sure our peacemaking efforts have failed.”

And French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe added that ending the embargo was “an absurdity.”

The British argue that if the arms embargo is lifted fighting will intensify and the position of U.N. peacekeeping forces will be untenable.

Britain and France are making contingency plans to evacuate troops from Bosnia-Herzegovina--an operation expected to take three months. Their withdrawal would mean an end of the U.N. Protection Force in the ex-Yugoslav republics.