U.S. Sees No Hope of Stopping Serbs’ Takeover of Bihac : Balkans: Perry says NATO strikes would be useless, signals sea change in American stance on Bosnia. Rebels advance; U.N. peacekeepers begin moves to leave country.

In a pessimistic assessment of the Bosnian conflict, Defense Secretary William J. Perry said Sunday that heavily armed Serbian rebels advancing on the teetering city of Bihac are unstoppable and that further NATO air strikes would be useless.

Perry’s comments came as Serbian gunmen continued to shell and burn their way across the 32-square-mile “safe area” of Bihac, prompting beleaguered U.N. peacekeeping troops to begin moves toward withdrawal from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Recent bombing raids by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization against the determined rebels and a succession of U.N. Security Council orders for an end to attacks on the U.N.-protected area have failed to halt or even slow the Serbian thrust against Bihac.

Signaling a sea change in the Clinton Administration’s previous support for the Muslim-led Bosnian government, Perry said he sees “no prospect” of its recovering the 70% of Bosnian territory lost to the Serbian nationalists during their 32-month-old rebellion.

“The Serbs have demonstrated military superiority on the ground,” Perry said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” conceding that the rebels could overrun the city of Bihac whenever they want.

“Air strikes cannot determine the outcome of the ground combat,” the defense secretary said. “They can punish the Serbs, but they cannot determine the outcome of the ground combat.”

The United Nations has generally declined to ask for air strikes by NATO planes for fear that the Serbs would seek revenge against the 23,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia. Perry said he too opposes more strikes because that “would . . . drive the . . . U.N. forces out of Bosnia; it would lead to a widening of the war; it would lead to more violence.”

Perry said it would take “several hundred thousand troops with heavy weapons . . . involving significant casualties” to reverse the course of the fighting and defeat the Serbian rebels.

But he said the 2,000 Marines headed toward the Adriatic Sea coast are being positioned only for possible help in rescuing U.N. forces or downed NATO pilots and would not set foot on Balkan soil as peacekeeping troops.

Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, also appearing on “Meet the Press,” denounced the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia as a “classic failure” and called for the peacekeeping mission’s withdrawal.

“It may be time to get the United Nations Protection Force out of there,” Dole said. “They’re not doing their job, and they’re in harm’s way. . . . Let’s get them out of the way. Let’s lift the arms embargo (on Bosnia). And let’s at least let the Bosnians defend themselves.”

He said U.N. resolutions creating safe havens in the war-torn country have become meaningless.

“Who cares what the U.N. does?” Dole asked. Saying the new Republican majority in Congress would take a “hard look” at U.S. financial support for the United Nations, he added, “The President is going to have to stop relying on the United Nations and start looking at whether we are going to be a part of NATO.”

Officials at U.N. mission headquarters in Zagreb, Croatia, said a “reconfiguration” of troops is already under way to concentrate them in better-defended compounds for potential evacuation.

“People have been asked to gather at military and command posts, to facilitate safety in the first place,” said mission spokesman Michael Williams, adding that the consolidation could also be “preliminary” to evacuation.

There were also indications that some U.N. troops in vulnerable areas of Bosnia are trying to withdraw or reduce their numbers but are being taken hostage by Serbian gunmen as they move through rebel territory.

U.N. sources in Zagreb said one convoy carrying 43 British soldiers out of Gorazde was taken hostage by Serbian gunmen once it left that U.N.-protected zone and that another convoy trying to carry British military engineers into the rebel-encircled pocket was blocked before it could enter.

One U.N. official conceded that the group trying to get into Gorazde may have been carrying arms and protective gear that British and Ukrainian peacekeepers in the embattled town would need to survive a retreat.

Those detentions and the disappearance of other U.N. troops headed into or out of besieged eastern Bosnian enclaves illustrated what mission officials fear is a rapidly escalating campaign of harassment by the confident Serbian rebels designed to drive away what little protection the United Nations affords those civilians still loyal to the Bosnian government.

At least 400 U.N. peacekeepers are now missing or held hostage by Bosnian Serbs.

U.N. sources also disclosed a brutal and humiliating attack on British soldiers near Gorazde, some of whom were handcuffed by gloating Serbian gunmen and beaten with rifle butts.

The U.N. commander for Bosnia, British Lt. Gen. Michael Rose, told reporters in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo that his forces might have to withdraw soon.

“If the thing gets much worse at the military level, then I suspect that the peacekeeping mission would find it very difficult to continue,” Rose said.

The acceleration of Serbian rebel aggression and Perry’s comments Sunday created an atmosphere of defeat and impending doom at U.N. mission headquarters in Zagreb.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Perry has now set policy,” one U.N. official said of the defense secretary’s statement that further use of air power to protect Bihac is pointless. “Everybody is breathing sighs of relief now that they don’t have to get involved.”

Rose succeeded in winning Bosnian government support for a cease-fire and demilitarization of the Bihac safe area, but there was no immediate indication that the advancing Serbs are prepared to stop their unfettered onslaught.

Bosnian Serbs have previously said that their compliance with a cease-fire in Bihac would be contingent on the government forces halting all offensive actions throughout Bosnia, which would amount to the Sarajevo government’s capitulation.

Edward Joseph, a U.N. official reached by telephone in Bihac, said it is clear to everyone in the embattled region that the Serbian gunmen are intent on “completely neutralizing” the Bosnian government army there.

“They are exceedingly close, virtually in the town,” Joseph said of the Serbs advancing from both Bosnia and Croatia. “There really shouldn’t be any impression that the crisis and the threats to the town have been abated.”

Joseph described the nearly 70,000 people crowded into the designated safe area, as well as the 100,000 or so living elsewhere in the violence-racked Bihac pocket, as “desperate.” But he said few are fleeing the Serbian advance for lack of any more secure area to run to.

“How could they go somewhere else which did not even have the paper status of a safe area?” he asked. “They know they’re not protected. They’re prepared to die.”

In his comments Sunday, Perry tried to absolve the Administration of blame for failing to stop the fighting. He said that the United States had successfully defended its own national interests in the Bosnian conflict. “Our national interests are to stop the spread of war and to limit the violence,” he said.

If the war spread outside Bosnia to other of the former Yugoslav republics, Perry said, “we would consider more substantial actions than we’ve taken now.” The United States now has a few peacekeepers in Macedonia in a U.N. mission that is regarded as a form of “preventive diplomacy.” In addition, U.S. officials have long warned Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic against armed repression of the majority Albanian people in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Perry, however, refused to say how far the war would have to spread before the Clinton Administration would feel that U.S. national interests were endangered.

“We’re not going to draw a line in the sand, and we’re not going to state precisely what hypothetical situations would cause it,” Perry said, “but it is very clear that stopping the spreading of the war is the major national interest that the United States has today.”

Some U.N. officials in Zagreb speculated that with the greater accomplishment of scaring off U.S. support for the government and further punitive air strikes, the Serbian nationalists might accept the demilitarization of Bihac and turn their sights toward a settlement acknowledging the government’s defeat.

One official in Zagreb predicted that the five-nation Contact Group, whose earlier plan for dividing Bosnia between the Serbs and the government was spurned by the rebels, would produce a revised offer this week that is more to the nationalists’ liking.

Negotiators of the Contact Group, which consists of the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, are to meet Friday to consider how to respond to the latest developments in the conflict.

Meisler reported from Washington and Williams from Zagreb, Croatia.