France Asks U.N. to Draft Plan for Bosnia Pullout

Declaring negotiations to end the Balkan crisis at a “total impasse,” the French government said Wednesday that it has asked the United Nations and NATO to draw up a detailed withdrawal plan for the 24,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told the National Assembly here that the U.N. force, which includes 5,000 French troops, “has done everything it can” to end the conflict peacefully. And he said an evacuation would be a “high-risk operation that will require reinforcing troops on the ground first.”

Juppe acknowledged that “the decision which we are being forced into will mean war, more unhappiness and more suffering,” adding that he feared the Balkans will be “set ablaze” in the near future.

The foreign minister’s gloomy assessment, which followed a flurry of visits to European capitals to discuss the crisis, came as NATO said it will ask member states how many troops they could supply to a mission to evacuate U.N. peacekeepers. A force of at least 20,000, and perhaps many more, would be required to withdraw the U.N. Protection Force, alliance officials said.

With pressure mounting for a withdrawal, mission officials in the former Yugoslav federation discovered Wednesday that they had lost even the ability to retreat, as a partial pullout from embattled Bihac collapsed before it got started.

The thwarted attempt to “temporarily redeploy” half of the 1,200 Bangladeshi troops out of Bihac stemmed from a decision made within the U.N. military hierarchy in Zagreb, Croatia, sources there said.

In recent days, Juppe has blamed the United States for inflaming the conflict with talk of lifting a U.N. arms embargo that has kept the Muslim-led Bosnian government from defending the country against a 32-month rebellion by heavily armed Serbs.

Despite Juppe’s forecast that no settlement is likely, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic told a news conference at his headquarters in Pale, just east of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, that he is prepared to resume stalled negotiations in view of “new interpretations” being made by the five-nation Contact Group of a plan offered in June on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

Juppe and other politicians from countries contributing troops to the peacekeeping force have recently suggested that the Bosnian Serbs should be allowed to join their conquered territory to neighboring Serbia. That right of confederation was denied them under the original plan drawn up by the Contact Group, which is composed of the United States, Britain, Russia, France and Germany.

Karadzic tied his rebels’ return to negotiations to a lifting of U.N. sanctions on allied Serbia, but his hints of assisting the U.N. peacekeepers in an unhindered evacuation were likely to appeal to those now scrambling for a way out.

Troop-contributing countries, including many from NATO, have been alarmed by the surge in hostile actions against U.N. peacekeepers, mostly by the Bosnian Serbs, who hold nearly 350 troops hostage and have thousands of others surrounded.

Bosnian Serb gunmen in Banja Luka did resolve the most serious of the hostage situations Wednesday when they released a sick Jordanian military observer, Maj. Zaid Hussein Fayed, after a Russian officer volunteered to take his place.

The Serbs had reneged on a promise they made Monday to release the major, who has been bedridden with a heart ailment since Nov. 30. Instead, on Tuesday, the rebels seized a Spanish captain offered in his place as well as a Czech major supervising the hostage swap.

The Jordanian and the Czech were released late Wednesday, said U.N. mission spokesman Paul Risley. With the Russian, there are now four captive military observers in Banja Luka.

Systematic humiliation of the U.N. peacekeeping force has intensified withdrawal planning, officials at U.N. mission headquarters in Zagreb said.

The provocations prompted mission commanders to propose evacuating half of the undersupplied Bangladeshis, who are caught between attacking Bosnian Serb forces and Croatian Serb rebels seeking to starve and freeze them out of the U.N. “safe area” they were deployed to protect.

But a U.N. request to bus out 600 soldiers over six nights--100 soldiers a night--failed to gain support from any of the factions that could endanger such a withdrawal, one U.N. official said.

Without the cooperation of the armed forces that surround them, neither withdrawal nor redeployment would be possible, as has been made clear by the weeks-long blockade by Croatian Serb gunmen preventing Dutch troops from reinforcing the Bangladeshis in Bihac.

The proposal to withdraw half of the Bangladeshi battalion was described by mission spokesman Michael Williams as a move under consideration because of the poor state of provisions. The troops have little food and no fuel and are confined to quarters because of a lack of winter coats and defensive weapons--shortages aggravated by the Croatian Serb blockade.

The frustration level at mission headquarters in Zagreb has been palpable, as civilian and military leaders examine their escape routes and find them all wanting.

“We can decide to do anything we want. We can decide that pigs can fly, but unless they sprout wings it’s not going to happen,” spokesman Risley said of the Bihac reduction that mission headquarters wants but cannot achieve. “We can decide whatever we want, but the reality is that we have very limited options.”

A senior Western diplomat from a troop-contributing country said the mission is working feverishly with NATO on emergency pullout plans.

“It’s going to be a mess. You’re going to have women and children blocking the roads with their bodies. We are not going to be able to simply drive out of here,” said the envoy.

One U.N. official familiar with the withdrawal planning said a number of scenarios have been prepared for, including a swift and surreptitious retreat.

“A hasty withdrawal plan is one that takes place in the worst of environments, where two things are of importance: speed and stealth,” the official said. “Under a hasty withdrawal plan, you make no attempt to save equipment. . . . The priority is to save the lives of peacekeepers and allow for their safe evacuation.”

But even the most thorough contingency planning has failed to chart a secure course out of the deteriorating Bosnian conflict, especially in places like Bihac where the Serbs clearly want U.N. troops out of the way while the poorly defended government supporters want to hold on to what is at least a psychological shield.

Bosnian Serb gunmen and the Croatian Serb rebels collaborating in attacks on Bihac would probably facilitate a U.N. withdrawal “with conditions,” the U.N. official said.

For example, they would gladly provide safe passage out through the occupied Krajina region of Croatia for the Bangladeshis as long as they take with them their armored personnel carriers, weapons, radios, communications equipment and other gear of military value. The Krajina Serbs are also expected to demand that all U.N. troops leave, rather than just half, removing the main impediment to a Serbian conquest of the Bihac pocket.

Kraft reported from Paris and Williams from Zagreb.