NEWS ANALYSIS : Milosevic Signature Seen in Serbs’ Gains : Balkans: Belgrade mastermind ‘reconciles’ with rebels as dream of Greater Serbia is on the verge of coming true.

First there was the appearance throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina of antiaircraft missile batteries that Western military sources said had come from Yugoslavia.

Then there was U.N. confirmation of Yugoslav aid to Croatian Serb rebels, who in turn were openly collaborating with Bosnian Serbs in the month-old assault on Muslims in Bihac, the besieged enclave in the northwestern corner of Bosnia.

Now Bosnian Serb politicians whose spurning of an international peace plan caused a highly publicized rift with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic earlier this year are suddenly heeding his advice that the proposal provides a “good basis for negotiation.”

After months of diplomatic bickering that has masked military collaboration on the ground, Serbs throughout the Balkans have conveniently mended fences to take advantage of the international community’s indecisiveness over Bosnia, sensing that their dream of a Greater Serbia is on the verge of coming true.

U.N. officials, NATO sources and Western diplomats say the fine hand of Belgrade--the capital of the new Yugoslavia, which consists of Serbia and Montenegro--is increasingly visible in the latest Balkan violence. They say they fear that Milosevic has been maneuvering his Bosnian and Croatian Serb pawns in a clever end game.

“There’s a good chance he’s been double-dealing and is involved in the Bihac stuff,” one senior diplomat said, observing that while the evidence is not conclusive, “I’m suspicious as hell.”

The U.N. special envoy for the Balkans, Yasushi Akashi, said he is not as convinced as others of a grand conspiracy among the Serbs to expand their state against the will of the world. But asked if Milosevic is playing peacemaker as a smoke screen to cover his followers’ determined land-grabbing, Akashi conceded, “He may be.”

Consider the following incidents that indicate Yugoslav Serb involvement or orchestration of the latest violence racking the region:

* When a Croatian Serb helicopter crashed during a bombing run over Bihac in late November, the dead pilot was identified as a native and resident of Serbia.

* Paramilitary thugs who detained and beat two Western photographers over the last week, American Ron Jacques and Frenchman Luc Delahaye, identified themselves as Serbs from Belgrade and wore the insignia of an elite commando squad loyal to Milosevic.

* When Milosevic had the chance last month to have all U.N. sanctions lifted from his country by simply recognizing the prewar borders of Bosnia and Croatia, he refused.

* Despite Belgrade’s claims to have imposed a blockade against Bosnian Serbs for their refusal to endorse the international peace plan, SA-2, SA-3 and SA-6 surface-to-air missile batteries have made their way from Yugoslav army stocks across the allegedly sealed Bosnian border and are now capable of shooting down aircraft from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization over at least 40% of Bosnian terrain.

* Belgrade claims to have cut the fuel line to the Bosnian Serbs, whose tanks were said to have ground to a halt last month. Yet convoys of fuel tankers listed as “transit” deliveries for Croatian Serbs are allowed through Serbian-occupied Bosnia by U.N. sanctions monitors, even though the two Serbian rebel factions are known to be collaborating in the assault on Bihac.

* U.N. officials confirm that when Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev visited Belgrade last month he met not only Milosevic but also Bosnian Serb army chieftain Gen. Ratko Mladic, suggesting that the Serbian president’s alleged break with Bosnian Serbs has been a ruse.

* A delegation from the intransigent Bosnian Serb parliament visited Belgrade a few days ago to meet with Milosevic and express interest in resuming peace talks with the five-nation Contact Group--the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany.

* Diplomatic sources say they have intelligence to suggest that Croatian Serb troops have moved through Yugoslav territory to deploy in Bosnia to help with the assault on Bihac. Yugoslav army helicopters also have been spotted ferrying supplies to Bosnian Serb troops in the east of the republic.

The reconciliation of Milosevic with his Bosnian Serb proxies, if they were ever truly estranged, comes as foreign mediators seem most desperate to stifle the Balkan crisis with a paper settlement and when all the Serbs have in view are carrots, not sticks.

Russia has demanded that the U.N. Security Council lift all punitive sanctions levied against Yugoslavia for fomenting the Bosnian crisis, arguing that Milosevic is doing everything he can to bring about peace.

France and Britain, fearful for their thousands of soldiers serving as U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia, have tried to entice Bosnian Serbs back to negotiations by hinting that the rebels could annex their conquered territory to Yugoslavia in a Serbian confederation.

The United States had previously rejected any premature rewarding of Serbia for no longer blatantly inciting Bosnian violence, insisting that sanctions should be eased only after the Bosnian Serbs agree to a negotiated peace. But senior U.S. officials have lately been proclaiming that unity within the NATO alliance and good relations with Russia are more important than a just Bosnian peace deal, signaling that Washington may bow to European pressures to craft a settlement acceptable to the Serbs.

But in an example of appeasement creating appetites rather than sating them, Bosnian Serbs have recently upped the ante for compliance, demanding that NATO abandon protective air patrols over Bosnian skies.

The U.S. ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, deemed the evidence of pan-Serbian collaboration “very serious” after hearing the brutal details of the torture of the two photographers, who were beaten, subjected to a mock execution and doused with water and left in the cold.

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Other Western diplomats have expressed fear that Milosevic has again duped foreign mediators into offering further concessions for the Serbs at the expense of Bosnian Muslims.

“I’ve never been comfortable with the Contact Group’s approach of dealing with Milosevic as a man of peace,” one envoy said. “Some people are too quick to forget how this whole thing got started.”

Milosevic rose to power as head of the Serbian Communist Party by whipping up nationalist passions over the predominantly Albanian province of Kosovo and arming Croatian and Bosnian Serbs prior to their land grabs.

If the assault on Bihac eventually succeeds and the last government-held pocket of northwestern Bosnia falls, Bosnian Serbs will hold more than 80% of the republic and will provide a supportive bulwark along the length of the Serbian-occupied territory in Croatia, making it difficult, if not impossible, for Zagreb ever to reassert its authority over its lost land.

And with the international community’s current offer of “confederal rights” for the Bosnian Serb holdouts and the unbreakable grip that they would have on occupied Croatian territory as a result, a Greater Serbia would be virtually achieved.