More Firepower Sought for U.N. Troops : Bosnia: U.S. and France change course, seek alternative to evacuating peacekeepers. Allies must still approve plan.

By ART PINE

Dec. 13, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

The U.S. and French defense ministers proposed a series of measures Monday designed to make U.N. forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina better able to fight back against harassment by Serbian nationalists--as an alternative to evacuating the U.N. peacekeepers.

The defense chiefs, declaring that withdrawing U.N. troops would only spread the war, called for consolidating existing U.N. units to give them more firepower and for revamping the rules of engagement to enable the troops to use their own heavy weapons and to shoot back more readily.

They also proposed setting up a humanitarian aid corridor from the Adriatic coast to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, and backing it up with heightened use of NATO warplanes to protect aid convoys and other U.N. missions.

U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry and French Defense Minister Francois Leotard, who outlined the proposals after a meeting here, said they hope to persuade other allies to embrace them at a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels this week.

If the allies go along, the two ministers said, NATO will then take the measures to the U.N. command in Bosnia and recommend that it put them into practice. They asserted that the plan would not require any new authority from the U.N. Security Council.

At the same time, however, private analysts cautioned that the series of measures could also heighten the potential for military conflict between the U.N. forces and the Serbs, embroiling the allies more deeply in the war.

Leotard’s proposal marked a sharp about-face from the French position expressed last week by Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who hinted that France was about to withdraw its U.N. peacekeeping forces and argued that more aggressive action by NATO would only endanger them.

On Monday, Leotard warned that withdrawing U.N. forces would further displace Bosnia’s civilian population, spread the conflict to neighboring countries and seriously undermine the credibility of both the United Nations and NATO.

He also expressed concern that if U.N. forces were to leave Bosnia, that would “bring . . . Islamic forces” into the region to side with the Bosnian government. France is having political difficulties with Islamic governments and is reluctant to see their power grow.

“My government does not wish to see this withdrawal take place,” the French defense minister told reporters here. “ . . . We refuse to grant the (nationalist) Serbs the reward that they are apparently seeking and think that they will get (from a U.N. withdrawal).”

U.S. officials stressed that the proposals--which were drafted by Leotard--were preliminary and had not yet been agreed to by other NATO allies.

Perry and Leotard worked together a few months ago to draw up proposals for intensifying NATO air strikes, but, while NATO adopted the plan, the U.N. commanders never took advantage of it. Under current rules, the United Nations has final say in such attacks.

Leotard emphasized Monday that even under the new proposals, NATO forces still would have to wait for U.N. commanders to formally request air support before NATO warplanes would take off.

“One of the things that for us is totally unthinkable and totally unacceptable is to carry out (NATO) air strikes without the prior agreement of the U.N. forces in the field,” Leotard said. France has about 4,000 troops in the U.N. peacekeeping contingent.

The plan that the two ministers outlined for strengthening U.N. peacekeeping forces involved these proposals:

* Alter the rules of engagement for U.N. and NATO forces to enable them to fire at Serbian nationalist units if they harass or attack U.N. peacekeeping troops or take U.N. soldiers hostage. Under current rules, it is difficult for U.N. and NATO troops to return any fire.

* Use NATO air power more fully to provide close air support protection for U.N. supply convoys and humanitarian relief missions and to secure the Sarajevo airport. The warplanes would also be allowed to hit larger Serbian targets, such as radar installations and command posts.

* Consolidating U.N. peacekeeping forces into larger units, to make them less vulnerable to Serbian attacks, redeploying them into positions that can be defended more easily and allowing them to use the heavy weapons they have to help fend off or attack Serbian forces.

U.N. commanders already have consolidated their forces into fewer sites. But some analysts say they still are too spread out to be very effective militarily.

Perry also reiterated a promise by President Clinton to help evacuate U.N. peacekeeping forces if the allies decide to withdraw them. But he agreed with Leotard’s assessment that such a move would prove counterproductive.

Leotard suggested at one point that the allies could also send reinforcements into Bosnia if they wanted to bolster the peacekeeping forces there, but he conceded that at least for the moment such a proposal “does not seem like a very likely scenario.”

Unlike Juppe, who laced his remarks last week with criticism of the United States for not providing ground troops for U.N. peacekeeping missions, Leotard praised the Clinton Administration for what he called the “U.S. presence in the former Yugoslavia.”

“Many people often forget that the United States is present in the area,” Leotard said. He ticked off a list of places where U.S. military personnel are serving, including on aircraft and ships enforcing U.N. embargoes and at U.N. headquarters in Zagreb, Croatia.