Good Luck--but Can It Work?

Former President Jimmy Carter has served world peace well as a mediator, often in the face of mocking criticism that later events would prove unwarranted. In the effort to bring peace to Bosnia, his mediation is, in principle, more than welcome. Unfortunately, the Bosnian mission he has undertaken is one he could and should have aborted.

Our objection is not that Carter went to Bosnia at the invitation of Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serb rebels who began the war. Obviously, a mediator must risk talking to all the belligerents. In retrospect, Carter was clearly right to have spoken to another rebel leader, Gen. Raoul Cedras of Haiti. We have no objection to his doing the same with Karadzic.

Yet Karadzic made several promises at the time of his invitation to Carter. Carter said he would go if Karadzic kept these promises. Karadzic did not do so. Carter decided to go anyway. We call that decision a mistake.

On Sunday, still en route to Sarajevo, Carter was told that the promise of a Sarajevo cease-fire had not been kept, that Serbs were blocking relief convoys in violation of another promise and that in violation of a third promise access to the Sarajevo airport was being denied. Karadzic’s promises were meager to begin with. They included not a word about the current Serb onslaught against Bihac. When Carter learned that even these slim promises were being broken, he should have ended his mission. Rushing ahead, he has so far come up with only a trivial cease-fire offer from Karadzic and thus only fed the futility.