Carter Announces Bosnia Cease-Fire Agreement : Balkans: Truce begins Friday, he says after shaky start with rebel Serbs. Diplomats remain skeptical.

By DEAN E. MURPHY

Dec. 21, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina —

The Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-led Bosnian government have agreed to begin a cease-fire on Friday as a small first step toward ending the 32-month civil war, former President Jimmy Carter announced Tuesday.

The modest agreement--one of many proposed cease-fires over the course of the war--came after an unscheduled second round of meetings between Carter and the Bosnian Serb leadership in nearby Pale. Carter called the extra session after conflicting claims about the results of their high-profile talks on Monday threatened to sink his entire peace mission.

Carter announced Monday that Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic had agreed to an immediate cease-fire, but Karadzic backed away from the claim a few hours later.

The Bosnian government was so angered by the theatrics that President Alija Izetbegovic refused to meet with Carter when he returned to Sarajevo late Monday, choosing to make the former U.S. President wait until morning, sources said.

“We have had this character 2 1/2 years, and he lies every day,” said Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic, referring to Karadzic. “Make sure that you know with whom you deal.”

Carter, said to be alarmed and betrayed by Karadzic’s antics on Monday, made Tuesday’s cease-fire announcement in Pale standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

After driving the mountainous road to Sarajevo, Carter repeated the announcement at the airport en route to Belgrade, where he plans to hold talks with Serbian leaders.

“There will be a complete cease-fire in all of Bosnia-Herzegovina, including Bihac, to go into effect at noon on Dec. 23,” Carter said. “This cease-fire is to be completely monitored, without interference, by UNPROFOR (U.N. Protection Force) troops, interposing themselves between the opposing military units wherever necessary.”

In The Hague on Tuesday, a two-day informal meeting of defense chiefs from 28 countries agreed on measures aimed at strengthening the U.N. force. At a news conference after the meeting, Lt. Gen. H.G.B. van den Breemen, chief of the Dutch Defense Staff, declined to give details on the measures.

It seemed clear the proposals carried at least the potential to make the U.N. force stronger and more effective, but they must still be studied by national governments and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and then approved by the United Nations, which so far has been extremely reluctant to employ force.

Van den Breemen said the chiefs had discussed, and apparently recommended to their governments, the use of aircraft and more firepower to deliver humanitarian aid to civilians trapped by the war.

“We talked about helicopters and armed escort helicopters,” he said.

Such escort aircraft would probably be provided by NATO countries.

The tenor of Van den Breemen’s remarks hinted strongly that the military chiefs recommended helicoptering supplies over roadblocks and permitting armed escort aircraft to attack anyone attempting to interfere.

The Dutch general also said the agreed proposals would mean adding to the U.N. force’s troop strength.

According to Carter’s announcement, the cease-fire would last until Jan. 1, during which time the warring sides would negotiate the details of a proposed four-month cessation of hostilities. If the two sides agree to that temporary peace, they will then turn their attention toward transforming the agreement into a permanent end of the war.

“We don’t need more negotiations; we need results,” one unimpressed Western diplomat said. “One has to be very doubtful this will go anyplace.”

The diplomat and others described the process set up by Carter as fragile and ridden with potential pitfalls, especially since the former President failed to resolve what has been the most intractable obstacle to peace: the Bosnian Serb refusal to accept the Contact Group peace plan.

“In that key and critical area, I think they are still 180 degrees apart,” a U.N. official said. “The whole basis of negotiations is still in dispute.”

The Contact Group plan, drawn up by the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Russia, calls for dividing Bosnia about in half between the Muslim-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serbs.

The Bosnian government and neighboring Serbia have agreed to the international plan, but the Bosnian Serbs, who would have to give up one-third of the territory they now control, have repeatedly rejected it.

The United States and other backers of the Contact Group plan have described it as a take-it-or-leave-it proposal that must be accepted by all sides before any of it can be revised or amended. The Bosnian Serbs have said they would consider the plan only if it could be renegotiated.

Karadzic once again did not accept the plan Tuesday but insisted that it should serve as “the basis of negotiation” for peace. The Bosnian government maintained that the plan’s acceptance was the “starting point” for negotiation.

Unable to reach consensus, Carter included the language from both sides in a written summary of agreements reached during his two-day visit but said he could not “detect any significant difference” between them.

“That is a difference in semantics that I have not been able to overcome,” he said, adding after reading a note passed to him by his wife, “and I am obviously not taking sides as to whose language is best.”

Carter’s admission that he could not distinguish between the two positions sent chills through Bosnian government offices here.

Since Carter announced that he would visit their country, Bosnian officials have openly questioned whether his presence would be used by the Bosnian Serbs to undermine the Contact Group plan.

A U.N. official said that even if Carter secures a cease-fire Friday, it will have come at a high price.

“We’re going to wait for the next two days” to see if there is a cease-fire, the official said. “Maybe it holds out a very slim chance of forward momentum, but it comes at the great cost of handing Karadzic a propaganda coup and muddying the international community’s stance on Bosnia.”

A cease-fire could significantly benefit the people of the Muslim enclave of Bihac in northwest Bosnia, which came under heavy shelling again Tuesday. Unconfirmed reports said there were many casualties in the area, including a 10-year-old boy who was killed.

But for a longer truce to take hold, Carter’s deal requires the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers between the two warring sides.

U.N. officials said Tuesday that there are few available soldiers, and NATO military chiefs meeting in the Netherlands did not seem inclined to send additional peacekeepers.

Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in The Hague contributed to this report.