Enemies Agree to Four-Month Bosnian Truce

After days of intense U.N. shuttle diplomacy, Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-led Bosnian government agreed Saturday to make good on a four-month truce brokered by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and to resume negotiations to end their 33-month war.

U.N. officials hailed the two-page New Year’s Eve cease-fire agreement as a significant breakthrough in a war that has taken tens of thousands of lives. But the collapse of many previous cease-fire pacts makes it far from certain that the truce will hold or that the respite will translate into a lasting peace.

A Christmas Eve cease-fire that has generally held for the last week makes it clear that both sides would like a break in fighting during Bosnia-Herzegovina’s rugged winter months. But neither side is satisfied with the front lines that will be temporarily frozen under the broader truce that was to go into effect after midnight.

U.N. special envoy Yasushi Akashi flew to Sarajevo early Saturday, the city’s 1,000th day under siege by Bosnian Serb rebels, to nudge the reluctant parties into the truce. After seven hours of back-and-forth talks, and beaming like a new father, he announced that he had “good news.”

“I had moments of doubt, but we finally managed to agree on a comprehensive cessation of hostilities,” Akashi said.

“Life is going to change a lot with this agreement,” he said.

President Clinton welcomed the truce and applauded the efforts of Carter and the United Nations.

In a statement issued at Hilton Head Island, S.C., where the President was spending New Year’s Eve with friends, he said, “We hope (the cease-fire) will be respected fully and pave the way for a negotiated settlement that brings peace to all the long-suffering people of Bosnia.”

One source said U.N. optimism rests on the assumption that the warring sides and the world are tired of the Bosnian war, which began in April, 1992, after Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence.

“Both sides are pretty tired, and the international community is running out of patience,” said the U.N. source, who asked not to be identified. “Most people think that this time the two sides have understood they are in a corner and there’s nowhere else to go but peace.”

In previous years, however, the government and rebel Serbs have used a winter decline in fighting to rest up and regroup; the Serbs have dug new roads and trenches in the parts of the country that they hold, while the Bosnian government has managed to smuggle weapons into its territory.

The generally worded agreement for a cessation of hostilities was signed Saturday by Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and military commander Rasim Delic on the government side in Sarajevo, and by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, at their mountain headquarters in Pale.

The accord calls for a cease-fire beginning today and continuing until May 1; a separation of forces and positioning of the U.N. Protection Force between the two sides; freedom of movement for all U.N. troops and operations, and the restoration of utilities.

A joint commission established to oversee the separation is to begin meeting today at the Sarajevo airport.

Akashi promised “very close supervision” of the separation, but a shortage of U.N. troops to patrol what is nearly a nationwide front line has contributed to the disintegration of previous cease-fires.

In Sarajevo, U.N. spokesman Alexander Ivanko said he expects that there will be no new troops to enforce the agreement and that the U.N. mission will have to make do with the roughly 23,000 troops already in country.

The Bosnian government had been pressing for the agreement to require at least a partial demilitarization of Sarajevo and the opening of routes into and out of the capital, but it did not get its way.

“It’s pretty general,” Ivanko said of the final pact, “but either you make it general or you get so detailed that it takes a century to sign.”

The agreement would seem to benefit the Serbs because it maintains the status quo, in which they hold most of the territory. The government fears that it could become a permanent situation. In effect, that is what happened in neighboring Croatia, where a 1992 cease-fire left a third of the country in Croatian Serb hands, with the United Nations acting as a buffer.

The truce is to be accompanied by a resumption of peace talks based on a plan drafted by the so-called Contact Group nations--the United States, Russia, Germany, Britain and France--that would give roughly 49% of the country to the Serbs and 51% to a Muslim-Croat federation.

The Muslim-led government has accepted the plan, but the Serbs are pressing to hang on to the 70% of Bosnia they have taken by force.

The two sides had reached a stalemate, and all talks had broken off until early December, when Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic invited Carter to intervene. Karadzic, although doing well on the battlefield, was internationally isolated because of his forces’ human rights abuses and had even lost the support of his ally in Serbia, President Slobodan Milosevic, for rejecting the internationally drafted plan.

Carter’s peace mission, in which he expressed some sympathy for the Serbian position, was criticized by much of the world because it appeared to rescue Karadzic. But just as his controversial intervention in Haiti produced results, so his trip to Bosnia appears now to have kick-started the peace process again.

Fighting has been reduced by 90% to 95% in the last week, but the troubled northwestern region of Bihac is still particularly volatile because the Serbs there are backed by renegade Muslims and Croatian Serbs who are not signatories to the truce.

The rebel Muslim leader, Fikret Abdic, has given the United Nations a verbal promise to respect the cease-fire, but Ivanko said nine shells fell Saturday around Velika Kladusa, near the town of Bihac. He termed that activity “quiet for there.”

Times staff writer John M. Broder in Hilton Head Island, S.C., contributed to this report.