Snubbing a Bid for Croatia Peace : Serbia’s Milosevic refuses to even read a major new proposal

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic strengthened the case for maintaining and indeed intensifying international economic sanctions against his country when he arrogantly refused this week even to read a major new peace plan for Serb-occupied territories in Croatia.

Just last week the British Foreign Office had praised Milosevic for his “significant contribution . . . to progress in the negotiating process in both Bosnia and Croatia” and added that “further concrete steps . . . should be rewarded with further sanctions relief.”

We agree, but by the same token concrete steps toward war should be punished. Milosevic’s insult to the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, which had worked cooperatively for months in preparing the plan, was a brutally clear step toward war.

The new plan was a remarkably forthcoming one. Though many more Croatian Serbs live outside the Serb-held Krajina region than live in it, the Krajina Serbs were to be permitted to set up a virtual state within a state with their own chief executive, legislature, judiciary and police force. The new autonomous Serb region in Croatia would have the power to tax, and residents of the region would be exempt from Croatian taxes. Serb Krajina would even have its own flag.

This plan was not ideal from the Serb side, for no such autonomy was envisioned for the richer Serb-held territory in eastern Croatia. Still, as the date approaches for the withdrawal of the U.N. peacekeeping force in the Croatian Krajina, is the plan not worth serious consideration?

In a second round of fighting, the Krajina Serbs will lack some key advantages they had in the first round. The United Nations, adopting a resolution drafted by Britain, has banned the transshipment of goods from Serbia through Bosnia to the Serb-held Krajina. This corridor, which permitted the Croatian Serbs to supply the Serb siege of Bihac in northwest Herzegovina, would also be crucial to the defense of the Krajina itself against a Croatian attempt to reoccupy it.

Sadly, the Krajina Serbs, like Milosevic, refused even to read the plan. Peter Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia, surely spoke for all the major powers when he said with clear regret: “We’ll have to reassess. There is only so much the international community can do. And unfortunately time is running out.”