U.S. Urges Croatia to Return to Previous Cease-Fire Lines

Despite its renewed charge that Serbs are the primary aggressors throughout the shattered Yugoslav federation, the Clinton Administration on Tuesday called on Croatia to end its two-day offensive and re-establish cease-fire lines that cede one-third of the country to Serbian control.

“We do not believe the situation should be changed by the use of force,” State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.

He urged Croatian government forces to withdraw from territory they recaptured Monday and Tuesday and restore a status quo that has existed since 1992.

Although Burns repeated Washington’s longstanding position that the Serbs bear the largest share of fault for the bitter ethnic warfare, he said the Croats should try to regain their lost land at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield.

The Administration’s immediate call for the Croats to give back territory they have just regained was in sharp contrast to the equivocal U.S. response to an offensive by the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina last year.

That drive resulted in temporary government gains, later wiped out in a counteroffensive by Bosnian Serbs. U.S. officials then expressed concern about the renewed Bosnian fighting but said it was difficult to object to the Muslim-led government’s attempt to regain territory.

This time, officials said, Croatia should not expect even tacit support.

“We can’t stand on the sidelines and cheer every attempt to regain territory,” a senior official said.

Burns said Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev agreed in a brief telephone conversation to launch a joint effort to dampen the fighting. They called for the Contact Group of the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany to try to mediate between the warring factions.

The Contact Group, unsuccessful in repeated efforts to find a solution to the conflict in neighboring Bosnia, has been less active in Croatia, where the cease-fire had held for almost three years.

In Atlanta, where he is visiting, Kozyrev joined in calling for a truce and withdrawal to previous lines.

“What is needed in the area--in the whole former Yugoslavia--is a cease-fire, because opening hostilities will serve no people’s purpose,” he said. “It will only lead to further bloodshed and to killing of innocent lives and destruction of properties.”

In launching the offensive, Croatian government forces overran Serbian enclaves under the protection of the United Nations.

A U.S. official said that the United Nations last month redesigned its operation in Croatia to meet government demands and that it would be a travesty if the Croatian regime now repudiates U.N. authority.

Burns said the Croats initiated the latest round of fighting, but he denounced the Serbs for a deadly rocket attack on downtown Zagreb that caused civilian casualties.