NEWS ANALYSIS : Sound and Fury of U.N. Resolutions, Signifying . . . Not Much

The United Nations’ military nightmare in Bosnia-Herzegovina comes out of a host of bellicose-sounding resolutions passed by the Security Council in the last three years that were designed not to fight a war but to assuage public opinion in Europe and the United States.

Every time ambassadors on the Security Council have felt popular demand for action against Bosnian Serb aggression, they have passed resolutions and issued statements that have quieted the demands but created a confused, contradictory and largely ineffectual U.N. military machine.

There have been two obvious reflections of this strange mission:

* In a bizarre double assignment, mixing the weapons of war and the weapons of peace, the United Nations has designated its main mediator--Yasushi Akashi--as the official with the authority to approve or veto air strikes.

* In a subversion of its own resolutions, the council has continually refused to provide the troops and resources needed by the United Nations to do its assigned military tasks.

To confuse matters more, military analysts believe that the forbidding mountainous terrain of Bosnia, the poor weather over Bosnian Serb strongholds and the intermingling of troops with civilians would have made it excruciatingly difficult for the United Nations to punish the Bosnian Serbs, even if the world body had the will and the resources.

*

Akashi, a Japanese diplomat and veteran U.N. official, has borne the brunt of the criticism because he has vetoed requests from military commanders for air strikes on several occasions.

“Akashi believes that he has a chance to end this war as a mediator with channels open to all sides,” a European ambassador said. “A mediator is in trouble if he bombs the people he is trying to talk to.”

Numerous critics, such as Edward Luck, former president of the private United Nations Assn., have argued often that Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and his civilian aides have no business running a military operation once it is authorized by the council. It is not part of a secretary general’s job, they say.

But France and Britain, which have the largest number of peacekeepers in Bosnia, wanted Boutros-Ghali to take on this role, knowing that he would be cautious about anything that might endanger peacekeepers. Boutros-Ghali, who has tried to expand the powers of the secretary general, accepted the role when the council offered it to him.

In early 1994, when military commanders complained that it would take too long for their requests for air strikes to reach Boutros-Ghali, he agreed to transfer his authority to Akashi.

But Akashi has a reputation for being even more cautious than Boutros-Ghali.

As the official in charge of the U.N. operation in Cambodia in 1992, Akashi ignored the Khmer Rouge rather than try to disarm them when they refused to give up weapons. When Cambodia held elections without interference from the Khmer Rouge, Akashi’s caution was hailed as the epitome of wisdom.

*

Akashi, however, succumbed to intense pressure Thursday and authorized an air strike--the first since November, 1994--after the U.S. government convinced Britain and France that both the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had become laughingstocks because of their ineffectual response to Bosnian Serb violations.

The most blatant example of the council’s producing furious resolutions that have proved ineffectual came in August, 1993, when a popular outcry in Europe and the United States over stories of abuse of Muslim prisoners in Serbian prison camps prompted members to call on all countries and regional organizations to take “all measures necessary” to ensure that relief reached victims in Bosnia.

That was the same phrase used by the council in 1990 to authorize the Persian Gulf War. As a result, the Bosnia resolution authorizing “all measures necessary” made front-page headlines throughout the United States.

But it was never implemented.

The council designated Sarajevo and five other besieged enclaves in early 1993 as “safe areas” under U.N. protection.

Military commanders estimated that the United Nations would need 34,000 extra troops to protect these areas; the council authorized 7,600 troops, and Boutros-Ghali was never able to get governments to contribute even that many soldiers.

In Washington, a senior Clinton Administration official on Friday signaled a possible change in the dearth of resources for the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia. He said it was time to give the mission the heavy weapons, eased rules of engagement and stronger political backing that it needs.

The current U.N. mission in Bosnia “is untenable,” the official said. “If they are to protect exclusion zones, they ought to be able to do that. It doesn’t make sense for them to be there as pawns.”

He said the U.S. government believed that the force should be given “a mission that it can enforce and accomplish.”

If, however, there is a total reverse, military analysts have also warned that sending in U.N. combat troops to evacuate the peacekeepers could be a difficult--and expensive--effort.

U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry has said NATO plans now call for deploying about 50,000 ground troops to do the job, between 20,000 and 25,000 from the United States and the rest from Western Europe and some developing countries.

The evacuation could be relatively straightforward, provided the allies have the cooperation of the Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims. But Western planners say that is unlikely, and that one of those factions is almost certain to try to oppose the move.

Allied military strategists have mapped plans to create a protected corridor from Sarajevo to the Adriatic Sea, to help move troops and equipment out quickly. But they acknowledge that keeping it open would be difficult and probably would require substantial firepower.

Not only are the Serbian nationalists and Muslims in Bosnia well-equipped and well-entrenched, but U.N. peacekeeping forces are scattered among about half a dozen cities and convoy routes and would be relatively easy prey for anyone wanting to block their way.

Times staff writers Norman Kempster and Art Pine in Washington contributed to this report.