Clinton Ready to Send Temporary Force to Bosnia : Balkans: President says troops would help reposition U.N. peacekeepers, but aides say allies may not request such assistance. Opposition is voiced in Congress.

President Clinton confirmed Wednesday that he might deploy U.S. troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina to help reposition U.N. peacekeepers mired in a hapless mission to contain Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

Amid signs that Bosnian Serbs have infiltrated the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, Clinton--during a commencement address at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs--repeated his Administration’s resolve to stand up to the Bosnian Serbs.

The President said he was prepared to send American ground forces to Bosnia for “temporary” duty if U.S. allies request the help. Congressional leaders, fearing the casualties that combat would bring, began to voice opposition to such a move.

But senior Clinton aides said the European nations whose troops are engaged in Bosnia may decide against asking for U.S. help.

In other Balkans-related developments Wednesday:

* Fighting intensified in Bosnia. Serb separatists holding about 370 peacekeepers hostage battled Bosnian government forces on the edge of Sarajevo and bore down on the “safe area” of Muslim-dominated Gorazde. In yet another brazen act, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles stolen by Bosnian Serbs were spotted Wednesday being driven through the center of Sarajevo, U.N. officials said. Bosnian Serbs have been commandeering U.N. equipment, tanks, uniforms and weapons for days, giving them the ability now to slip into Muslim-held territory.

* At the United Nations, which along with NATO has been paralyzed by the Bosnian Serb audacity, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali admitted that the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia has become “untenable” and must be reduced or replaced.

* Diplomatic pressure focused on the region’s principal powerbroker, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. A senior U.S. envoy arrived in Belgrade and met with Milosevic in an effort to secure his recognition of Bosnia in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. The move is intended to further isolate the Bosnian Serb leadership, who on Wednesday night offered to negotiate the release of their hostages--but only on terms the major world powers have already rejected.

* Congressional reaction, even among Democrats, opposed efforts to widen U.S. involvement in Bosnia.

The U.S. Role

In his speech in Colorado, Clinton said he is prepared to approve the temporary use of ground forces in Bosnia if U.S. allies request help in moving their peacekeeping troops to safer positions.

“We have obligations, commitments to our NATO allies and I do not believe we should, we must not, leave them in the lurch,” Clinton said in the commencement speech at the Air Force Academy. “So if necessary, and after consultation with the Congress, I believe we should be prepared to assist NATO if it decides to meet a request from the United Nations . . . for help in a withdrawal or in a reconfiguration and a strengthening of its forces.”

At the same time, he added, “I still believe that we have made the right decision in not committing our own troops to become embroiled in this conflict in Europe, nor to join the United Nations operations.”

Clinton’s remarks confirmed what lower-ranking officials said earlier this week: that the President, who once ruled out using American ground troops in Bosnia, except to withdraw U.N. forces or to police a political settlement there, has decided to make an exception if close U.S. allies ask for help.

At the same time, the President made it clear that he is considering only a “temporary” deployment of U.S. forces and still intends to avoid a long-term commitment of troops--something White House aides have warned against.

Clinton’s national security adviser, Anthony Lake, later told reporters that it is not yet certain that the U.N. peacekeepers will be redeployed at all.

“I think that is up in the air,” he said. “All this redeployment talk really comes primarily out of our thinking [about options] down the road. They haven’t made a decision yet.”

Clinton’s restatement of his opposition to “embroiling” troops in Bosnia drew the loudest, most sustained applause of the day from the 987 graduating Air Force cadets--some of whom could be sent to Bosnia if large-scale military action occurs.

The President’s statement that he would consult with Congress before committing ground troops--even for a short-term operation--was his first such public pledge.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry indicated later, however, that Clinton did not intend to seek a vote in Congress to approve an operation.

“We would consult with Congress consistent with the Executive’s views on the proper way to consult,” he said.

Both Clinton and McCurry emphasized that neither the United Nations nor the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has requested U.S. help in Bosnia, and the press secretary noted that the allies have not even proposed a redeployment plan to the White House.

Still, McCurry said, “the President felt it was important to send a signal that we would be there for them should assistance be required”--in part, he said, to encourage Britain and France to keep their troops in Bosnia rather than withdraw them.

And another official noted that the White House wants to prepare the American public in case the allies do request U.S. help.

France and Britain each have more than 3,500 troops in Bosnia as part of a U.N. peacekeeping force of about 22,000, the two largest foreign contingents there.

Bosnian Serb guerrillas took about 370 U.N. troops hostage over the weekend, prompting French and British authorities to consider either beefing up their units and moving them to more defensible positions, or withdrawing them entirely.

Clinton’s remarks on Bosnia marked his first policy statement on the Balkan war since the United Nations, at the Administration’s urging, authorized NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb ammunition depots last week. After the air strikes, the Bosnian Serbs retaliated, killing 71 people in renewed shelling of the city of Tuzla and taking U.N peacekeepers hostage.

The Administration’s inability to help bring an end to the dangerous war in the former Yugoslav republic has caused anguish and frustration among the President’s foreign policy advisers since the 1992 presidential campaign, when Clinton promised more assertive efforts to end the war among Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims.

The Front Lines

Confirming fears that U.N. peacekeepers had voiced for days, Serb rebels donned stolen U.N. uniforms Wednesday and drove stolen U.N. vehicles through government-controlled parts of Sarajevo, U.N. officials said.

The infiltration of the Bosnian capital, which has been surrounded by rebel Serb forces for three years, was an ominous sign, showing the impunity with which the Bosnian Serbs can act.

In recent days, the Bosnian Serbs have commandeered dozens of U.N. armored vehicles, including six light tanks, in what U.N. officials described as a major threat to security.

After a lull of several days in the capital, Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-led government traded artillery, mortar and tank fire for several hours early Wednesday in a battle for a strategic ridge overlooking the capital.

And renewed fighting around Gorazde, a Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia, raised fears that the city could fall into rebel Serb hands after the peacekeepers protecting it were either taken hostage or forced to abandon their posts.

The Bosnian Serb army said its shelling of Gorazde was in response to attacks by the government army from within the enclave.

Also Wednesday, the Bosnian Serbs issued a new offer to negotiate the release of their hostages. They invited members of the five-nation Contact Group, which is mediating the Bosnian war, for the talks.

But Miroslav Toholj, the self-described information minister of the Bosnian Serbs’ self-styled republic, said in Pale that the Bosnian Serbs wanted guarantees they would not be attacked from the designated “safe areas.”

U.N. officials have said, and reiterated Wednesday, that the hostages must be freed unconditionally.

Diplomatic Efforts

With few diplomatic options available to the world’s major powers, Washington dispatched envoy Robert Frasure to Belgrade for the second time in two weeks. His mission was to persuade Milosevic to recognize Bosnia in exchange for suspension of economic sanctions imposed against the rump Yugoslavia three years ago for its role in fomenting the Bosnian war.

Similar talks broke down last week over Milosevic’s insistence that the sanctions be removed altogether. Washington has offered a 200-day lifting of the sanctions but has insisted on maintaining a mechanism that would reimpose the restrictions if Milosevic fails to uphold his part of the deal, diplomats say.

Recognizing Bosnia would deal a devastating blow to the Bosnian Serbs, who diplomats hope would be forced to back down in their standoff with the West and accept a negotiated settlement to the 3-year-old war that has claimed 200,000 lives.

Senior Yugoslav officials said Wednesday that an agreement was likely to be reached soon.

“We are more close to the lifting of the blockade than ever before,” Zoran Lilic, the president of Yugoslavia, said Wednesday in a speech in which he also blamed the sanctions for Belgrade’s soaring crime rate.

Though sanctions are not the only cause, Yugoslavia’s economy has been devastated in recent years. Industrial production and per capita income have plunged, and inflation, brought under control last year after months of runaway prices, is starting to creep up again.

So Milosevic could use a deal that would return his country to the international business fold and open the way for investment. But he may opt to hold out for an even better deal now that the West seems to need him in the Bosnian Serb hostage crisis.

“I think his price just went up,” said a European diplomat whose nationals are among the hostages. “He realizes he has become more valuable to us.”

U.N. Options

Secretary General Boutros-Ghali told the Security Council it must either replace U.N. peacekeepers with a powerful multinational force or restrict the peacekeepers to the limited and nonbelligerent role of delivering humanitarian aid and negotiating agreements.

The secretary general made clear his own preference for a limited U.N. peacekeeping mission that neither uses force nor invokes air strikes by NATO.

In a long-awaited report to the council, Boutros-Ghali also listed two other options--withdrawal or the status quo--but said neither was feasible.

Withdrawal, he said, “would be tantamount to abandonment of the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.” The status quo would continue an impossible mission, he said.

The report left the council with a stark choice between open war and limited peacekeeping that it must make soon as it debates the future of Bosnia policy. “In its reaction to events in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Boutros-Ghali said, “the United Nations faces a truly defining moment, the impact of which will have a decisive effect on its standing for many years to come.”

Discussing the option he preferred--limited peacekeeping--Boutros-Ghali said the council would have to revise the U.N. mission’s mandate “so that it includes only those tasks which a peacekeeping operation can realistically be expected to carry out in the circumstances prevailing in Bosnia.”

Under a new mandate, he said, peacekeepers would use force only in self-defense. They would maintain a presence in the six “safe areas”--Sarajevo, Gorazde, Tuzla, Bihac, Zepa and Srebrenica--but would “not use force to defend them.”

Their main duties would be negotiating and monitoring agreements between the belligerents, supporting humanitarian supply operations and running Sarajevo airport “with the consent of both parties,” he said.

Although the peacekeepers might need reinforcements as they redeployed under the new mandate, he added, this option would “eventually lead to a reduction in strength.”

He insisted that if the council wanted to change the mandate and control the situation in Bosnia by force, it would have to do so by replacing the peacekeepers with a multinational force authorized by the United Nations but not under its command. He cited former President George Bush’s dispatch of 28,000 U.S. Marines to Somalia in December, 1992, as an example of this kind of operation.

On Capitol Hill

Clinton’s new stance on U.S. troops in Bosnia caught congressional leaders by surprise. But lawmakers’ initial comments indicated that there would be strong opposition to even temporary involvement of American ground forces in the conflict.

From caustic criticism of the President’s handling of the crisis by Republicans to the anxiety evident in cautionary appeals voiced by Democrats, it was clear the Administration will face an uphill battle to win congressional approval for its latest Bosnia policy.

Predicting strong GOP opposition when Congress returns next week from its Memorial Day recess, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said sending U.S. ground troops to Bosnia was tantamount to a “policy of reinforcing failure.” It will be “very difficult” for Clinton to dissuade Congress from opposing the plan, he added.

“President Clinton has been stumbling toward war in Bosnia for two years, and now it appears that he has finally found a way to involve U.S. ground troops,” added Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, who, like Dole, is seeking the GOP presidential nomination next year.

The opposition was not confined to Republicans. “This is not a situation in which our ground troops should be involved. . . . The majority of Americans are totally unprepared for a sudden U.S. engagement in Bosnia,” said Sen. Claiborne Pell, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Other Democrats were more reluctant to oppose the President outright, but they all said Clinton would, in the words of Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, “have to make a much stronger case than he has so far” for a greater U.S. involvement in Bosnia.

McManus reported from Colorado Springs and Wilkinson from Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Times staff writers Stanley Meisler and Michael Ross in Washington contributed to this report, as did Times special correspondent Samantha Power in Sarajevo.

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The American Response

U.S. ground troops have been deployed to the Adriatic Sea to help rescue, evacuate or redeploy U.N. troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, if necessary.

* THE TROOPS: A unit of 2,000 Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. It is a well-trained force that may soon be used to bend Washington’s long-held policy against sending ground troops into Bosnia.

* RAPID DEPLOYMENT: The Marines can be transported into and out of Bosnia aboard Sea Stallion and Super Stallion transport helicopters, which can carry up to 30 Marines.

* AIR SUPPORT: The Navy’s three-ship task force has Harrier fighters and Sea Cobra attack helicopters. The Marines can also call for fighter support from the U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and from NATO warplanes stationed in Italy.