NEWS ANALYSIS : For World Leaders, Bosnia Poses a Problem That Won’t Go Away

The insoluble problem of Bosnia-Herzegovina has stalked world leaders for three years, haunting the halls of international diplomacy and forcing its unwelcome presence onto the agenda of every major conference and summit.

And to the chagrin of the presidents and prime ministers of the Group of Seven industrial powers holding their annual gathering here, the latest deaths and recurring violence across the Atlantic Ocean served as painful reminders that a solution to the worst conflict in Europe in half a century still eludes them.

As President Clinton and the heads of six other influential nations clasped hands and smiled for pictures, Bosnian government forces showed their impatience with repeated promises of a negotiated solution by launching an offensive to break Sarajevo out of a rebel Serb stranglehold.

The escalating conflict once again exposed the flaws of the international community’s current Balkans policy--a U.N. peacekeeping deployment in the former Yugoslav federation, where about 50,000 troops have proved woefully insufficient to enforce a nonexistent cease-fire and compel the increasingly hostile combatants to abandon the course of war.

The Halifax summit brought together the leaders of all the big powers with major stakes in Bosnia, including the largest troop-contributing countries to the U.N. Protection Force and all five member nations of the thwarted Contact Group, which has been trying to mediate a peace deal.

But the statesmen conceded that their three-day caucus brought little hope that the situation will improve, even though concern over Bosnia dominated the agenda.

“I don’t think there are any new ideas,” British Prime Minister John Major admitted Saturday.

Clinton, asked about the Contact Group of mediators from the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, allowed a day earlier that “I don’t think there’s much going on there.”

One Canadian official said the summit leaders departed feeling good about the accomplishments they made in the economic arena during the summit, while expressing frustration over the political distraction of Bosnia that commanded much of the G-7 leaders’ time and attention.

The official said some leaders were dismayed by the insistence of French President Jacques Chirac that the group issue a toothless statement on Bosnia on the opening day of the summit, as it served to “underline our impotence” in bringing an end to the 38-month-old war that has killed at least 200,000 people.

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, host of the Halifax gathering, on Thursday made a televised appeal to the Bosnian combatants to cease all military activities and resume negotiations frozen by Bosnian Serb refusal to accept international proposals for territorial division.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin had been hinting broadly before the G-7 summit, to which he was invited for discussion of political issues, that some new initiative to ease the Balkan conflict might be advanced in Halifax.

Yeltsin’s spokesman, Sergei K. Medvedev, stated after arrival from Moscow on Friday that the Russian president planned to disclose some new approaches.

But a senior U.S. official who served as official note-taker during Yeltsin’s hourlong discussion with Clinton at the end of the summit said Bosnia did not come up.

“Very little on Bosnia was discussed because that figured so prominently in other meetings they’ve had” during the Halifax summit, said the official, describing the Bosnian crisis as “the No. 1 topic” at both working dinners of the G-7 leaders and between U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev.

The bloodshed in Bosnia has disrupted numerous gatherings of the world’s most influential leaders because all previous efforts at intervention have been focused on supporting the U.N. peacekeeping force, which finds itself trapped between the warring factions and unable to fulfill its numerous and conflicting mandates.

The U.N. Protection Force, conceived nearly four years ago, was deployed in lieu of military intervention to defend Bosnia against artillery attacks by Serbian nationalists bent on creating ethnically pure enclaves for annexation to Serbia.

With no peace to keep, the U.N. troops have often found themselves caught between rebel forces who resent the peacekeepers’ attempts to feed and shield Croats and Muslims, and embattled populations who have concluded that armed resistance offers a better chance of survival than counting on the outside world to protect them.

Although Clinton voiced support for military backing of the Muslim-led Bosnian government during his 1992 presidential campaign, he has since been drawn to the side of European leaders who fear being sucked into a protracted Balkans war.

Nations with troops in the U.N. force, including Britain, France, Canada and Russia, also fear further retaliation against their soldiers in the event their governments take sides.

Serbian rebels angered by punitive North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strikes have already grabbed hundreds of U.N. hostages, and more than two dozen remain captive.

Faced with the alternative of deeper involvement and mounting casualties, the world’s leading countries have time and again failed to find an effective strategy to end the conflict.