Clinton Faces 2 Unpleasant Choices in Bosnia; Both Put U.S. Troops at Risk : Balkans: United States can help reinforce the 23,000 U.N. peacekeepers or it can help them withdraw.

The Clinton Administration is reluctantly heading into the very hornet’s nest it has sought to avoid for 2 1/2 years: the prospect of sending U.S. combat troops to Bosnia-Herzegovina--with an uncomfortably high risk of casualties--just before the 1996 elections.

The meeting between U.S. and allied officials in London on Friday is likely to propel the Administration into one of two unhappy choices: reinforcing the 23,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops now stationed in Bosnia, or helping to pull them out once and for all.

Although officials have been publicly suggesting for months that the two options are relatively risk-free for U.S. forces, each is fraught with danger. And each carries at least an outside chance that U.S. troops could be stuck in Bosnia for months.

“To a certain extent, you’ve crossed the Rubicon,” said Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general now at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “Once you unleash the dogs of war, you start to lose control.”

Officials here insisted that the Administration has still made no decisions. The British and French continue to disagree over what to do, and Washington is trying to get them to hammer out a compromise before the conference in London on Friday.

The White House said the President urged his top foreign policy advisers Tuesday to intensify their efforts to work out a compromise on how to strengthen the U.N. peacekeeping forces and stave off a full-scale withdrawal.

Officials said Clinton plans to confer by telephone with British Prime Minister John Major and French President Jacques Chirac to “craft a consensus” in advance of the Friday meeting. The Administration wants to cancel the session if there is no accord.

British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind arrived in Washington late Tuesday for talks with Secretary of State Warren Christopher and other top officials. White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said Clinton has several proposals to discuss with the allies, but he declined to provide details.

Meanwhile, the Senate, defying warnings from the Administration that its actions would result in a “catastrophe,” began debate on a resolution by Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) to end U.S. participation in the U.N. arms embargo that, critics say, deprives Bosnian government troops of the weapons they need to fight the Bosnian Serbs fairly. Hours earlier, Christopher and Defense Secretary William J. Perry traveled to Capitol Hill to lobby lawmakers against such a step.

The Administration has warned repeatedly that lifting the arms embargo unilaterally, as the resolution would do, would prompt U.S. allies to withdraw their U.N. peacekeeping troops and raise the risk that the war would spread beyond Bosnia to countries such as Greece and Turkey.

The Dole measure is considered almost certain to pass. Congressional strategists said the major question is whether Republicans will be able to muster the two-thirds majority necessary to override a presidential veto. GOP planners believe that they will be very close.

The Administration suffered a related setback as Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), a key Clinton ally, expressed doubts about a plan that the President was weighing to use U.S. helicopters to ferry allied troops in Bosnia.

Policy-makers are wrestling with two basic choices:

* Bolster the current force of U.N. peacekeeping troops--either in Gorazde or around Sarajevo--and try to ride out the winter in the hopes that both the Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-led but non-sectarian Bosnian government will tire of the battle and eventually come to some kind of peace accord.

* Deploy an 80,000-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization evacuation force to provide cover for the peacekeepers while they pull out of the country. Clinton has pledged to send up to 25,000 U.S. troops for such an operation.

The French, advocating the first option, have proposed a force of 1,000 heavily armed combat troops--mainly French Foreign Legion units from the newly assembled European rapid-reaction force--to help prevent the Serbs from taking Gorazde. France wants the United States to provide both attack helicopters and heavy-lift cargo helicopters, in both cases flown by U.S. pilots. U.S. Army ground crews also would be deployed to the area to service and repair the aircraft.

But the plan has run into trouble because the British, who have the largest peacekeeping force in Gorazde, are reluctant to step up military action.

The Administration is urging the allies to adopt a less risky approach. Any new military intervention would be geared to breaking the siege of Sarajevo rather than defending Gorazde, and it would rely on more aggressive NATO air strikes instead of more ground troops. The idea would be to consolidate U.N. forces in central Bosnia and create a genuine “safe area”--free from the threat of Bosnian Serb artillery attacks--that could be supplied over roads unchallenged by rebel Serb militias.

Analysts cautioned that, while the plan would relieve the United States of sending its helicopter pilots into hostile territory, U.S. pilots flying warplanes with NATO patrols would be under more intense risk from Bosnian Serb antiaircraft batteries and shoulder-fired missiles. It would also expose U.S. pilots to risk if U.S. helicopters ferry U.N. troops from the enclaves to central Bosnia. And the allies would have to go along with stepped-up NATO air strikes.

The potential withdrawal of U.N. forces, outlined in a 1,500-page plan drawn up by U.S. and NATO strategists, calls for deploying as many as 80,000 allied troops--including as many as 25,000 Americans--and hundreds of fighters, helicopters and ships. Only part of the NATO force would set foot in hostile territory inside Bosnia. The rest would be stationed aboard warships and in support bases in Croatia and Italy.

Times staff writers Michael Ross in Washington and William Tuohy in London contributed to this report.