U.S. Seeks Backing for Air Strikes : Bosnia: France and Britain appear to have already OKd Washington’s plan to safeguard Sarajevo, Gorazde.

With Britain and France apparently on board, the Clinton Administration struggled to win international backing Thursday for massive air bombardment in Bosnia-Herzegovina to stem the Bosnian Serb threat against Gorazde, a campaign the United States wants to press even if the rebel Serbs retaliate by seizing hostages.

Defense Secretary William J. Perry outlined Washington’s objective in stark terms: If the Bosnian Serbs do not back off from any plans to overrun the U.N.-designated “safe area” of Gorazde and refrain from renewed shelling of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, warplanes of the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies will hit them hard and continuously “even in the face of possible hostage-taking.”

Perry said earlier uses of NATO air power have been ineffective because the U.N. command limited the targets to items such as a single artillery piece or a single tank. In the future, he said, the strikes must inflict real damage. He said they probably would start with preemptive attacks on Bosnian Serb air-defense missiles.

Perry and Secretary of State Warren Christopher huddled with British, French, Russian and other leaders Thursday in advance of a 17-nation international conference today, called to draft a response to the rebel Serb offensive that has already overrun Srebrenica, threatens Zepa and menaces Gorazde and other vulnerable Muslim enclaves.

A senior Defense Department official said Perry and Christopher obtained a general agreement that Gorazde and Sarajevo must be better protected but that no decisions have been made yet on how to do it.

But White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said French President Jacques Chirac told President Clinton by telephone that Paris supports the air option, even though it has not abandoned its own plan of reinforcing Gorazde with about 1,200 more U.N. troops. The United States is unenthusiastic about the French proposal and officials said it has little support at the London conference.

McCurry said Chirac “did suggest that the French were now prepared to accept our proposal . . . for a more robust threat of air power in and around Gorazde and Sarajevo.”

Britain also has agreed to support the bombing, although some officials still have strong misgivings about it because of concern that British soldiers in the U.N. command might be seized as hostages.

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Talking to reporters aboard his Air Force jetliner on the flight from Washington, Perry said the London conference marks “a turning point in the Bosnia war.” He said the international community either must reinforce the U.N. military operation or withdraw it.

Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff who also talked to reporters aboard Perry’s plane, conceded that air power alone is seldom successful in turning the tide of a conflict. But in Gorazde, he said, the Bosnian government has ample ground troops to protect the enclave, if they are not overmatched in tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons. He said NATO air power could be used “as an equalizer against the artillery and the other heavy weapons.”

Just such a plan worked in February, 1994, when the threat of NATO air strikes caused the Bosnian Serbs to stop shelling Sarajevo. Perry said the Serb rebels are now threatening to renew the shelling “and if they do, the way to deal with them is through air strikes.”

Perry said the American plan can be carried out by NATO countries without additional action by the U.N. Security Council because the council has already authorized military action to defend Gorazde, Sarajevo and other enclaves declared U.N. safe areas.

“These actions we’re talking about do not require additional U.N. resolutions or an additional NATO resolution, they simply require enforcing, vigorously, the resolutions and mandates already established,” he said.

But at U.N. headquarters in New York, Ahmed Fawzi, a spokesman for Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, insisted that a new council resolution was necessary. The new proposal “has to go to the Security Council and it has to be mandated by the Security Council,” he told reporters. “In order to change the existing mandate, you need a new resolution.”

The debate is not simply academic: Russia, a traditional ally of the Serbs, could veto any new Security Council resolution, an outcome Washington hopes to avoid.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said Christopher stated the U.S. case for air strikes in a meeting Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev, who made no commitment.

Perry’s airborne interview was a high-stakes diplomatic gamble. While State Department officials said Washington’s objectives in the London conference go beyond defense of Gorazde and Sarajevo, Perry seemed to nail his colors to the mast; anything less than approval of an air campaign will appear to be a failure for the Administration.

In the past, U.N. and NATO forces have been hamstrung by the danger that U.N. ground troops would be taken hostage and used as human shields. Burns said the threat of hostage-taking was a central issue in each of Christopher’s meetings Thursday.

The United States is on shaky ground in advocating a no-compromise position on hostage-taking, because there are no U.S. ground troops in the U.N. command. But officials said there are Americans in harm’s way in Bosnia, including civilian officials, liaison officers to the U.N. command and others; about half of the NATO pilots flying missions above Bosnia are Americans.

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In Washington, Administration officials said the danger of hostage-taking has been reduced, in part because the United Nations has withdrawn many of its troops into Muslim-ruled central Bosnia, beyond the nationalist Serbs’ reach.

The United Nations, they said, has already moved many of its peacekeepers out of vulnerable positions in expectation of NATO air strikes around Gorazde, the eastern Bosnian city the allies have decided to defend against Serb attack.

Times staff writers Doyle McManus and Stanley Meisler in Washington contributed to this report.

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Bosnian Serb Air Defenses

The United States, Britain and France have agreed to use air strikes to protect Gorazde if Serbs attack. Planes would face an air-defense system that has 45 surface-to-air missile launchers, not including shoulder-fired versions known as SA-7s. Most are clustered in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The system: U.S. intelligence analysts say the Bosnian Serb air defenses are part of an integrated air-defense system that is headquartered in Serbia, under command of the former Yugoslav army. As a result, Belgrade can use its own, more-powerful radar system to locate an intruding allied aircraft and then relay the information to Bosnian Serb forces, which then can shoot it down seconds later. That means allied warplanes, such as the F-16 fighter that was piloted by U.S. Air Force Capt. Scott O’Grady, have little real warning before they are fired upon.

The arsenal: Four basic types of missiles--the older SA-2 and SA-3 stationary missile batteries; the radar-homing, two-section SA-6 mobile missile; and the SA-7, a modern shoulder-fired weapon. Although the SA-2 and SA-3 are obsolescent, they still are effective.

Bosnian Serbs’ Key Weapons Locations

Although the Bosnian Serbs have some radar sites in southeast Bosnia, the bulk of their air defenses are deployed in the northern and western part of the country, north of a line between Udbina, Croatia, and Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Missiles

The Bosnian Serbs have built a fairly sophisticated and extensive--system of air defenses across the northern half of Bosnia-Herzegovina, composed of a broad array of surface-to-air missiles [SAMs].

Designation/Name Type Range in miles SA-2 Guideline Fixed 31.0 SA-3 Goa Fixed 18.6 SA-6 Gainful Mobile 37.3 SA-7 Grail Shoulder- fired 6.2

Sources: Defense Department, Jane’s Weapons Systems