CRISIS IN BOSNIA : Senate Takes Up Debate on Bosnia Arms Ban : Embargo: Dole pushes for weapons sales to help Muslim-led government. Vote is expected today.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) brushed aside a last-ditch request by President Clinton and reopened debate Tuesday on legislation to force the Administration to end its embargo on the sale of arms to combatants in Balkan warfare.

Dole and others who favor lifting the embargo, which critics say puts the Muslim-led government of Bosnia-Herzegovina at a severe disadvantage, appear to have a clear majority in the Senate.

They argued that the United States has a moral obligation to permit Bosnian government troops to defend themselves against the generally better-armed Bosnian Serb rebels and should end the embargo unilaterally if no U.S. allies agree to take similar steps to sell arms to the Bosnian government.

The Senate debated Dole’s resolution late Tuesday and was expected to vote on it today.

The White House fears that removing the ban on sale of U.S. weapons would increase the likelihood of further U.S. entanglement.

“In short, unilateral lifting [of the embargo] means unilateral responsibility,” Clinton said in a letter to Dole and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D). “We are in this with our allies now. We would be in it by ourselves if we unilaterally lifted the embargo.”

Clinton also warned that ending the embargo against the wishes of U.S. allies would threaten the stability of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “The NATO alliance has stood strong for almost five decades,” he said. “We should not damage it in a futile effort to find an easy fix to the Balkan conflict.”

Dole, in a speech on the Senate floor, called the embargo morally wrong and harshly criticized the Bosnia policy of the United States and its allies. The Bosnian government, which has few heavy weapons, argues that the embargo gives the Bosnian Serbs a tremendous advantage because they inherited the vast majority of weapons once held by the Yugoslav army.

“What does this say about America? That we are willing to go along with immoral and insane policies because the rest of the international community is doing so?” Dole said. “What does this say about American leadership?”

Opponents of the Dole measure argued that it would push the United States to send its troops to Bosnia--at the very least to help U.N. peacekeepers leave the region. Military analysts believe that the Bosnian Serbs would regard lifting the embargo as the final gesture ending any vestiges of U.N. neutrality and that the rebels would launch all-out assaults on U.N. peacekeeping troops. Clinton has pledged to send 25,000 U.S. ground troops to assist in any withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers.

Under Dole’s measure, the United States would break the embargo only after U.N. peacekeepers withdrew from the region. The measure gives the Bosnian government an alternate way of getting the embargo lifted by requesting that the U.N. forces withdraw. In that event, the embargo would end 12 weeks after the Bosnian government’s request, regardless of whether the peacekeepers were withdrawn.

In an effort to broaden support, Dole’s measure was amended to provide Clinton with a mechanism to maintain the embargo for an unlimited number of 30-day periods if he declared such action necessary for U.S. security interests.

Angered by what critics around the globe have assailed as Bosnian Serb aggression, Dole and others in the Senate have long called for repeal of the embargo, which was imposed in 1991 by the U.N. Security Council.

The President has vowed to veto the resolution.