House Votes, 298 to 128, to Lift Bosnia Arms Embargo : Legislation: Margin is big enough to override a veto. Clinton says he expects to change lawmakers’ minds.

In another dramatic no-confidence vote against President Clinton’s policy, the Western allies and the United Nations, the House voted Tuesday for the United States to defy a U.N. arms embargo against participants in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The 298-128 vote, which followed similar action by the Senate, exceeded the two-thirds majority required to override Clinton’s threatened veto.

Despite the margin in the House and a 69-29 vote in the Senate last week--also more than enough votes to override a presidential veto--Clinton expressed confidence that the Administration can change the minds of enough lawmakers to uphold his promised veto.

Clinton Administration officials said this will happen once legislators confront all the consequences of their action, including the possible dispatch of 24,000 U.S. combat troops to the war-torn Balkans to help cover the withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers there.

“We still might sustain a veto,” Clinton told reporters after a meeting with House leaders in which two lawmakers--Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) and Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.)--switched to the Administration’s side. They said they were convinced that lifting the embargo at this time would only make matters worse, especially for the beleaguered Bosnian civilians whom the measure is intended to help.

Once the bill reaches the White House, a procedure that could take a day or two, Clinton will have 10 days, exclusive of Saturdays and Sundays, to veto it. A White House spokesman said no decision has been made yet on whether the President will use all the allotted time or will send the measure back immediately to emphasize his opposition.

There were already signs of erosion of support for lifting the embargo, actually imposed by the United Nations against all former Yugoslav republics. Two months ago, a House vote to end the embargo received more support--318 votes to 99. That measure, however, was attached to another bill that has since stalled.

White House officials are expected to concentrate on the Senate, where the margin last week was just over two-thirds.

But the President also has attractive targets in the House, where 93 Democrats joined 204 Republicans and an independent in voting for the resolution. If Clinton could bring a third of those Democrats to his side, that would be more than enough to sustain his veto.

So far, the exercise has been largely symbolic because the cumbersome legislative process and escape clauses in the bill itself mean that the embargo would not be lifted for some time, if ever. But the overwhelming vote in both the Senate and House has already given Clinton a stinging rebuke.

Politically, the President is on the defensive because his opposition to ending the embargo can be portrayed by opponents as support for genocide in Bosnia. Moreover, Administration officials say the action in Congress has already raised in London, Paris and other allied capitals some embarrassing questions about whether Clinton can keep the promises he makes to other governments.

Backers of the measure portrayed it as a matter of fairness. The army of the Muslim-led but secular Bosnian government is badly overmatched in terms of heavy weaponry by the rebel Serbs who have access to the arsenal of the former Yugoslav national army. By lifting the arms embargo, the United States could send the government the weapons it needs to protect itself and, perhaps, regain part of the more than 70% of Bosnian territory now in Bosnian Serb hands.

“ ‘Ethnic cleansing,’ mass rape and torture are the legacy of the policy of the last three years,” said Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.). “At the very least, we should not prohibit them from defending themselves.”

With mounting evidence of Bosnian Serb atrocities, many of them committed with U.N. peacekeeping troops nearby, there is an almost irresistible political attraction to a vote for lifting the embargo.

Proponents were able to cast the issue as a vote against the Administration, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations for pursuing Bosnia policies that even Clinton concedes have failed.

Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), leading the opposition to the bill, acknowledged “that the Serbs have committed a lot of atrocities.” But, he argued, “to intensify the war will simply multiply the atrocities.” And he accused proponents of ignoring the negative consequences of forcing the U.S. government to violate a U.N. Security Council embargo.

So far, the Senate and House have had something of a free vote on the issue. Lawmakers have been able to use the votes to express their outrage at Bosnian Serb atrocities--knowing that the full consequences of the step would still be far in the future.

Clinton argued that the United States and its allies agreed last month to take more resolute action against Serbian aggression. He cited an agreement to use NATO air power to protect the Muslim enclave of Gorazde as well as a decision by Britain, France and the Netherlands to create a rapid-reaction force to help protect U.N. troops.

The President urged Congress to give the new policy a chance to work.

Backers of lifting the embargo replied that the steps were too little and too late.

But the pace of the U.S. congressional system seems to guarantee that the embargo will not be lifted soon. Clinton has until the middle of this month to act on the measure. Once he issues a veto, new votes will be required in both the Senate and House.

Under terms of the legislation, the United States must stop abiding by the embargo once all U.N. troops have been withdrawn or 12 weeks after the Bosnian government asks them to leave--whether they do or not. In practice, neither of these things is likely to occur.