Clinton Seeks to Convert Croat Gains Into Bosnia Peace : Balkans: White House spokesman cites possibility of ‘new opening’ for diplomatic efforts.

President Clinton huddled with his top foreign policy advisers Monday to search for ways to use a bloody Croatian army offensive as a springboard for a new diplomatic effort to end the ethnic conflict in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“The fighting may have created a new opening for further diplomatic efforts,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said in describing the President’s response to the Croatian blitz that overran most of the Krajina region of Croatia, held by secessionist Serb forces for four years.

The Clinton Administration contends that the Croatian assault on the Krajina will deprive the Bosnian Serbs of a base just over the border held by their ethnic allies.

That strategic loss--combined with the growing strength of the Bosnian army, as its numerically larger force becomes better trained and better equipped--will convince the Bosnian Serbs that there are no more gains to be made on the battlefield, the White House reasoning goes.

The scenario is plausible.

But experts argue that it may amount to little more than White House wishful thinking.

The Krajina assault could well have a far more ominous effect from Washington’s view. It could serve to strengthen the Bosnian Serb army by filling in its most damaging shortage: manpower. Tens of thousands of defeated Croatian Serb fighters have poured over the border into Serb-held areas of Bosnia. If these fighters are pressed into the Bosnian Serb army, as seems likely, they will strengthen a force that is heavily armed but outnumbered and stretched thin.

And if the Bosnian Serbs respond to the defeat of the Croatian Serbs by attacking the Muslim enclaves of Gorazde, Bihac or Sarajevo, the capital, the Administration will be in grave danger of being sucked into the Balkan conflict. The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies have promised to use air power to blunt any renewed Serbian attacks on U.N. “safe areas” in Bosnia.

But for now, the White House chooses to see potential gains from the Croatian offensive. Clinton and other officials will confer this week with U.S. allies on reopening diplomatic talks aimed at finding an elusive end to the Balkan war, McCurry said.

“No further military action is likely to make matters better, and now is the time for the parties to come together and to begin serious discussions that will lead to a political settlement [based on] the Contact Group proposal,” McCurry said, referring to the plan advanced by the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany to partition Bosnia into government- and Serb-controlled regions.

The Contact Group plan, which has been accepted by the Muslim-led but secular Bosnian government and rejected by the Bosnian Serbs, calls for the federation of Bosnian Muslims and Croats to get 51% of the country’s territory, with the Bosnian Serbs taking the other 49%. The Serbs now control more than 70% of Bosnia.

Although the U.S. government hopes that all sides in the complex Balkan war are weary of fighting and ready to talk peace, there is little evidence to support that view.

All sides in the conflict seem convinced that U.N. peacekeeping forces will be pulled out soon, said Daniel Goure, a former Pentagon official who is now deputy director of political-military studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He said it seems likely that “no one will fold their cards until the U.N. is out and they can test their strength on the real battlefield.”

“Why should they settle until the U.N. is out?” he said. “Whose interest is it in to have peace? Nobody. The only people who have any interest in peace are those that are involved in peacekeeping and the United States. We want to get out in a way that doesn’t appear to be a total rout.”

For the Croats to risk strengthening the Bosnian Serb military by handing them several tens of thousands of Croatian Serb fighters seems to cast doubt on the ties between the Croatian and Bosnian regimes. That alliance has always been shaky and the Bosnian government may have been sold out to advance Croatian interests.

“The people who are the most uneasy are the Bosnian Muslims,” said Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former National Security Council and State Department expert. “They had some relief in Bihac, but they may now be asking themselves what comes next. Bihac provided an excellent jumping-off spot for the Croatian offensive against the Krajina.”