Clinton’s New Push for Peace in Bosnia : An opening for diplomacy is seen in Croatia’s war gains

The Clinton Administration, against all odds, is once again trying to take the lead in arresting Bosnia’s brutal and seemingly interminable civil war. Saying that Croatia’s recent crushing defeat of Serbian forces in the Krajina region offers an opening for renewed diplomacy, President Clinton has sent several top advisers to Europe with a dusted-off version of an earlier peace plan.

The proposal is carried by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and Peter Tarnoff, the undersecretary of state for political affairs. It calls for dividing Bosnia between the central, largely Muslim government and the rebellious Serbs, leaving the government in control of more than 51% of the country. Such a partition would force some significant pullbacks by the Serbs, who now control about 70% of Bosnia.

What inducement is there for the Serbs to accept less territory than they now hold? American officials say it’s the threat that if they don’t, the U.N. peacekeeping force will be withdrawn, the arms embargo that has so unjustly denied the Bosnian government the means of self-defense will be lifted and NATO air strikes against Serb forces will be launched on a scale not yet seen in this conflict. In other words, the “lift and strike” policy the Administration has always resisted--but which Congress favors--would be adopted.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that the Serbs have heard these threats before, and have ignored them and then safely watched Washington and its allies retreat into inaction. Is there any reason to think the latest threats will be regarded as any more credible? Maybe, just maybe, there is.

There are, it’s now clear, widening divisions within the Serb leadership over who should be calling the tune and what course should be pursued next. There are, in next-door Serbian-controlled Yugoslavia, mounting signs of economic hardship and malaise after 38 months of U.N.-imposed sanctions. And there are, in the pathetic pictures and accounts of Serbs who have been forced to flee their homes in Krajina, further terrible reminders that the chief victims in this war are civilians and that the policy of “ethnic cleansing” first proclaimed by Serb officials can be brutally and tragically turned against Serb civilians.

So however thin its credibility on Bosnia, the Clinton Administration holds new hope for its proposal for a territorial division to halt the conflict and for its threats to take dramatic measures should the proposal be rejected. That hope, of course, hangs on whether agreement and cooperation are forthcoming from U.S. allies. Failure of the plan probably would lead both to a widening of the conflict, with Croatia seeking to build on its recently won military advantage over the Serbs, and to a pullout of British and French forces, the backbone of the U.N. peacekeeping contingent.

Such a turn of events would leave Clinton no choice but to make good on his promise to send as many as 25,000 U.S. troops to cover the withdrawal, a costly and risky contingency he is eager to avoid. That explains the renewed U.S. attempt to influence events in a situation where outsiders may realistically have only the most limited chance to make a lasting difference. It is, nonetheless, an effort that must be made.