U.S. Sends Emissaries to Kick-Start Peace Talks on Balkans : Diplomacy: White House aides go to Europe. Yeltsin’s invitation rejected by Croatia’s president.

With a Croatian blitz changing the political as well as the military situation in the region, international negotiators Wednesday sought anew to bring about a breakthrough in the intractable Balkan peace process.

White House National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff, accompanied by other White House, State Department and Pentagon officials, left Washington for consultations in London, Paris and Bonn.

They are seeking ways to restart the moribund peace process in Bosnia-Herzegovina by capitalizing on Croatia’s defeat of secessionist Serbs in the neighboring Krajina region of Croatia.

The Clinton Administration provided only sketchy information on the latest U.S. initiative. But officials indicated it was essentially a reworking of proposals that failed in the past because one or more of the warring factions rejected them.

Nevertheless, officials said the chances for the proposals seem better now because of the battering that Croatian Serb forces took in the Krajina and because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s warning that it is ready to use air power is more credible than previous international threats.

Officials said Washington hopes to revive the five-power Contact Group plan for the ethnic partition of Bosnia, perhaps by redrafting the map to more closely reflect power on the ground.

The group--the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Russia--has proposed giving 51% of Bosnia to the Muslim-led but secular government and its Croatian allies and 49% to the Serbs, who now hold more than 70% of the country.

Officials said a new proposal might retain the 51-49 split while ceding the Bosnian Serb-occupied enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa to the Serbs in exchange for enlarging Muslim holdings around Sarajevo, the capital.

State Department spokesman David Johnson said the U.S. government believes that the Contact Group plan must be the basis for negotiations, although it “could be changed at the bargaining table.”

Although Russia is a member of the Contact Group, Johnson said Lake and Tarnoff are not now scheduled to visit Moscow.

Meanwhile, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s offer to broker Balkan peace talks fell flat Wednesday when Croatian President Franjo Tudjman announced he will not accept a Russian invitation to participate in peace talks.

Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic has accepted the invitation and will arrive in the Russian capital as early as today to meet with Yeltsin, Russian Foreign Ministry sources told the Interfax news agency.

On Monday, Yeltsin invited both leaders to peace talks in Moscow, saying the Kremlin could make diplomatic progress where Western negotiators had failed because of Russia’s good relations with the outcast Serbs.

Yeltsin’s spokesman announced early Wednesday that both Tudjman and Milosevic will visit Moscow--but he was immediately contradicted by Tudjman’s office, which said the Croatian president had not yet received an invitation.

Tudjman said more preparation would be needed for such a meeting, and he insisted that Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic be invited as well.

Meanwhile, the political situation among the Serbs themselves grew more contentious as Serbian leader Milosevic angrily replied to criticism by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

In an open letter, Karadzic has asserted that Milosevic betrayed the Serbian cause, allowing the Croats to crush secessionist Serbs in Krajina, who had helped their Serbian brethren in Bosnia.

In reply, Milosevic accused Bosnian Serb politicians of warmongering and blamed them for the loss of Serb-held lands in Croatia.

In a speech to officials of the rump Yugoslavia, reported by the state news agency Tanjug, Milosevic repeated his argument that Karadzic and Krajina leaders, by refusing to negotiate a peace deal, had put personal survival before the real interests of their people.

Kempster reported from Washington and Efron from Moscow.