NEWS ANALYSIS : Fatal Flaws May Scuttle U.S.-Brokered Bosnia Pact

A U.S.-brokered agreement for Bosnian Serbs to withdraw their heavy guns from around Sarajevo may be fatally flawed because it allows many weapons to stay behind and relies on Serbian good faith, analysts and diplomats said Friday.

Questions about the plan emerged amid the first signs that the Serbs may be complying with some terms of the agreement: A test flight landed safely at the Sarajevo airport for the first time in five months, and an overland convoy arrived under armed U.N. escort. A handful of Serbian tanks and artillery pieces were reported on the move, though not necessarily in the right direction.

After insisting for more than two weeks that a punishing NATO air campaign would not halt until the Serbs moved heavy weapons, the Western alliance Thursday announced a 72-hour suspension of air strikes to give the Serbs time to comply.

But the agreement, reached by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, will allow about one-third of the Serbs’ weaponry, including antiaircraft guns, to remain within a 12 1/2-mile exclusion zone around Sarajevo.

Artillery pieces of 100-millimeter caliber or less, and mortars of 82-millimeter caliber or less, were excluded from the withdrawal agreement and will be permitted in the hills around this beleaguered city, according to an addendum to the nine-point accord.

U.N. military officers in Sarajevo seemed stunned that these weapons will not be withdrawn, and Lt. Gen. Rupert Smith, U.N. commander in Bosnia, appealed to his superiors for a broader definition of heavy weapons, as was originally envisioned in the NATO ultimatum.

“We’re making a recommendation to change” the caliber, U.N. military spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Vernon said. “We are hopeful at the lower level of command that we will be listened to.”

But he suggested that military details were sacrificed in the haste to reach an agreement.

Originally, NATO and the United Nations demanded that all weapons of caliber greater than 12.7 millimeters be withdrawn. That would have covered almost all of the estimated 300 pieces that the Serbs have had trained on Sarajevo for most of the last 41 months of siege.

In Washington, Clinton Administration officials, acknowledging the limits on calibers, seemed to distance themselves from the agreement.

Although Holbrooke accepted the plan as an important step in the right direction, one official said, the U.S. government will urge the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to resume air strikes unless all “dangerous” weapons are removed from the exclusion zone.

The official declined to define “dangerous” but made clear that the term includes a number of weapons smaller than 82-millimeter.

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“We have conveyed to the U.N. a very tough line on the weapons,” the official said. “The Serbs’ statement does not fully meet U.N. and NATO demands.”

The official said the agreement did not represent official U.S. policy: “We didn’t write the statement. We wouldn’t have written it the way it was written.”

President Clinton warned Bosnian Serbs against breaking their pledge to lift the long siege of Sarajevo. “They should have no doubt that NATO will resume the air strikes if they fail to keep their commitments, if they strike again at Sarajevo or the other safe areas,” he said.

Officials of the Muslim-led Bosnian government rejected the terms of partial withdrawal Friday and refused to sign the agreement. The caliber issue was one of several reasons for the rejection.

“I don’t see it [the agreement] changing anything,” said a government official. “Most of the damage here has been caused by [low-caliber] mortars.”

Under the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement, the Serbs also pledged to refrain from attacking two roads into Sarajevo and the capital’s airport, which the Serbs shut down on April 8 by shooting at aircraft.

On Friday, a military cargo airplane landed at the sandbagged, barbed-wire-surrounded airport. It was a camouflaged French C-130 bearing a load of flour and the French defense minister, Charles Millon.

Also on Friday, a U.N. humanitarian convoy was permitted to enter Sarajevo over a road that had been closed by the Serbs for months.

Neither the road nor the airport will be open to Bosnians, who remain largely trapped in the city.

In other parts of Bosnia, Serbian rebels reportedly launched two shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles at NATO planes outside Gorazde in the east. They missed, and no fire was returned, a U.N. spokesman said.

And in the northwest, Bosnian government and Croatian forces continued to drive Serbian troops and refugees eastward after capturing rebel-held territory earlier this week.

The steps announced on Thursday are only preliminary in the still-far-off process of lifting the siege of Sarajevo, although relief agency officials said their efforts to feed and provide residents with medical supplies will improve dramatically with the new access.

Another potential flaw in the agreement is that it relies on the Serbs’ own accounting of weapons. They will provide an inventory that will then serve as the basis for whether the arms have been moved or not. U.N. officials say they cannot independently verify how much and what kind of weapons the Serbs have, nor where they are.

The Serbs have a credibility problem because they have previously pledged to keep weapons out of the exclusion zone, then failed to do so, and have used U.N. weapon collection points to aim at Sarajevo’s streets.

Given the potential pitfalls, some analysts suggested that Holbrooke accepted an imperfect agreement to strengthen Milosevic’s position with the Bosnian Serbs. Holbrooke needs Milosevic to be strong as he continues to spearhead a U.S. peace initiative that has shown promise toward a settlement in the war.

And Milosevic needed to be able to show the Bosnian Serbs that he could end the air strikes, a Western official said.

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“We would have liked something more watertight, but preserving Milosevic’s credibility with the Bosnian Serbs was more important,” said the official. “Without that, the wider [peace] process would crumble. It may be a miscalculation. It doesn’t mean the whole house of cards won’t collapse anyway.”

As for whether the Serbs can be expected to comply this time, there are two differences now. One is that Milosevic took a personal role and forced Bosnian Serb leaders Gen. Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic to meet with Holbrooke and sign the agreement.

Secondly, U.N. officials say the use of force by NATO and the Anglo-French rapid-reaction force in the last two weeks has served as a new deterrent.

“You’ve seen more than a verbal threat,” Vernon said. “They risk force against them. That is the fundamental difference.”

Holbrooke, en route to Geneva following a meeting with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, said Friday that he was “moderately hopeful” that the Balkans had “taken another step away from war,” but he cautioned that the proof “will be in the compliance.”

If the Serbs renege on the bargain, Holbrooke said, “a return of action by NATO is unavoidable, whatever the consequences.”

Meanwhile, in Rome on Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry said he was withdrawing his request to use Italy’s Aviano Air Base for possible missions over Bosnia by U.S. Air Force F-117 Stealth fighters.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this article.