Sarajevo Sees Some Light at Last : Intervention by the Western powers seems to be paying off in the Balkans war

In Sarajevo, electricity, water and natural gas are being restored. Relief planes are landing at the airport for the first time in months. Although pedestrians still move quickly through open areas for fear of snipers, tension has clearly eased. In the surrounding mountains, Serbian artillerymen have moved almost all their big guns out of range of the Bosnian capital under the threat of resumed NATO air strikes and counterfire. It’s not over in beleaguered Bosnia, but it’s grinding down. Now comes the hard part--separating the forces of historically bitter enemies and patching together a political settlement.

What must be said is that this agony in the heart of Europe would not have approached this seemingly final stage without the intervention of the big powers. But it took them far too long to get their act together.

All signs point now toward a political settlement. President Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader of Yugoslavia, whose Serbian expansionism lit the fuse in Bosnia, has virtually divorced himself from the outcome. His political position has collapsed under a U.N. blockade and he wants out. North of Sarajevo, the allied forces of Muslim Bosnians and anti-Serbian Croatians have stopped their crushing counteroffensive at the gates of Banja Luka, the largest Serbian city in Bosnia.

Ethnic expulsions by both sides in the 41-month-old war have left the peacemakers facing a nightmare of reshuffling populations to fit the political lines of a division of Bosnia. Under the new map, created through a crash U.S. initiative, Bosnia would be divided about equally between a Muslim-Croatian entity and a Serbian one. How the Bosnian Croats and Serbians would relate to their mother countries has yet to be sorted out. Next week at the United Nations, the foreign ministers of Croatia, Bosnia and Yugoslavia are expected to take up the guidelines.

This terrible war probably could not have been prevented. The breakup of Tito’s Yugoslavia upon the collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable. It had been disintegrating almost from the day its founder died in 1980. He was replaced by a rotating presidency of ethnic leaders, and the seeds of rivalry were sewn. When war came in 1991, the Western powers stood back, leery of the bloody Balkans. Now they will have to get their hands dirty.

Gen. John Shalikashvili, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chief of Staff, says an American force of 25,000 may be needed to help other NATO forces sort out the warring factions and keep the peace. His timetable would have U.S. troops on the ground in Bosnia no longer than the end of 1996. Good luck, general.