Impasse Puts Bosnia Peace Talks in Peril

The Bosnian government, accusing the rebel Serbs of trying to renege on their original Balkan peace agreement, threatened Sunday to pull out of negotiations scheduled for Tuesday in New York if the Serbs persist in demanding “whole-scale changes.”

The threat, however, represented a softening of the Bosnian government position. Earlier Sunday, the government said it definitely would not attend the U.S.-sponsored negotiations at the United Nations.

The Bosnian government then relented and promised to show up, provided the Serbs back down from their demands.

Any postponement or cancellation of the Tuesday meeting would strike a blow at the high-profile campaign of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke to cajole and pressure all sides into a settlement of the 3 1/2-year-old war.

U.S. officials were obviously pleased when the Muslim-run government finally agreed in the late afternoon to soften its stand. But the Bosnian outburst exposed the fragility of future negotiations.

At the direction of Secretary of State Warren Christopher, two U.S. negotiators were flying to Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, on Sunday night in an effort to bolster the peace initiative, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said. Negotiators Robert Owen and Christopher Hill were to meet today with Bosnian Muslim leaders who had threatened to boycott the talks.

The exact nature of the difficulty was only hinted at Sunday. The problem was evidently provoked by one of the most nettlesome issues in the agreement brokered by Holbrooke and signed by the foreign ministers of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and the rump Yugoslavia in Geneva two weeks ago.

In that document, Holbrooke managed to persuade all sides to accept a vague constitutional arrangement in which Bosnia would be a “united” country with almost half of it run by the Bosnian Serbs in their own “republic.”

Devising a formula to implement that constitutional arrangement, however, is problematic because the Muslims who run the Bosnian government believe that the Bosnian Serbs have no right to secede from a “united” country, while the Bosnian Serbs believe that their “republic” has the right to do so if it chooses.

U.S. diplomats, who have been meeting with all sides in advance of this week’s negotiations, evidently failed to resolve the impasse in discussions with the Serbs in Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital.

As a result, the office of Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic issued a statement on Sunday stating that Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey had been ordered not to attend the Tuesday meeting.

The presidential statement, according to Bosnian state radio, said that “in view of the fact the Serb side has failed to respond positively to our constructive proposals for further work on the details of the principles contained in the Geneva document, our minister of foreign affairs . . . has been instructed not to attend.”

Sacirbey, who was in Washington for talks with U.S. diplomats, discussed this with Holbrooke and was evidently persuaded to change his government’s position.

The foreign minister issued a new Bosnian government statement in the late afternoon that said: “President Izetbegovic has instructed me to proceed with the negotiations scheduled for Tuesday . . . on the basis of the document worked on between our government and the American negotiating team on Friday.”

That document, which has not been made public, was apparently rejected by the Serbian government, which is negotiating on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs.

Sacirbey said that the Serbs have “demanded whole-scale changes which radically alter the [Geneva] agreement, which are inconsistent with the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and which would negate agreement for Tuesday’s meeting.”

He said the demands have put the Tuesday meeting “into jeopardy.”

Some analysts surmise that the Bosnian government believes its recent gains on the battlefield will serve it better than discussions at the negotiating table.

Amid the international push for peace, fighting flared on several fronts in northern Bosnia.

In the northwestern Bosnian town of Lusci Palanka, ambulances screeched out of town Sunday ferrying soldiers who were wounded in fighting that continued along a chaotic front line despite diplomatic efforts to end it.

Artillery and cannon fire exploded about half a mile away through much of the afternoon.

Soldiers from the Bosnian government’s 5th Corps said Serbian troops remained in the nearby hills after putting up stiff resistance to hold on to the embattled town.

Late last week, government troops took Lusci Palanka three days ago, another Serbian town on their push east from Bihac as part of a military campaign to widen government control of western Bosnia. Lusci Palanka is about nine miles west of Sanski Most, the largest Serb-held town on the way to the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka.

“We broke their line of defense on one side, but they were waiting for us,” Hidajet Mulalic, an artillery gunner from the 5th Corps, said in describing the battle to take Lusci Palanka. “There was heavy resistance on the edge of town.”

Judging from the wounded being pulled out, skirmishes continued Sunday, although it was impossible to obtain precise information.

Fifth Corps commanders have told international monitors that up to 1,500 Serbian troops may still be arrayed along the highlands south of Lusci Palanka, possibly as part of a counteroffensive.

Fresh attacks were also reported in Brcko, a town in the corridor linking Banja Luka with the mass of Serb-held territory in the east.

Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic over the weekend told reporters in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, that his government will not give up on taking Banja Luka unless the rebel leaders there surrender.

But the ability of the government’s 5th Corps to take Banja Luka is more than questionable, and there were signs that some of the fighting Sunday was more by chance than strategy.

Some Bosnian soldiers apparently stumbled into confrontations with Serbian troops on the edge of town, ending up in fierce hand-to-hand combat with high casualties, according to other soldiers.

Although the Serbs initially seemed to allow a retreat from the government advance that began earlier this month, they have since put up more resistance, and it has apparently become easier for them to defend a smaller patch of territory.

Meisler reported from Washington and Wilkinson from Lusci Palanka.