7 Skeptical Senators Tour Sarajevo : Balkans: Visit to Bosnia’s war-torn capital apparently fails to sway U.S. lawmakers on need for American troops.

The debate over sending U.S. troops to Bosnia shifted briefly to Sarajevo on Sunday as U.N. and Bosnian government officials tried to make the case for a future American peacekeeping role to seven skeptical senators on a three-hour fact-finding mission.

The senators arrived unconvinced and, for the most part, left that way, according to participants in the meetings in the Bosnian capital, which included sessions with the U.N. commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina, British Lt. Gen. Rupert Smith, and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic.

Their concerns about costs--both in money and lives--reflected the reluctance many Americans feel about U.S. involvement in monitoring an eventual peace in the Balkans.

President Clinton has committed about 25,000 troops to that NATO-led task in what is shaping up as a $1-billion, one-year endeavor that is contingent on the Muslim-Croatian federation and the Bosnian Serbs reaching a peace settlement in U.S.-sponsored talks set to begin in two weeks.

The first step, a nationwide cease-fire, took effect Thursday. But it is already in danger because of violations by both sides.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) led the delegation that flew into Sarajevo’s U.N.-controlled airport, which was stacked high with sandbags. The delegation’s motorcade then drove down the capital’s notorious “sniper alley” and past the hulks of bombed buildings and cars, the shattered facade of the Holiday Inn and the gutted remains of the National Library.

They also got a taste of what Sarajevo has become in the month since North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strikes forced the Serbs to remove their heavy artillery from around the city, easing a 3 1/2-year siege.

They saw people strolling Old Town streets under Indian summer sunshine, and their motorcade had the pleasure of running red traffic lights, functioning now thanks to the restoration of electricity in the last few days as part of the truce.

The senators’ convoy of armored cars paused at the vast soccer field that has become a wartime cemetery, filled with those killed in fighting and in Bosnian Serb shelling of the city. One of the senators took a picture.

The delegation included members of the Appropriations, Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, which will be central to any congressional support for President Clinton’s Bosnia policy.

Meeting separately with Smith, and then Izetbegovic and Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic, the senators were clearly skeptical about the need for U.S. participation in the eventual NATO peace-enforcement operation.

U.N. officials told them that the United States has an obligation to join the deployment.

“Basically we told them this is a Holbrooke-sponsored party,” one official said, referring to U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, whose shuttle diplomacy has spawned the current peace process. “The U.S. issued the invitations, and the host has to attend.”

Antonio Pedauye, the civilian head of the U.N. mission in Bosnia, said he argued that only the threat of the full weight of American-dominated NATO firepower would force the warring factions to obey any agreement they sign.

“We told them that without American troops, it’s not really NATO,” Pedauye said in an interview. “With NATO, it’s ‘First we shoot, then we talk later.’ That’s the difference with UNPROFOR [the U.N. peacekeeping force]. And that’s what they, the warring factions, understand.”

In response to senators’ questions, the U.N. officials discussed ways to minimize even the most basic of risks to U.S. troops, such as a farmer who might shoot a GI because the soldier is on the farmer’s land, a participant said.

Later, at the presidency building, where shelling has chipped away at the exterior and the entrances are sandbagged, Izetbegovic told the Americans that not only is their presence necessary to implement the peace agreement, but it is also needed to guarantee free elections, according to a statement issued Sunday by his office.

Under the current framework for peace talks, Bosnia will be split into two ministates--a Muslim-Croatian federation and a Serbian “republic”--within a single country.

Officials in Sarajevo have argued that for the peace plan to work, elections should be held to get rid of the Bosnian Serbs’ hard-line leadership and replace it with moderates.

Such issues, plus the actual maps that divide Bosnian territory between the parties, will be hashed out leading up to and during the talks that start at the end of the month in the United States.

Meanwhile, fighting continued in the bitterly contested northwest despite the government’s assurances that it had halted an offensive. Reports conflicted as to whether the level of fighting was greater or less than in previous days, and the ability of the United Nations to report on the region was still impeded.

One sign that the region might indeed be quieting came from the reported withdrawal of a mechanized Croatian army unit from Bosnia and back into Croatia.

The Bosnian army has relied on support from the better-equipped Croatian army for most of its battlefield success.