Bosnia Talks Intensify as Crucial Point Nears : Diplomacy: U.S. officials say accord is within reach, but that negotiations will end soon with peace or failure.

U.S. and European mediators led Bosnia’s warring factions Saturday through the most intensive day of negotiations undertaken so far, hoping to wrap up a peace agreement that continues to float just out of reach.

With Secretary of State Warren Christopher back at the table, U.S. officials remained optimistic that a deal will be closed within the next few days. But they warned Muslim, Serbian and Croatian leaders that the talks will end soon, whether in success or failure.

“These talks remain balanced on a knife’s edge,” said State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns of negotiations under way since Nov. 1 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. He said the Balkan parties “shouldn’t be under any expectation that they have another 18 days” to keep talking.

“We certainly believe that an agreement is possible,” Burns said, adding that “a very difficult and challenging negotiating process is ahead of us this weekend.”

Although the end game is proving to be more difficult than some officials had thought it would be several days ago, there are continuing signs that the parties are edging toward agreement, albeit reluctantly in some cases.

Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey told reporters that he will resign to open a slot in Bosnia’s top leadership for a Croat, a signal that the country’s Muslim-Croat alliance--considered a basic building block for postwar stability--is becoming firmer.

Sacirbey, a sometimes reluctant participant in the negotiations because he fears they will undermine Bosnian national interests, summed up: “A bad peace is better than war.”

Later, Sacirbey said that the Muslim-led Bosnian government continues to demand U.S. arms and military training as part of any deal to compensate it for the military superiority of the Serbs. He indicated that his government is not yet satisfied with the answer.

For his part, Burns said the United States is committed to creating a military equilibrium in Bosnia-Herzegovina so that no faction will be tempted to attack another. But he said Washington’s first choice is to reduce the quantity of weapons in Serbian hands. If that does not work, he said, the United States will arm the Bosnian government.

Asked about Sacirbey’s resignation, Burns praised him for “a very elegant statement” about the need for Muslim-Croat cooperation.

Also Saturday, Reuters news service reported from Zagreb, the Croatian capital, that Kresimir Zubak, the little-known Bosnian Croat who serves as president of the Muslim-Croat federation, has threatened to resign rather than sign any peace agreement that he considers detrimental to the interests of the Bosnian Croats.

A deputy in the Bosnian Croat national assembly, Pavo Gobas, said Zubak sent a letter to the assembly from Dayton in which he “offered his resignation as he doesn’t want to sign what he is being forced to.”

Meanwhile, Burns said the United States is concerned about what he termed “a pattern” of violations of the Yugoslav army’s commitment not to give military aid to its Bosnian Serb brethren. Reports that Yugoslav army units have made up some of the losses the Bosnian Serbs suffered in this summer’s bombing campaign by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are especially troubling, he said, because they raise questions about Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s credibility in keeping any promises he makes in Dayton.

“We’ve had some concern about Serb actions in the past,” Burns said. “We still have those concerns.”

Burns said questions about resupplies of Bosnian Serb militias have been raised with the Serbian delegation in Dayton, but he declined to characterize the response.

Burns also said Croatian President Franjo Tudjman indicated to U.S. officials that Croatia will cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the case of Tihomir Blaskic, a Bosnian Croat militia leader who was named to a staff position in the regular Croatian army 48 hours after he was indicted on war crimes charges.

It was not clear what Tudjman planned to do. But Burns said that from Washington’s point of view, cooperation means the Croatian government would have to arrest Blaskic and turn him over to the tribunal for trial.

Burns said the United States will give Croatia time to surrender Blaskic. If that does not happen, he said, Washington “will review all of our options,” including economic sanctions against Zagreb.