Bosnia Talks Go On Past Deadline

U.S. mediators, ignoring their own Monday morning deadline, kept Balkan leaders talking all day, apparently fending off an imminent failure and keeping the peace negotiations going for at least another day.

State Department officials announced that the talks ended about midnight but will resume today.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher met repeatedly with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman throughout another marathon day of talks aimed at ending Europe’s bloodiest war in half a century.

In the afternoon, the negotiations appeared on the verge of collapse because of territorial disagreements. Each delegation--including the Americans--readied their aircraft for departure, loading baggage and fueling their jets. But by midnight, the planes were dark.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns dismissed the activities around the aircraft as diplomatic theater.

“It looked like the jet was being fueled, but President Milosevic was there negotiating,” Burns said. He added that the other leaders also remained at the talks.

President Clinton called Tudjman to urge him to try to break the impasse, a senior White House official said. The official said Clinton received “an encouraging reply” from the Croatian president.

But a senior Bosnian government official said in the early afternoon that there was more than a 99% likelihood that the negotiations would conclude without an agreement. The official said the talks were foundering because of excessive territorial demands by the Bosnian Serbs. A Serbian official agreed that the talks were near collapse. He blamed the Croats.

As has been the case throughout the conference, the sticking point Monday was the division of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina between the Muslim-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serbs. The sides agreed in September to give 51% of the territory to the federation and 49% to the Serbs, but there was no decision at that time the boundaries.

The hottest dispute surrounded the strategic Posavina corridor, which links Serb-held land in northern Bosnia with Serbia. The Bosnian Serbs want to widen the corridor, which runs through land where Bosnian Croats have lived for generations. Any widening of the corridor would require the Bosnian Croats to withdraw from territory they currently hold.

The senior Bosnian official said the Serbs insisted on concessions in the corridor that the federation felt were clearly unreasonable. The Serbs said they thought they had an agreement to widen the corridor but that the Croats reneged at the last minute.

Bosnian Serbs captured a narrow strip of land through Posavina at the beginning of the war in 1992 and “ethnically cleansed” it of non-Serbs in some of the war’s most horrific atrocities.

The talks continued Monday long after the expiration of a 10 a.m. EST deadline that Christopher had imposed Sunday.

By setting that deadline, Christopher touched off a long day of negotiations that lasted for 22 1/2 hours, ending at 5:30 a.m. Monday when exhausted bargainers broke for a couple of hours for naps and showers. Talks resumed about 8 a.m.

Burns had insisted Sunday that the deadline was a firm one and that the U.S. sponsors would make a public announcement at 10 a.m. regardless of the situation at the time. If agreement was reached, he said, the treaty would be initialed. If not, delegates would explain the reasons for their failure.

But a senior U.S. official admitted Monday that things were never that cut and dried. The official said that the deadline was a negotiating ploy, designed to force the factions into making painful decisions.

The official said the deadline “concentrated the minds and the energies of the delegations. If there hadn’t been a deadline, they wouldn’t have gone until 5:30 a.m., I can tell you that.”

But on Monday, Burns said the mediators had decided to keep the talks going as long as there was a chance for success.

“Each of these three countries seems to want peace,” Burns said. “As long as there is a chance to make peace, we will be there with them.”

U.S. officials said late Monday that they hope to wrap up the talks today, but they avoided anything that could sound like the earlier, abortive deadline.