Curtain for a European Tragedy : With accord signed, the building of a Bosnia peace must begin

“The war is over,” declared Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, whose nationalistic thundering ignited the vicious Bosnian conflict 43 months ago. In the heart of America, pushed by Clinton Administration diplomats to take the last, hard steps to peace, Milosevic and Presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Franco Tudjman of Croatia struck a deal stained by the blood of perhaps 200,000 dead. Their armies had run out of steam months ago, but it still took the leaders three weeks of grueling negotiations to stagger to a world-welcomed conclusion in Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.

There are no heroes among these men. Each played for every advantage. Milosevic demanded and received the promise of arbitration on control of a town that links Bosnian Serb forces to the motherland. More significantly on the wider stage, the Serbian delegation agreed to language banning those charged with war crimes from holding political office. Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic have been indicted in absentia by a U.N. war crimes tribunal. But nothing in the accord--initialed at the conference site, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio--required Karadzic and Mladic to be turned over to U.N. officials. Bosnia got the promise that Sarajevo, the once beautiful, now battered mountain capital, would remain undivided and under the control of a Bosnian Muslim-Croat federation that will rule half the country. Bosnian Serbs get the other half.

The American, European and U.N. diplomats and soldiers who finally brought this war to an end deserve great credit. Certainly the combatants were not able to do it themselves. Assistant Secretary of State Richard C. Holbrooke performed a remarkable and exhausting feat in getting the three presidents onto foreign soil for a peace conference. Secretary of State Warren Christopher time and again gave the extra shove that moved them closer. And full credit goes to President Clinton. He stuck his neck out and made a peace agreement his Administration’s No. 1 foreign policy objective. Announcing the deal at a Rose Garden press conference Tuesday morning, he boldly took the next step. “We must help them make it work,” Clinton declared. “. . . Only NATO can do that job and the United States, as NATO’s leader, must play an essential part in this mission.”

This means sending American troops to Bosnia as part of a NATO peace force. Clinton, burned by American casualties in Somalia under his presidency and singed by the fitful deployment in Haiti, nevertheless has stuck to his guns on Bosnia. His decision as a key NATO leader to send U.S. and European combat planes into action against Serbian forces helped force the cease-fire.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) have challenged the decision to risk American lives in Europe, but the Clinton coup may have taken the wind from the GOP sails. On Tuesday Gingrich said Congress will hold hearings on the U.S. contingent-20,000 or more of a 60,000-member NATO peace force. “I am not prepared to vote yes,” he said, “but I would discourage any member from automatically voting no.”

The argument is often put forward that to be a leader of NATO the United States must share the organization’s commitments. Washington created NATO and bears in Europe the responsibilities of a great power. Each operation must be carefully weighed, but that responsibility stands.

Going into Bosnia’s civil war, in which U.S. support has tilted toward the Muslim side, will be unusually risky. The peace there will come step by step, with difficulties in each ad- vance. The U.N. embargoes are first up. Early next week the Security Council could consider eliminating the economic sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro, Serbia’s partner in the rump Yugoslavia. The embargo has crippled the Serbian economy, and President Milosevic made its removal a condition of accepting the Day- ton formula for peace, according to press reports.

More sensitive is the U.N. arms embargo against shipments to the three combatants. The pain was felt almost exclusively by the Bosnian Muslims. The Serbians had sufficient resources to make their own armaments. The Croatians, by all accounts, simply ignored the embargo and the United Nations did nothing to enforce it. This newspaper has supported lifting the embargo for Bosnia to even the balance. If fighting were to break out again, we would continue to do so.

A formal peace agreement will be signed in Paris early next month. That would trigger the lifting of the arms embargo in phases over a six-month period. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Bosnian refugees must now try to remake their lives after this awful, tragic conflict.