Bosnia Serbs’ Acceptance of Deal Uncertain

One of the most critical questions haunting the new U.S.-brokered Bosnian peace accord is whether the Bosnian Serbs will obey a document signed not by their own people but by a proxy: the president of Serbia.

The Serbs have defied President Slobodan Milosevic in the past. On two previous occasions, the self-declared Bosnian Serb “parliament” rejected peace accords that Milosevic approved.

Under pressure from Milosevic and a weakened battlefield position, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on Aug. 29 agreed to let the Serbian president negotiate on his behalf in the talks that led to the comprehensive agreement initialed Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio. But Karadzic’s supporters were quick to condemn the deal and threatened to ignore its terms. Milosevic, in turn, may have sealed Karadzic’s political death through territorial concessions that isolate his power base.

Most objectionable to the Bosnian Serb leadership are two key points that dogged the talks to the very end: the fate of Sarajevo and the width and breadth of the Brcko corridor, also known as the Posavina corridor, a lifeline swath of territory that connects Bosnian Serb holdings in eastern and western Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Milosevic gave up Sarajevo to Muslim-Croat control and accepted a five-kilometer (three-mile) width for the corridor--less than what the Bosnian Serbs wanted--while agreeing to submit the city of Brcko to international arbitration. In exchange, the Serbs received the western Bosnian cities of Mrkonjic Grad and Sipovo, which had fallen to Muslim-Croat forces just last month.

Milosevic’s strategy seems aimed at pitting two different sets of Bosnian Serbs against each other, favoring those more loyal to him while punishing those who have given him the most trouble--namely the rebellious Karadzic and his nationalist cronies based in Pale, a ski resort nine miles southeast of Sarajevo.

Karadzic had long fought for a piece of Sarajevo, something that Milosevic considered impractical and unimportant. Now, under the agreement initialed by Milosevic, the Serbs must relinquish control of several Sarajevo suburbs, including Grbavica, Ilidza and Vogosca, the site of an ammunition factory. That concession, combined with the decision to establish a land corridor to the last Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia, Gorazde, effectively leaves Karadzic’s Pale isolated and stranded.

The gains for the Serbs in western Bosnia, on the other hand, will bolster the Banja Luka Serbs who have been loyal to Milosevic and who, like him, come from Communist Party backgrounds. Banja Luka had a prewar population of about 140,000.

Milosevic is apparently attempting to exploit a pronounced and longstanding split between the Pale and Banja Luka Serbs as the most effective way to win Bosnian Serb compliance.

Anxiously waiting to see whether that or any other strategy will work are U.S. officials, who all along have remained hopeful but unsure as to whether Milosevic could do the trick.

“We kept asking Milosevic whether he really would be able to get the Serbs to go along with what he gave in the talks, and he kept insisting that he had the authority and the political strength,” said one U.S. mediator in Dayton. “But we know it’ll be a tough sell for him.”

American officials became especially concerned Tuesday afternoon after hearing the angry responses from several key Bosnian Serb leaders. A Clinton Administration official said several Serb leaders were refusing to accept the terms of the agreement, beginning with the territorial compromise at the core of the deal.

The most bitter rejection of the peace deal came from Momcilo Krajisnik, the hard-line head of the Bosnian Serb parliament and a key Karadzic aide whose own profile has been on the rise lately.

He likened the accord to treason and said that he and the other two Bosnian Serb representatives at the Dayton meetings had been excluded from negotiating sessions and were not shown the maps until 10 minutes before the initialing ceremony.

“No one has the right to give up the territories our people have defended with blood,” Krajisnik said.

In Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and the rump Yugoslavia, other hard-line nationalists--the only real domestic political opposition that Milosevic faces--echoed Krajisnik’s sentiments.

“Slobodan Milosevic has betrayed and sold out all [Bosnian] Serb territories,” radical Serb nationalist Vojislav Seselj said. “He encouraged the [Bosnian] Serbs to fight, and they liberated most of the territory through enormous sacrifice. He is now ruthlessly trampling on the results of their struggle only to stay in power.”

But in Banja Luka, perhaps predictably, the reaction was positive.

Gen. Milan Gvero, a senior official in the Bosnian Serb army and deputy to its commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, pledged support for the pact. “In these circumstances, it is the maximum that could have been achieved,” Gvero said.

Milosevic for some time has been cultivating leftist political parties in Banja Luka as satellites, with the aim of transforming Banja Luka, a crowded, bustling industrial city, into the Bosnian Serb capital, supplanting Karadzic and Pale.

Several U.S. officials at the Dayton talks remained adamant that American troops would not be deployed in Bosnia as long as Karadzic and Mladic are in power. Both are indicted war criminals who, under the agreement, would be banned from public office, although not specifically turned over to the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.

Times staff writers Norman Kempster in Washington and Art Pine in Dayton contributed to this report.

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Territorial Trade-Off

If Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic gave up too much, Bosnian Serbs could reject the settlement. Here is what he exchanged:

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He Gave

* Sarajevo to Muslim-Croat control

* A three-mile width for the Brcko corridor--less than what the Bosnian Serbs wanted

* The city of Brcko to international arbitration

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He Got

* Cities of Mrkonjic Grad and Sipovo, which had fallen to Croat-Muslim forces just last month