U.S. Seeks a Military Balance in Bosnia : Balkans: Washington’s new dilemma is how to even out region’s armed forces without appearing to take sides.

The Clinton Administration, having achieved a peace agreement in Bosnia, is now facing a major dilemma over how to achieve a military balance between the Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-Croat federation without providing extensive artillery, armor and other heavy weapons to the Muslims.

Washington badly wants the Bosnian Muslims to be capable of defending themselves against the rebel Serbs so that the hard-won peace does not begin to break down when the 60,000-troop NATO-led peacekeeping force begins pulling out.

But the United States does not want to ship more heavy weapons into a region already ravaged by four years of war or to appear to be taking sides by building up the Bosnian Muslim army.

“This could prove to be a pretty important issue once we get past the initial entry of NATO troops into the country,” a well-placed Administration official said Friday. “We need to restore the [military] balance somehow, but we want to do it in the most effective way.”

So far the Administration has been trying to straddle the issue.

Defense Secretary William J. Perry, who first raised the possibility of arming the Muslims, said recently that the United States first will press the Serbs to disarm. Only if that does not work will it take steps to arm the Muslims instead, he said.

But there has been little indication that the Bosnian Serbs, who have strong superiority in heavy weapons, will agree to disarmament.

This week, however, Washington has been looking at a variation: An offer by Germany to host talks next month on Bosnian disarmament to go with companion conferences--one, in Paris, for signing the peace accord and a second, in London, on economic reconstruction.

Although American officials insist that the German offer--announced by mediator Wolfgang Ischinger at the initialing of the peace accord in Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday--was not dreamed up at the request of the United States, they are looking at it increasingly as a possible way out.

While the peace accord that the three warring factions concluded in Dayton contains a special section devoted to gradual arms reduction, U.S. diplomats acknowledge that it is the least specific--and possibly the weakest--provision in the document.

U.S. officials hold out some hope that having new arms reduction talks hosted by a third party--rather than by the Americans--could make the idea more palatable.

With the U.S. already busy with the broader military aspects of the peace accord, the German offer is particularly welcome.

“It’s a perfect fit,” a senior Administration strategist said Friday.

While the allies ponder how to establish a stable military balance, steps are under way to lift the worldwide embargo on arms sales to the Bosnia combatants that the United Nations imposed in 1991.

On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council approved a gradual phaseout of the ban, eliminating all legal barriers to the arming of the Bosnian Muslims.

Fear that U.S. efforts to arm the Muslims would antagonize the Bosnian Serbs and prompt them to target U.S. troops as enemies has been a major factor in Congress’ opposition to the deployment of U.S. troops to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

While lawmakers earlier were actively pressing the Administration to find a way to arm the Bosnian Muslims, they recently have begun to worry that doing so now will place U.S. troops in danger.

Western diplomats say Germany made the offer to host a disarmament conference at the last minute, partly as a way to take on a visible role in the Bosnian peace conference and partly to gain influence in the region.

Perry, visiting U.S. soldiers training in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, on Friday, reiterated that while U.S. officials expect to find “some resistance” to the NATO peacekeeping force among Bosnian factions, U.S. troops will not go in if there is widespread opposition.

“We do expect that there will be some opposition--some resistance to that deployment,” Perry said.

However, he added, “we are not going in to fight a war, and we are not going in if we are faced with that.”

Meanwhile, the White House released letters Friday from Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian leaders guaranteeing the security of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeeping troops and pledging to carry out the new peace accord.

The near-identical letters, dated Tuesday, commit Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic to taking “all possible measures” to “ensure the safety and security of all American and other forces and civilian personnel participating” in the NATO force.

Milosevic’s letter includes a paragraph ensuring that the Bosnian Serbs will comply with the accord.