Congress Rejects Effort to Deny Bosnia Funding : Balkans: Clinton gets grudging support from Senate. But the House denounces decision to send troops.

Congress turned back efforts Wednesday to abort American participation in the Bosnia peacekeeping mission, and the Senate, in a surprisingly broad show of support, gave grudging approval for the deployment of 20,000 U.S. troops.

At the end of a day of emotional and at times bitterly partisan debate, President Clinton and lawmakers reached a hard compromise:

Lawmakers would not stand in the way of his commitment to send troops to the 60,000-member allied peacekeeping mission, and--in the Senate at least--they would even express support for the mission because the president had already pledged that the United States would be involved. But the lawmakers would not say that Clinton had done the right thing by giving that commitment.

Clinton left for Paris late Wednesday to witness today’s signing of the peace accord the three warring factions initialed Nov. 21 at U.S.-brokered talks in Dayton, Ohio.

He departed only hours after learning that the Senate and House had scuttled attempts to thwart the deployment of U.S. troops through the only mechanism at their disposal: cutting off funds for the mission.

In the Senate, the vote was 77 to 22 against barring the funds. The House vote of 218 to 210 reversed the chamber’s Nov. 17 decision to deny the funding.

The White House responded by hailing those votes as a victory. “Having voted overwhelmingly not to shut off funding is in a sense a verdict on the president’s judgment,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry. “That was probably the strongest statement of support they could possibly make.”

That interpretation was not voiced on Capitol Hill, however, where the House and Senate proceeded later Wednesday to debate nonbinding resolutions expressing support for or denouncing the mission. While those measures could not kill the deployment, they gave a different picture of congressional sentiment.

The House did as expected and denounced the decision to send the troops. In the Senate, however, Clinton got more support than many had anticipated.

After first voting down two measures that would have repudiated the president’s policy, the Senate approved a resolution of support for the mission “notwithstanding reservations” about Clinton’s original decision to send the troops.

“I believe that the Congress has a responsibility to do more than posture and complain about the president’s decision,” Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), sponsor of the measure, said in a floor speech before the vote. “We need to do what we can to make sure that the United States does not get bogged down in an endless quagmire or leave in a humiliating retreat.”

The resolution, drafted in consultation with the White House, says that the president can deploy the troops for a year, provided that they perform military duties only. It also says that the United States must take the lead in training and arming the Bosnian Muslims, a step needed to bring military balance to the region before U.S. troops withdraw.

The House voted, 287 to 141, to approve a resolution taking a dimmer view of the deployment. The measure puts the House on record as opposing Clinton’s decision to send troops but expresses support for those who will serve in Bosnia.

A similar measure was defeated in the Senate, 52 to 47.

The congressional action leaves Clinton in a somewhat stronger position as he attends today’s ceremonies in Paris. In talking to reporters after the Senate vote, Dole said that the resolution supporting the deployment probably would preclude a panicked call from the Senate to withdraw the troops should there be U.S. casualties.

“We’ve prepared the American people for the eventuality of casualties,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who co-sponsored the Dole resolution.

In a speech on the Senate floor, McCain told his colleagues that, by voting for the Dole amendment approving the mission in Bosnia, they were agreeing to “share in the blame if it ends disastrously” and American troops are killed.

“We will have to tell those families that they bear their terrible loss for the sake of the country,” McCain said.

He added: “It may be the hardest vote I will ever cast.”

Dole and McCain had prodded reluctant lawmakers to support the mission since the agreement was hammered out last month. In arguing against cutting off funds for the mission, Dole said that doing so would undermine American troops in and on the way to war-torn Bosnia.

“While I understand opposition to and disagreement with the president’s decision to send American ground forces to Bosnia, I believe that action to cut off funds for this deployment is wrong,” Dole said. “It is wrong because it makes our brave young men and women bear the brunt of a decision made not by them but by the commander in chief.”

The senators--21 Republicans and one Democrat--who voted to deny funding for the troops said that they did not see a vital U.S. security interest in Bosnia and would have no explanation to offer the loved ones of any Americans who might die there.

“I could not justify such sacrifice,” Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a member of the Senate Armed Service Committee and former secretary of the Navy, said after voting to cut off funding.

Those who voted with Warner also stressed that the conflict in the Balkans reflects hundreds of years of hatred and cannot be resolved with a yearlong North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission.

The Dole resolution was a compromise measure reflecting the desire of Republicans to avoid fully embracing the president’s policy and the desire of Democrats not to denounce it directly. It mentions “reservations” about the president’s decision to deploy and would limit to “approximately one year” the amount of time that the troops can remain in Bosnia.

Many Republican senators, however, argued that they could not support that measure and voted instead to support a resolution sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) denouncing the president’s decision.

In the House, a measure resembling the Hutchison resolution passed overwhelmingly. An alternative Democratic resolution offering unequivocal support for the troops failed.

Rep. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said that the measure to cut off funds for the mission “is a cruel resolution. It will say to the men and women whom we ask to get up tomorrow morning, to dress in a military uniform and go to Bosnia that we don’t stand behind them.”

Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) snapped back that the resolution, sponsored by Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), “is not a message to our boys. It’s a message to our president, who is acting like a dictator.”

Staff writer Art Pine contributed to this report.