Diplomatic Ties Will Help Bind Peace Treaty

Bosnia-Herzegovina and the rump Yugoslavia will establish diplomatic ties even as Balkan leaders sign a peace treaty aimed at ending Bosnia’s nearly 4-year-old ethnic war, chief U.S mediator Richard Holbrooke said Wednesday.

The foreign ministers of the two republics will exchange letters of recognition before the agreement to end the war is signed today in a glittering ceremony at Elysee Palace.

Holbrooke told reporters, however, that Yugoslavia--which is made up of Serbia and Montenegro--and Croatia are not yet ready to take a similar step. He declined to provide any details.

President Clinton, flying to Paris to witness the settlement worked out largely by Holbrooke, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and other U.S. mediators, will meet with the presidents of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia before the ceremony.

Serbia had played a leading role in the war against Muslim-led Bosnia, providing weapons and other support to rebel Serbs who took control of more than two-thirds of the country before the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombed their positions and a Muslim-Croat coalition reversed nearly all the gains.

The treaty sets up two ethnic republics in Bosnia, one Serb and the other jointly controlled by Muslims and Croats. It leaves a loose Bosnian central government with control over foreign policy and little else.

Belgrade’s recognition of that central government is regarded by the United States as a major development, Holbrooke told reporters.

While Serbia and Croatia did not agree to establish diplomatic ties, they did agree on a U.S. diplomat, Jacques Klein, to head a U.N. authority that will oversee the return to Croatia of control over eastern Slavonia, a Croatian Serb-held strip of land along the Serbian border. The transfer is part of the Bosnia agreement.

In another development, a senior U.S. official quoted Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic as saying he had threatened Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serbs’ military leader, with arrest to force the release of two French aviators detained by Bosnian Serbs for more than three months.

The men were released Tuesday.

The official said he could not vouch for the accuracy of Milosevic’s account of threatening to arrest Mladic, who has been indicted by a U.N. war crimes tribunal.

Mladic, meanwhile, reportedly agreed to respect the peace treaty and to permit freedom of movement for the 60,000 NATO-led troops who will implement it. Mladic’s acquiescence would ease efforts to reunify Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo.

Mladic had threatened to resist the reunification of Sarajevo under Muslim and Croat rule. But in a letter to NATO officials, he wrote that, once the accord is signed, “he, as the commander of the Bosnian Serb army, will live up to the military agreements signed within the Dayton accord,” U.N. spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Vernon said.

On another issue, Christopher told reporters that the vanguard of up to 2,000 Islamic fighters brought in to battle Bosnian Serb rebels apparently is leaving the country.