Serbs Ask NATO to Delay Reunification : Bosnia: On his first visit with rebel leaders, U.S. commander of peacekeepers is urged to extend timetable on Sarajevo area by up to a year. He says he’ll consider it.

The American commander of NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia paid his first visit to Bosnian Serb leaders Tuesday and was immediately hit with a demand that the reunification of Sarajevo be delayed by up to a year.

A delay would change the timetable set forth in the U.S.-brokered peace treaty that formally ended the Bosnian war Dec. 14 and that calls for the return of nine Serb-held Sarajevo suburbs to Bosnian government control.

The fate of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina devastated by Serb shelling campaigns during a 3 1/2-year siege, remains one of the most delicate and potentially explosive obstacles to settling the war and stabilizing the country.

U.S. Adm. Leighton W. Smith, commander of the 60,000-strong North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led force that will eventually police Bosnia’s peace, said he will consider the Serbs’ request.

“I didn’t say yes or no,” Smith said at a news conference in the fast-fading stronghold of the rebel Serbs, nine miles east of Sarajevo. “Anything is possible.”

Momcilo Krajisnik, head of the Bosnian Serbs’ self-styled parliament, told Smith that the reunification of Sarajevo should be postponed because of the dread the Serbs have of being ruled by their enemy, the Muslim-led government. The success of the peace agreement could depend on such a delay, he said.

“Sarajevo Serbs will never accept Muslim authority, because there is fear . . . the legacy of a bloody civil war,” Krajisnik told reporters. “We need time . . . time to build confidence. Maybe sufficient time would be nine months, a year.”

The Serbs’ bid for a delay will test Smith’s ability to enforce the peace treaty fairly but with the firmness needed to prevent the warring parties from wiggling out of their commitments.

Past peace agreements in this region have fallen apart when the two sides signed up to a series of terms only to gradually back out of them through procrastination and deceit.

Smith held his nearly two hours of talks with Krajisnik, whom he addressed as “Mr. President,” and other members of the Bosnian Serb leadership, including Aleksa Buha, the so-called foreign minister.

They gave a news conference in a ski-resort hotel used by the secessionist government, with a Bosnian Serb flag promoting the cause of Serb unity as a backdrop.

But Smith pointedly avoided contact with Pale’s two senior leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serb army.

The two are indicted war criminals, and Smith, under the peace accord, would be obliged to detain them if he encountered them--something that was not going to happen.

“He [Smith] has made sure they won’t be there,” NATO spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Raynor said before the trip. “He’s going on that assumption.”

Questioned on the whereabouts and the futures of Karadzic and Mladic, Krajisnik became evasive and said the answers would come on another occasion.

The estimated 70,000 Serbs who live in Ilidza, Grbavica, Ilijas and other Serb-held suburbs around Sarajevo have threatened a mass exodus--taking everything from their washing machines to the coffins of their dead loved ones--if the reunification plan goes ahead. Some have already acted on the threat and left.

Drafted in Dayton, Ohio, the peace plan calls for the Bosnian government to gradually take control of the suburbs starting Jan. 19 and finishing by March 19. International police monitors will supervise.

The government has given only semi-convincing pledges of protection for the Serb citizenry.

“The Dayton solution for Sarajevo is not a just solution,” Krajisnik said. “Just to say the Serbs will be safe and secure is not sufficient.”

Smith said that while he cannot change substantive details in the Dayton agreement, he is authorized to extend deadlines for the implementation of its requirements.

Senior U.S. officials who drafted the peace plan insist that it cannot be renegotiated, and some diplomats were uncomfortable with Smith’s willingness to open the door to new deadlines.

“You can’t give them [the Serbs] an inch,” one diplomat said.

Bosnian Serb sources said they were hoping to put off the turnover of the suburbs long enough so that elections, scheduled to be held within nine months under the peace treaty, would take place while the Serbs still had control of those districts. That would strengthen the Serbs’ ability to maintain their hold on the areas.

In Sarajevo, a spokesman for the Bosnian government said some postponements of the peace agreement’s provisions might be acceptable, but not for as long as the Serbs seemed to be requesting.

“Our strategy is not to let them undermine the elections,” said the spokesman, Mirza Hajric. “They want to come to the elections with a Serb Ilidza, a Serb Grbavica and so forth.”

The government, for its part, wants to resettle the Muslim and other non-Serb residents who were driven from their suburban homes when the Serbs took over at the start of the war in the spring of 1992.

Some of those refugees will want to reclaim homes now occupied by Serb refugees, further complicating matters and raising tensions.

Smith’s foray into Serb territory Tuesday took him to a land he ordered bombed in NATO’s punitive air strikes that finally forced the Serbs to accept a peace deal. Yet his reception, he said, was cordial and productive.

The visit had a secondary purpose of proving a new “freedom of movement” established in the accord.

He traveled over the picturesque mountain highway from Sarajevo to Pale in a Humvee and with heavily armed guards. The route is usually off-limits but on Tuesday was free of the Serb checkpoints that normally block transit.