U.S. Envoy Tries to Save Bosnia Pact

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke launched a high-profile effort Sunday to put Bosnia’s stumbling peace process back on stable footing, and his early assessment of the mission was upbeat.

“We think this is going to get straightened out,” Holbrooke said at the Sarajevo airport after a day of talks.

“It is a serious problem, but it is one I think that we will be able to deal with,” he told reporters earlier. “We are here to make sure things stay on track.”

In recent days, the U.S.-initiated peace agreement on Bosnia-Herzegovina has been jeopardized by the Bosnian Serb military’s cutoff of relations with NATO and by disputes over the divided city of Mostar.

Holbrooke, the main designer of the peace accord, met Sunday in Sarajevo, the capital, with Bosnian government officials. Then he flew in a heavy snowstorm to Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, for a session with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who has represented the Bosnian Serbs in peace negotiations.

Afterward, he said both sides “reaffirm their full commitment” to the peace accord.

He was scheduled to return to Sarajevo this morning for more meetings and is also expected to travel to Zagreb, the Croatian capital, to relay to the Croatians the same no-nonsense warning delivered Sunday to Muslim and Serbian officials.

“We are here to insist on full compliance with Dayton, no exceptions, no changes,” said Holbrooke, referring to the Dayton, Ohio, peace deal signed in December in Paris. “All three parties are still saying they will comply, but they are arguing over what compliance means. We are here to help them straighten it out.”

Holbrooke was dispatched to the Balkans by Secretary of State Warren Christopher after the 8 1/2-week-old peace agreement began to falter last week on two separate fronts, one in Sarajevo and the other in the southwestern city of Mostar.

In Sarajevo, the Bosnian government’s arrest of several suspected Bosnian Serb war criminals so enraged Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic--himself an indicted war crimes suspect--that on Thursday he cut off all military ties with the NATO-led peacekeeping force, known as IFOR.

The Bosnian government points to a provision in the Dayton agreement that allows the apprehension of suspected war criminals, but the Bosnian Serbs cite a separate section that guarantees freedom of movement for all people.

The dispute points to a central dilemma built into the peace agreement: An aggressive pursuit of war crimes suspects, who disproportionately come from the Bosnian Serb side, will probably put a damper on the movement of all Serbs, who fear that charges will be concocted against them.

The Bosnian government released four of the detained men Saturday, but it has insisted that at least two of them--both top military officers in the Bosnian Serb army--will be held until the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague decides whether to indict them. Bosnian Serb television, however, reported Sunday night that all the men, including the two top officers, will soon be released.

Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck, who is traveling with Holbrooke, visited the detained men Sunday and reported that they were being treated well.

From the start, Bosnian Serb political leaders have distanced themselves from Mladic’s directive, which North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials said Sunday had brought most high-level military dealings to a halt but had not soured political relations.

The split response from the Bosnian Serbs reflects a sensitive problem in IFOR dealings with them--namely, that Bosnian Serb politicians seem to have minimal influence over the goings-on of the military, yet military commanders have the ability to thrust the entire peace process into turmoil.

“We have had contradictory messages,” said Maj. Simon Haselock, an IFOR spokesman.

Holbrooke, after meeting with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and other top government officials, publicly stated the need for the Bosnian government to adhere to all sections of the Dayton agreement, including provisions ensuring freedom of movement.

“We absolutely reaffirmed full compliance with Dayton,” Holbrooke said in the hallway of the presidential palace.

Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey said the government agreed to balance the two seemingly conflicting sections of the peace accord, although he did not say how.

“We emphasized the need on the one hand to comply with the demands of The Hague war crimes tribunal and the need to bring people to justice and, on the other hand, freedom of movement,” Sacirbey said. “We believe we can work out the necessary means by which those would work hand in hand.”

In the second flash point, in the divided Muslim-Croat city of Mostar, hundreds of Bosnian Croats rioted last week to protest a new plan by the European Union city administrator for municipal boundaries that the Croats fear favor Muslims.

The Muslim-Croat federation in Bosnia serves as the backbone of the Dayton peace agreement; its dissolution in Mostar would imperil the alliance across the country and throw the entire peace deal into disarray. At the start of the conflict, Muslims and Croats were at war, but they eventually joined sides against the Serbs and, in the hotly contested city of Mostar, agreed to submit to EU arbitration.

In his remarks in Sarajevo, Holbrooke expressed U.S. support for the controversial Mostar boundaries drawn by the European Union, and he is expected during his trip to Zagreb to put considerable pressure on Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to crack down on Bosnian Croat hard-liners in the war-devastated city.