Bosnia’s Power Brokers Meet in Rome to Renew Their Pledges of Peace

Three Balkan power brokers who hold the key to peace in their beleaguered region came together here Saturday facing direct and intense international pressure to recommit themselves to the Bosnia peace agreement they signed two months ago.

Presidents Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia-Herzegovina were in effect summoned to the hastily scheduled summit by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, the chief architect of the peace accord hammered out in Dayton, Ohio. The meeting was called after a series of violations in recent weeks heightened concerns that the accord was in danger of unraveling.

In part, the mere symbolism of bringing the three leaders together in the same room gave a boost to the accord. In the full glare of the cameras, the three shook hands at the beginning of the meeting as Holbrooke, Italian Foreign Minister Susanna Agnelli, senior NATO officers and representatives from Germany, France, Britain and Russia all applauded around them.

The two-day summit is expected to deal with a number of urgent issues, including procedures for detaining suspected war criminals, completing an overdue exchange of all prisoners and easing ethnic tensions between Croats and Muslims in the southern city of Mostar.

In his opening remarks, Holbrooke said he had expected some problems because of the Dayton agreement’s “ambiguities” and other shortcomings.

“That’s why we’re here today,” he said. “To continue the progress, to iron out . . . bumps in the road and to keep going down that road toward peace.”

While some have called the gathering an “emergency summit,” Holbrooke described it as the first of a series of anticipated reviews of the Dayton accord.

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Still, the meeting follows the rockiest 10 days of peace in the Balkans since the accord was signed Dec. 14 in Paris.

Ironically, the spate of problems began almost immediately after some of the toughest hurdles had been cleared.

During the initial 30 days of the peace mission, the NATO-led Implementation Force, known as IFOR, successfully supervised the disengagement of Bosnia’s warring armies and the creation of “zones of separation” throughout the country.

After that, IFOR finished another sensitive job by getting Muslim-Croat federation forces and Bosnian Serb units to vacate territory scheduled to be transferred to the opposing sides under terms of the agreement.

In addition to these milestones, the complex deployment of IFOR’s 60,000 troops to the Balkans had entered its final phase relatively problem-free.

As U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher departed for the region earlier this month to mark the end of IFOR’s hectic first 45 days in Bosnia, senior State Department officials declared that they were satisfied with the military side of the agreement.

“I hate to tempt fate, but what’s happening in Bosnia is a success story,” declared Robert Hunter, the U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Then came the problems.

Virtually as Christopher hit the ground, the first crisis broke with news that Bosnian government authorities had arrested two Bosnian Serb officers who had strayed from a Sarajevo suburb and accused them of war crimes. That led the Serbs to break off contact with the Bosnian government and IFOR.

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Only Friday, after NATO’s supreme commander, U.S. Gen. George Joulwan, met with Milosevic in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, did the Bosnian Serbs once again resume contacts.

But Saturday, NATO had to threaten to unleash firepower before IFOR troops were allowed access to a key Serb weapons depot northeast of Sarajevo.

The incident--which occurred as NATO began an effort to seize up to 60 heavy weapons that violate the peace accord--was the first reported case that the NATO-led force has threatened air power against the Serbs.

In Mostar, Croats not only rejected a plan designed to share control of the ethnically mixed city with Muslims, but they rioted and physically threatened the city’s European Union administrator, Hans Koschnik, with violence. That dispute threatened to spill over into the larger Muslim-Croat federation, whose stability is considered essential if the accord is to succeed.

On Thursday, IFOR troops took control of an apparent terrorist training camp on Bosnian government territory.