U.S. Scrambles to Shore Up Bosnia Peace

The Clinton administration, concerned that troubles with the peace process in Bosnia-Herzegovina may lead to a full-scale partition of the country, is launching a new effort to shore up the U.S.-led peace effort, officials here said Thursday.

In the wake of a review of the situation about 100 days after the signing of the Dayton, Ohio, peace accord, top administration officials are stepping up efforts to build new governmental institutions in Bosnia and to prepare for late-summer elections.

Earlier this week, the NATO-led international military force charged with providing security for the peace effort scrapped a previous prohibition and began helping civilian authorities and private aid groups with reconstruction efforts.

And officials say the administration is about to announce a new federation forum designed to salvage the fledgling Bosnian Muslim-Croat federation by forcing leaders of those two factions to talk to each other about how to make their alliance work.

At the same time, White House officials have redoubled their work to prod Congress into approving a $200-million grant that President Clinton has pledged as the U.S. contribution to international aid for the rebuilding of Bosnia.

Strategists are worried that unless lawmakers approve the money soon, U.S. officials might have to go to a scheduled conference of potential donors April 12 in Brussels to ask other nations to contribute to an effort yet to be funded by the United States.

For all the recent flurry, senior officials insisted that the administration is not changing its Bosnia policy. While conceding that some problems appear to be getting worse, they insisted that everything still is going according to plan.

“We don’t think it’s broke,” said one senior official involved in the administration’s Bosnia effort. “All of us knew that this was going to be incredibly difficult. Everything was anticipated when we negotiated the Dayton accords.”

Even so, policymakers here acknowledged that the short-run outlook is precarious. And they said they fear that, unless the peace process begins taking root soon, fighting could resume after the troops withdraw in December.

On Wednesday, Army Lt. Gen. Patrick Hughes, the nation’s top military intelligence officer, warned that with the civilian side of the peace effort foundering, he is becoming more pessimistic about the outlook. Unless participants in the process begin to address those questions soon, “time will work against us,” he told a Senate subcommittee.

Officials cited such challenges as these:

* The Bosnian Federation--the Muslim-Croat alliance that is supposed to be the backbone of the new Bosnian government--is in serious trouble, threatening to leave the effort to build a new government in shambles when North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led troops finally depart.

The two sides’ leaders do not talk with each other--even though they live and work only a few miles apart--except when the United States and its allies force them to confer in formal meetings, one official complained.

The federation forum that will soon be announced is designed to force the two sides to begin working together at regular meetings at which Western mediators will pressure them to compromise. “We’ll be knocking their heads together,” one official said.

* The U.S. effort to equip and train the Muslim-led Bosnian army, a critical factor in preventing a revival of fighting after NATO forces leave the country, is dead in its tracks, with no indications that Washington will be able to revive it in time to get the Bosnian forces up to speed before NATO leaves.

Other countries are balking at the proposal that they help fund such an effort, contending that it would only spark retaliation by the Bosnian Serbs. Also, the Bosnian government has failed to meet two U.S. conditions for military aid: rejecting Islamic militia groups and releasing all Serbian prisoners.

* Efforts to repatriate refugees and prepare for August elections are woefully behind schedule, with little indication that they can be sufficiently accelerated.

Administration officials concede that attempts to shore up the progress of peace will achieve little unless elections are conducted and new leaders are named to rebuild Bosnia’s governmental structure.