U.S. Wavers on Bosnian Serbs

The Clinton administration conceded Friday that it may be unable to compel the removal of two top Bosnian Serb leaders who have been indicted on war crimes charges, even though their arrest and trial at The Hague is a central tenet of the Bosnian peace accord.

Although insisting that Washington still wants political leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic arrested, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns hinted that the United States may have to accept that they will remain in Bosnia-Herzegovina, albeit in lower-profile roles.

Earlier this week, their onetime patron, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, suggested “marginalizing” the two--allowing them to remain in Bosnia without openly exercising power--after his attempts to have them step down apparently failed.

Resolution of the dispute over the two Bosnian Serb leaders is considered critical to whether the new multiethnic Bosnian state envisioned in the Dayton, Ohio, peace accord ever gets off the ground.

The leaders of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat federation have hinted they may not participate in national elections, now scheduled for September, unless Karadzic and Mladic are arrested and sent to The Hague for trial on the war crimes charges. If the elections are abandoned, the peace plan could well blow apart, officials say.

The United States has been leaning on Milosevic to pressure the Bosnian Serbs to remove Mladic and Karadzic, but so far the Serbian president has proved unable to deliver on that pledge, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeeping forces have been unwilling to hunt them down.

Burns insisted Thursday that the United States still wants the two arrested and “will not agree to any deal for Karadzic and Mladic.”

But for the first time he also hinted that Washington might accept some form of the Milosevic plan.

“Our first wish would be that [they] would be turned over to the war crimes tribunal,” he said. But “if, for any number of reasons, that does not happen, we . . . would want . . . them both to be marginalized and taken out of the mainstream of political and military life.”

The State Department announced Friday that, in an effort to step up the pressure, Secretary of State Warren Christopher has called leaders of the three former warring factions to a meeting in Geneva on June 2 to discuss the situation in Bosnia.

Burns said the West has no intention of canceling the scheduled balloting even if the two Bosnian Serb leaders are still in power.

He pointed out that because NATO forces control the elections, the West will ensure that “neither of these gentlemen . . . will be on the ballot” and so “will therefore not be legitimate” political players after the elections.

“We think the elections should go forward,” he said. “It was never intended at Dayton that a perfect, ideal, shining city on the hill had to be created before the elections could take place. . . . [They] are going to have to be held in a very difficult . . . environment.”

Christopher’s June 2 meeting with the three Balkan presidents--Serbia’s Milosevic, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman--will be the start of another of the secretary’s periodic campaigns to shore up the peace effort.

Also at the session in Geneva will be Carl Bildt, who heads the international effort to rebuild Bosnia’s governmental structure and economy, and members of the five-country Contact Group that helped engineer the Dayton peace accord.

Besides the United States, the Contact Group is made up of representatives of Germany, Britain, France and Russia.

Immediately after that meeting, Christopher will fly to Berlin for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov and the foreign ministers of several Central European countries. He also will attend a meeting of NATO’s policy-making North Atlantic Council.

Separately, in a sign of progress on another front Friday, officials said the administration is on the verge of formally certifying that the Muslim-Croat federation has expelled enough Islamic militia fighters to begin receiving more arms and military training from the West.

Officials said Muslim leaders have made a major effort to expel the remaining fighters.

The announcement, which officials said is likely next week, is expected to pave the way for the start of a planned program to equip and train the Bosnian army.

Washington wants to restore military balance to the region to prevent a renewal of fighting.