Factions’ Resistance May Doom Bosnia Pact, Top Officer Says

In a candid and somewhat discouraging assessment of the peace process in Bosnia, the outgoing commander of NATO forces here said Friday that unyielding political resistance from all sides could doom the U.S.-brokered accord that ended 3 1/2 years of war.

Nearly six months after the Dayton, Ohio, accord brought tenuous peace to Bosnia-Herzegovina, U.S. Adm. Leighton W. Smith said progress in the mission carried out by a 60,000-member NATO-led force, including about 20,000 American troops, has fallen short of expectations.

“We’re not anywhere near where we’d like to be,” Smith told a small group of reporters in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. “We’re further than where we thought we’d be in some areas, and not as far along [in other areas]. But on balance, we frankly should be further.”

The principal obstacle, he said, is nationalistic refusal to allow the return of refugees of opposing ethnic groups and continued restrictions on free movement across ethnic lines. The main culprits, he said, are the Bosnian Serbs, though Croats and Muslims also deserve blame.

Smith said that, unless there are fundamental political changes at the leadership level--signs of which he has yet to see--the peace agreement will fail. Dayton’s vision of rebuilding a multiethnic Bosnia is all but dead, he conceded.

“I’m not sure the mission goes belly up,” Smith said. “It just means you’ve got a different outcome. You [would] have a failure of what Dayton saw as the ultimate outcome of this thing.”

Despite this bleak portrayal, Smith continued to insist, as he has since the beginning of the NATO deployment in Bosnia, that it was not part of his mission to force such issues as freedom of movement, refugee returns or the pursuit of indicted war criminals.

Economic and political force--not military might--must be used to exact compliance, he said.

There has been a growing clamor for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to take a more activist role in obtaining the cooperation of the Bosnian parties as the human rights and political situation in the country seems to deteriorate.

Smith said he did not anticipate a return to all-out war, repeating the widely held opinion that the military side of Dayton--for example, the separation and demobilization of enemy armies--has been successful, while the civilian, nation-building side languishes.

But the military side is also suffering setbacks. Agreement on arms control was delayed this week during negotiations in Vienna, and the Muslims and Croats--nominal allies--have refused to agree on a defense law necessary to initiate a U.S. program of training and equipping a Muslim-Croat army. The law would unify the two factions.

Smith reiterated NATO’s position that it will not pursue war criminals, despite the peace agreement’s requirement that they be brought to justice.

He said it was “fairly shortsighted” to focus on only two of the more than 50 indicted war crimes suspects, a reference to civilian peacekeepers’ demand that Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serbs’ principal political and military leaders, be arrested.

“Bring all of them to justice,” he said, adding, however, that it would not be NATO that does it.

Smith said NATO troops will not be reduced until after the Bosnia-wide elections scheduled for mid-September and that on Dec. 20--the original ending date of the mission--an “effective fighting force” will still be in place.

This is the latest confirmation that American and European troops will be in Bosnia well into next year.

Smith is expected to step down in upcoming weeks.

On Thursday, the Clinton administration formally nominated Vice Adm. Joseph Lopez to replace Smith, who is required to retire from the Navy by next June under U.S. law.