Aid to Bosnia Conditional, Nations Note

The international community offered a carrot-and-stick recovery program to slow-healing Bosnia on Thursday, making aid dependent on an increased commitment to democratic reforms and a crackdown on war criminals.

Concluding two days of talks involving more than four dozen countries and international agencies, the London Peace Implementation Conference called for better policing, more determined prosecution of the war criminals, greater freedom of movement within the ethnically divided nation and the repatriation of about 2 million refugees.

The international community’s willingness to ensure military stability and provide assistance in rebuilding shattered civil and economic institutions will be contingent on the future performance of the Serbs, Croats and Muslims in the divided nation, the conference cautioned.

Western donors have pledged $1.8 billion to help Bosnia rebuild after 3 1/2 years of war.

A bulky document concluding the meeting was longer on generalities than specifics, but the conference marked the first time that countries working to aid Bosnia publicly noted what was termed the “conditionality” of their help, said Malcolm Rifkind, Britain’s foreign secretary and the conference chairman.

“Bosnia-Herzegovina’s leaders can be in no doubt that the international community’s willingness to devote further human and financial aid to their country is dependent on a strengthened commitment to the peace agreement in all areas,” Rifkind told reporters.

In completing what Rifkind termed a “successful and realistic” meeting, the United States and other nations aiding the reconstruction noted that “peace has taken root.” The document also applauded successful elections, the establishment of new, multiethnic common institutions and agreements to integrate the telephone system and provide nationwide air traffic control and car licensing.

Delegates from the three communities as well as officials of the Muslim-Croat and Serbian entities within Bosnia all attended the conference as one Bosnian delegation.

However, unfulfilled expectations also are apparent a year after the fragile peace agreement reached in Dayton, Ohio, that was designed to weave three warring ethnic communities into a common nation.

“There are important areas of the peace agreement where little progress has been made,” the conference noted.

Chief among them has been the failure to track down the vast majority of Bosnia’s 74 indicted war criminals, and there were doubts at the conference that there would be increased efforts to arrest suspects.

Carl Bildt, the civilian administrator of the Dayton peace accord, warned that “further measures” would be considered if suspected criminals were not surrendered or apprehended, but the conference shied away from a Canadian proposal that would have involved using peacekeeping troops led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to pursue suspects.

Instead, the conference agreed to sponsor creation of a special police intelligence unit that will seek to pinpoint the accused criminals and facilitate their capture--though not undertaking the capture itself. That is to be left to the authorities in Bosnia.

The conference also approved more police resources for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which is based in The Hague. Only a few of the tribunal’s warrants have been served, and cooperation has been “severely lacking,” said Louise Arbour, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor.

“The kind of impunity that the indictees presently enjoy has always been used as a justification for revenge and, if allowed to remain unchallenged, it will perpetuate the vicious cycles of war,” she told delegates.

Responding to a reporter’s question, Rifkind said the international community expected former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and former army chief Gen. Ratko Mladic--who were indicted on charges of war crimes--to be brought to justice.

In the next international act of the Bosnia drama, a meeting in Paris next week is expected to approve replacement of about 54,000 international troops in Bosnia with a stabilization force of 25,000 to 30,000.