Security Advisor Berger Discusses Bosnia, Israel

In his first extensive public comments on foreign policy since being named the president’s next national security advisor, Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said Sunday that the United States will search for new ways to bring indicted Bosnian war crimes suspects before an international tribunal.

At the same time, however, he specifically excluded the direct use of U.S. troops to track them down and haul them into court.

Berger’s comments, on ABC-TV’s “This Week” program, came as part of a wide-ranging discussion of the administration’s second-term foreign policy agenda. On another issue, he indirectly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by labeling Jewish settlements in the West Bank “a complication for the peace process.”

“They are a problem,” he said. In the past six weeks, Netanyahu has moved decisively to expand the Jewish settlements in what Arab leaders view as a violation of the spirit of the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements.

During President Clinton’s first term, Berger has been the deputy to National Security Advisor Anthony Lake. He will move into Lake’s job, which will make him the president’s top foreign affairs aide, when Lake becomes director of the CIA.

Although Berger carefully avoided the limelight during his four years as Lake’s deputy, he seemed at ease in front of the cameras Sunday, outlining issues with a relaxed fluency and occasionally slipping into the vernacular.

At one point he described U.S. policy toward Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as “a little bit like a Whack-a-Mole game at the circus: They bop up and you whack ‘em down, and if they bop up again, you bop ‘em back down again.”

On the Balkans, Berger was asked about one of the most glaring shortcomings of the shaky peace that has settled in Bosnia-Herzegovina: the failure to arrest any of the most prominent figures indicted on war crimes charges.

“I think we need to find better and more effective ways to help the war crimes tribunal do its job [to] track down war criminals and bring them to justice,” Berger said, referring to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague. “We will try, in many ways, to help.”

But when pressed on a possible role in these new efforts for U.S. troops now stationed in Bosnia as part of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led force, he said that if they were involved at all, it would be indirectly.

“American troops are trained to fight wars and deter wars, not to be people who knock down doors and go hunting and searching,” Berger said. “American troops may have, as in the past, some backup role . . . but there may be more effective ways in which we can help the war crimes tribunal.” He did not say what these ways might be.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic are the most prominent war crimes suspects who remain free despite long-standing indictments. Economic pressure on the Bosnian Serbs has so far had little impact.

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Berger’s comments reflect what has been a key predicament faced by Clinton as he forms Bosnia policy. Although the United States places a far higher priority on the arrest of war crimes suspects than does any of its major European allies, its concern is apparently not so high as to risk American lives or credibility by going after them.

During a U.N. humanitarian mission in Somalia in 1993, a hunt for a Somali warlord left 18 U.S. soldiers dead after a gun battle--a humiliation that still casts its shadow over White House decision-making.

The problem is likely to grow for Clinton’s new national security team. Madeleine Albright, the nominee for secretary of state, is one of the staunchest supporters of the U.N. war crimes tribunal, but Clinton is under pressure to keep U.S. forces in the region out of trouble. He has already extended U.S. involvement there for 18 more months, leading to Republican accusations that he is breaking a promise to bring all troops home after a year.

On Sunday, House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio) called for an end to U.S. military involvement in Bosnia by early spring and pledged to work with a group of bipartisan members in Congress to achieve that goal.

“They keep saying ‘Longer, longer, longer,’ and I’m very concerned this could represent a permanent presence in Bosnia like we’ve had in Korea,” Kasich said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” “We’ve done our job. Now we’ve got to think about coming home and letting [the European allies] complete the job over there in Europe.”

Berger reiterated the extended commitment of U.S. troops in Bosnia but added, “We can’t be there forever, and sooner or later the parties in Bosnia are going to have to make their own way.”