France, Italy Support Clinton’s Bosnia Stance

DENVER — President Clinton won support Friday for more decisive action by European allies to consolidate the shaky peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Meeting separately with French President Jacques Chirac and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi at the start of an eight-nation summit here, Clinton received support for greater European help in financing a program to train and equip local police forces in Bosnia, U.S. and European officials said.

The forces eventually will assume the burden of maintaining law and order once the current North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led peace stabilization force completes its mandate in June 1998.

Clinton also reportedly won the two leaders’ backing for stepped-up efforts in the Balkans to capture suspected war criminals and ensure that refugees may safely return home to areas where they constitute a minority.

Clinton and Chirac disagree on such issues as how many nations should be invited to join an expanded NATO next month in Madrid and how best to help emerging African nations. But they share the belief that only decisive new steps can prevent an erosion of progress made so far in Bosnia.

Prodi was also prepared to back tougher measures, according to an Italian government official.

“There was agreement that, while there has been real progress, there are still great challenges ahead to make the peace lasting,” Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor, told reporters.

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The bilateral meetings occurred just before the opening session of the Summit of the Eight, a gathering of leaders from eight leading nations. The first formal session was a working dinner in which all eight leaders discussed the Bosnia issue, and officials said the mood for new measures extended behind Clinton, Chirac and Prodi.

“There’s a pretty strong convergence to accelerate the process,” a senior U.S. official said. “The leaders will give a push to this tonight.”

The sense of resolve shown on Bosnia reflected just how far the leaders have traveled in their thinking on how to deal with the crisis. At a meeting of the group in Halifax, Canada, two years ago, Chirac was a lone voice in making an impassioned appeal for action after the mainly Muslim Bosnian town of Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces as U.N. peacekeepers looked on.

On that occasion, Clinton said his hands were tied by a Republican Congress as discussions centered on the possible withdrawal of all U.N. peacekeeping forces and the abandonment of the region.

“It was a low point for all of us,” the senior U.S. official said.

The Denver summit brings together leaders of nations that make up what has been known as the Group of 7 leading industrial nations, or G-7: the United States, France, Italy, Britain, Germany, Japan and Canada. The Denver meeting has been dubbed the Summit of the Eight because Russia, which hopes to join the organization, has been included in all but one session of the two-day gathering.

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The United States has become noticeably more aggressive in pursuing its Balkan policy in recent weeks amid concerns that, unless major Western nations start now on measures to strengthen the uncertain Bosnian peace pact, the region could quickly slide back into chaos once the NATO-led peacekeeping force withdraws next year. The 1995 peace pact was negotiated with U.S. guidance in Dayton, Ohio.

In a speech last month, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called on European nations to provide up to $80 million to rebuild Bosnia’s shattered criminal justice system, including the police force and the judiciary. On a visit to the region two weeks later, she used some of the strongest diplomatic language heard in recent years to urge local leaders to speed the return of minority refugees to their hometowns and to take action to apprehend suspects indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

On other issues, Chirac reportedly made little progress in pressing the case with Clinton for allowing Romania to join Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary as the first nations from Eastern and Central Europe expected to join an enlarged Atlantic alliance. France has supported Romania’s immediate entry in order to maintain a southern orientation to the alliance, but the United States wants to limit the initial enlargement to three countries.

“He [Clinton] doesn’t believe now is the time to go forward with Romania,” Berger told reporters. “But we are in favor of admitting the three nations with a very aggressive, open-door policy in which this process of expansion would be ongoing.”

The leaders are due to discuss mainly economic issues today, including an initiative to help free-market economic development in Africa.