Clinton Has Message for Bosnia, but Is It Listening?

President Clinton’s trip to Bosnia on Monday may have been seen as a morale booster for U.S. troops, who, everyone now admits publicly, will be stationed here indefinitely.

But Clinton also had a critical message for Bosnians as well, a message he hammered in his first visit to Sarajevo, the capital. It is time, in the words of Clinton and his associates, for Bosnian leaders to “behave”--to overcome their stubborn resistance to democratic reforms and make peace work.

Were the Bosnians listening?

In “the end, the future is up to you--not to the Americans, not to the Europeans, not to anyone else,” Clinton told politicians gathered in the Austro-Hungarian-era National Theater. “The world which continues to invest in your peace rightfully expects that you will do your part. . . . The people of this country expect results, and they deserve them.”

The principal obstacles to building a stable democracy in a peaceful Bosnia-Herzegovina are the very nationalist politicians who continue to rule the country--and who formed Clinton’s privileged audience. In fact, Clinton was pushing the Bosnians to do their part in the building of their nation at the very same time that international mediators, frustrated at Bosnian leaders’ obstructionism, have begun to impose laws and solutions to problems--from passport design to national currency--that the Bosnians refused to resolve.

The most intransigent of the bunch--Momcilo Krajisnik, the Bosnian Serb member of the country’s three-man presidency--apparently boycotted Clinton’s national address.

He was nowhere to be seen at the theater, after attending an earlier meeting with Clinton at Sarajevo’s museum. (Clinton aides later quoted Krajisnik as complaining that the U.S.-brokered peace accords that ended Bosnia’s war in December 1995 have since been revised to the disadvantage of the Serbs.)

And others were taking away varying interpretations of Clinton’s remarks. Muslim leaders emphasized his decision to maintain troops in Bosnia but downplayed any criticisms directed at them.

“He said the right thing--that the Americans have agreed to stay here,” said Ejup Ganic, a Muslim who is vice president of the Muslim-Croat Federation, which rules half of Bosnia.

Mirza Hajric--spokesman for Alija Izetbegovic, the Muslim member of the presidency--noted of Clinton: “Everything he said, we liked. There are expectations we need to live up to, and we reconfirmed our intentions to do so. . . . He was clear in saying patience is running out.”

Biljana Plavsic, president of Republika Srpska, the Serb-run half of Bosnia, made a rare appearance in Sarajevo and met with Clinton.

Plavsic, despite her nationalist convictions, has received extraordinary support from the U.S. government in its bid to isolate Bosnian Serb hard-liners such as Krajisnik and his mentor, Radovan Karadzic, who is Plavsic’s predecessor and foe.

After returning to her headquarters city of Banja Luka, Plavsic told reporters that she believed Clinton was sympathetic to her pleas for more time. Plavsic has been criticized for her failure to execute important elements of the peace accords; she has not encouraged non-Serbian refugees to return to their homes nor has she moved against indicted war crimes suspects, most of whom are Serbs.

“We asked for patience and said that, slowly, some results can be expected,” she said. “But I told him that after a war, nothing can be implemented so quickly.”

Plavsic also suggested that Clinton’s trip to Bosnia was mostly aimed at his own domestic audience, an effort, she said, to show the American public how critical the continued presence of U.S. troops in Bosnia is to lasting peace. Success of the Dayton peace plan, she noted, is important to Americans “because it is their creation.”

Clinton also told Muslims and Croats to dissolve Bosnia’s “vestigial institutions,” leftovers from their efforts at building separate ethnic enclaves. For more than two years, and despite constant U.S. pressure, Muslim officials, for example, have failed to shut down an Iranian-trained intelligence agency, while Croatian officials sustain the remnants of a separate statelet called Herzeg-Bosna.

Countries overseeing the peace process in Bosnia, meeting for an annual review earlier this month, granted more powers to the senior international mediator here, enabling him to impose decisions that Bosnian leaders refuse to make.

These have included agreements on basic trappings of a legitimate state, such as passports, a single currency, a flag and license plates.

Bosnia’s nationalist leaders have also dragged their heels on reforming propagandistic media and eliminating corruption.

Clinton’s message is not new, of course, but a little finger wagging may make the point more forcefully. He warned the politicians that, by shirking their “responsibility” to keep Dayton-accord promises, they will isolate themselves and lose U.S. and international support.

Political and community leaders who oppose the nationalists in power clearly seemed to get the message. “Now,” said Stjepan Kljujic of the opposition Republican Party, “the citizens will have to open their eyes.”