Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 22, 1995 TAG: 9511220090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE JAHN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: VIENNA, AUSTRIA LENGTH: Medium
Born under intense U.S. pressure, the plan to end Europe's longest conflict since World War II now must survive the test of Bosnia's killing fields.
President Clinton lauded the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia in ``their historic and heroic choice'' as he announced an agreement to end Bosnia's 31/2-year-old war. The pact will be signed in Paris in early December.
Clinton hailed American leadership both at the three-week negotiations and in the work leading up to the talks at Dayton, Ohio.
But the lofty commitments of Dayton might not travel well from the confines of an Ohio military base to the shattered hills of Bosnia, where Balkan realities have torpedoed previous agreements.
Presidents Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia approved the pact only under intense U.S. cajoling.
But while all parties want to end the war and the human and economic miseries it has caused, their long-term goals remain in stark conflict.
Milosevic's main aim is to get punitive U.N. sanctions on Serbia lifted. He was ready to do anything to accomplish it, including pulling the rug from under his rebel Serb allies and forcing them to the negotiating table. And only when the sanctions are lifted will the world see if he has forever abandoned the rebels' cause of splitting up Bosnia and joining their territories to Serbia proper.
Milosevic declared in a TV address to Serbs that ``the war is over'' and the sanctions, in place since May 1992, should be lifted soon. But there is no guarantee his Bosnian Serb brethren will go along: They have defied Milosevic several times in the past by rejecting international peace plans he had accepted - and indicated Tuesday that they may again.
``The agreement that has been reached does not satisfy even a minimum of our interests,'' said Momcilo Krajisnik, the speaker of the Bosnian Serb assembly, who was in Dayton as part of the unified Serb delegation.
Tudjman, though pressured to enter an alliance with Bosnia's Muslims, also remains interested in carving up the republic. He is still committed to a de facto linking of western Bosnia, where Croats dominate, to Croatia proper.
That makes them potential allies against Izetbegovic, who vehemently opposes dividing Bosnia between Croatia and Serbia, which would sound the death knell for the Muslim majority.
Milosevic and Tudjman reportedly teamed up against Izetbegovic at the talks on the last outstanding land issue, despite the Muslim-Croat federation agreement, illustrating how little loyalties on paper mean when one side thinks its vital interests are at stake.
The dispute involved Brcko, a Serb-held town at the narrowest point of a corridor linking Serb-holdings in northwestern and eastern Bosnia. Control of the town is critical for the Serbs; its future will be decided in binding arbitration.
Izetbegovic clearly counts on the United States to guarantee the existence of a unified Bosnia.
But with its short-term goal of peace on paper accomplished, Clinton, his image bolstered, might not want to risk getting involved in policing the region for years. Seeking congressional approval for his plans to contribute more than 20,000 U.S. troops to a NATO peace-keeping force, Clinton has said repeatedly that American presence in the region will be short term.
A hasty peace plan that papers over differences instead of solving them also could endanger U.S. lives, should large-scale hostilities flare once American troops are on the ground.
Even before the agreement was announced, some were saying the United States' priorities were wrong in trying to impose a quick peace.
``I think that the Americans took more care about how they would achieve a diplomatic success, about their reputation, than about Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia,'' said Josip Jovic, a respected analyst and chief editor of Croatia's Slobodna Dalmacija newspaper.
by CNB