
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 24, 1995                   TAG: 9511240042
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PEACE IS NOT QUITE YET AT HAND

NO ONE can fail to see that the Bosnian peace accord signed this week is bitter and blood-stained, and fraught with risk for the future. No one can assure it means the end of Europe's worst conflict since World War II.

Still, the agreement is a triumph for tireless American negotiators and the recently more aggressive Western allies, and for hopes, however fragile, that the death-weary parties in the former Yugoslavia can put behind them a vicious, 43-month war.

President Clinton, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke deserve great credit for the feat of bringing the three warring presidents together in Dayton, Ohio, and pushing them into agreement.

With this achievement, America has reclaimed leadership of the Atlantic alliance and advanced the cause of peace. The accord is messy and risky; war is messier and riskier still.

To be sure, the complicated agreement offers little if any justice to the chief victims of the conflict, the Bosnian Muslims. The Muslims weren't fighting to build or expand a Muslim ethnic enclave; they were fighting to defend a tolerant, multicultural state.

The virtual partitioning of Bosnia between Croats and Serbs, leaving the country only nominally intact, amounts to a victory for ethnic cleansing, as well as for the strategy of shifting borders by force. No one, though, was willing to conduct the kind of bloody intervention, of questionable outcome, necessary to restore the status quo.

To be sure, too, the agreement is highly unlikely to last without the sustained engagement of the United States, NATO and the rest of the international community, and could well not last even with that.

The decision to put American troops in Bosnia, even as part of a NATO force, and even assuming U.S. lawmakers approve, is a risky proposition. It's up to President Clinton to make his case convincing enough for the country and Congress to support the deployment - not an easy task given an isolationist mood, political rivalries, and some Americans' doubts about Clinton as commander in chief.

The president is unlikely to get the support he needs if he can't clearly spell out the troops' mission. Will they, for example, forcibly assist refugees who, according to the Dayton agreement, are to be allowed to return to their homes? Nor can Clinton expect to win backing if he fails to make clear the deadline or circumstances under which American troops will return home.

Meantime, however, it is clear enough that the commitment of a significant U.S. contribution to NATO forces in Bosnia was as essential to achieving an agreement as it will be to enforcing it. Also essential will be whatever semblance of justice can be retrieved from the rubble; the accord's ban against war criminals holding political office is a start.

Now, while the atrocities of the war remain freshly appalling, would be a good time, too, to show U.S. leadership in efforts to build the international institutions and mechanisms needed to prevent the next Bosnia, and the one after that.

by CNB