Next, Friendly Persuasion

By J.F.O. McAllister/Washington

If a military ultimatum worked in Sarajevo, why not try it in Tuzla or Mostar or the other Muslim enclaves under siege in Bosnia? As Sarajevans took a tentative step toward peace last week, freed from the terrors of Serbian guns that have rained more than 1.5 million shells on the city in two years, NATO leaders, Russian diplomats and Bill Clinton congratulated themselves on a small but important victory. Buoyed by the success, the President was prodded to apply the same tactics to other parts of the embattled country.

But by the end of the week Washington was trumpeting a diplomatic push between Croats and the Bosnian government, who have also been fighting. After U.N. commanders negotiated a cease-fire in Mostar, which included a promise to withdraw the artillery relentlessly bombarding the Muslim quarters of the ancient city for more than nine months, U.S. envoys hurried to put together a settlement uniting the formerly allied Croats and Muslims into a Bosnian confederation. At the same time, it looked as if peace efforts were turning into a pale version of a cold war superpower contest, with the assertive entry of Russia as protector of the Serbs.

Now that the Serbs seemed convinced that NATO meant business, Bosnian officials begged the West to keep up the pressure. "I don't think it's possible to do that without threats of force," said Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic. But the talk from Western capitals was of peace, not widening ultimatums. "We should not concentrate on new military actions," said Jurgen Chrobog, a German Foreign Ministry official who led a meeting last week in Bonn of top diplomats from Russia, the U.S. and the European Union. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher agreed: "The much better strategy is to be using the momentum and new credibility created to try to promote a peace settlement."

No Western leader, least of all the domestically minded Clinton, really wants to start shooting in Bosnia. NATO's caution underlined how the Sarajevo ultimatum was about saving NATO's credibility as much as saving Bosnian lives. But the new peace offensive also had a Russian impetus. Moscow, proudly proclaiming that its clever diplomacy had made air strikes unnecessary, told NATO it would not countenance any military campaign against its fellow Orthodox Serbs.

Serb forces hailed the arrival of Russia's 400 peacekeeping troops, officially under U.N. command, as friends and saviors. Crowds plied the Russian troops with plum brandy and waved the three-fingered Serbian salute for the Orthodox trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost -- or church, country and army, as some claim. "When you get in trouble with the Serbs, please turn to us before raising hell," snapped Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vitaly Churkin at the Bonn gathering. "There is nothing that would require strong words or strong actions." NATO countries, partly to help Boris Yeltsin fend off ultranationalists in his country who deride him as Washington's lapdog, saw little choice but to bargain, though some had reservations about what one Washington observer privately called "Russia's greatest diplomatic coup in 10 years."

This time Washington's talk of vigorous negotiation seemed more than a cover for inaction. Bosnian Croats and the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government were showing renewed interest in working together, despite brutal fighting in the year since their anti-Serb alliance split apart. Bosnian Croat forces had sought to carve out a ministate for eventual merger into a Greater Croatia, but Muslim forces were gaining the upper hand. Unlike a string of previous failed cease-fires, the truce struck last week led swiftly to the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers along confrontation lines and the withdrawal of artillery and mortars to a distance of six miles.

Washington is trying to turn the cease-fire into a broader rapprochement. The goal, an old idea revived by Silajdzic in talks with U.S. envoy Charles Redman three weeks ago, is to join the majority Muslim government and the Bosnian Croats in a political union that would confederate with Croatia, and then seek a final settlement with Bosnia's Serbs.

There are advantages in linking the Croats and Muslims. It would end their territorial disputes and give them some joint strength against the Serbs. The Bosnian government would no longer have to worry about access to the sea -- it could use Croatian ports -- or about whether its country was too tiny and fragmented to be economically viable. Washington hopes the majority Muslim % government could be more flexible in making territorial concessions to the Serbs if they were joined with the Croats.

The two sides remain far apart. The Croats are insisting on forming a separate, strong entity within the union, which the Muslims fear will serve as a trapdoor for eventual secession to Croatia. There are also disputes over where internal borders should be drawn -- and whether Muslim refugees could return. One Croat official said there was so much mutual hatred that Washington's idea of confederation was "applying Madison Avenue standards to a Bronxlike situation." But the pace of discussions accelerated as Christopher brought the key players together in Washington to work out a deal.

The Croats' willingness to bargain reflects a crucial change of tactics by Franjo Tudjman, Croatia's strongman, a consummate opportunist who has previously shifted his allegiances from the Bosnians to the Serbs and back again as he maneuvers to preserve and acquire a greater Croation state. His continued meddling in Bosnia has prompted threats of sanctions from the U.S. Security Council. Worried by Moscow's embrace of the Serbs, "there is real fear they will be ostracized by the world community," said a well-placed foreign observer. As a more positive incentive, "we are offering Croatia the world if they will reverse their policy," said a Western diplomat in Zagreb: money for economic reconstruction and refugee resettlement, loans from the World Bank and associate membership in the European Union. Tudjman, haggard and solemn, appeared on television last week to announce that he backed a Croat-Muslim federation in Bosnia.

That, of course, still leaves the problem of how to bring the Serbs into the deal. Western diplomats in Zagreb hope that Bosnian Serbs would rather "join the Croat and Muslim union and get on this fast track with the West than join up with Serbia and be left behind." But such hopes sound unaccountably naive after the Serbs have driven their country to economic ruin to prolong their aggression in Bosnia.

An even bigger obstacle to any settlement lies in Washington: the U.S. role in enforcing it. The Clinton Administration has repeated its promise to send as many as 25,000 troops to Bosnia to patrol a peace, but public opinion is opposed, and powerful legislators question whether Clinton will manage to get congressional approval. "We are all realistic now," Christopher said last week. But believing in a Bosnian peace would still seem to call mainly for hope.

With reporting by Edward Barnes/Sarajevo and Laura Pitter/Zagreb