AT THE EDGE OF PEACE

By Kevin Fedarko

At 9 a.m. last Thursday, Richard Holbrooke strode into the seventh-floor study that U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher favors for informal staff meetings. Like his boss, Holbrooke was in shirt sleeves. But unlike the dapper Christopher, the chief U.S. negotiator on Bosnia looked rumpled and exhausted. More than five weeks of shuttle diplomacy in a bid to bring peace to the Balkans had sapped him of the nervous energy that usually suffuses his ample frame. But if the sparks were not exactly flying off Holbrooke, the news he brought to Washington was electrifying enough. As a clutch of State Department officials peered over his shoulder, he unfolded a map of Bosnia atop Christopher's desk, took out a ball-point pen and drew a line running from the northern border town of Dvor south to Sanski Most, then snaking southwest to the city of Jajce.

What Holbrooke's rough cartography captured was nothing less than the changing face of the battle for the heartland of Bosnia, which in recent weeks has seen the Bosnian Serbs driven back by the loosely coordinated armies of the country's Croat-Muslim federation capitalizing on NATO's bombing campaign. The results of that offensive--demarcated on Holbrooke's map--produced a strategic shift on the ground that, working with the grain of U.S. diplomacy, opened the most inviting window of opportunity for peace that Bosnia has seen in years. By the time the Bosnian Serbs had withdrawn most of their heavy guns from around Sarajevo last Wednesday night--thus meeting a NATO deadline and staving off renewed air strikes--the Croats and Muslims had recaptured nearly 1,500 sq. mi. of disputed real estate and whittled the portion of Bosnia controlled by the Serbs from about 65% to just under 50%. That land grab initially provoked fears that a possible peace agreement was in danger of being wrecked. But by week's end, the Croat-Muslim federation had put the brakes on its offensive, and suddenly the Clinton Administration appeared tantalizingly close to a diplomatic triumph that could redeem its reputation both at home and abroad.

Before the champagne is uncorked, though, numerous problems remain to be solved. A significant step in that direction takes place this Tuesday when representatives from the so-called Contact Group--Germany, France, Russia, Britain and the U.S.--meet at the U.N. in New York City with the foreign ministers of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. Although a new map of Bosnia and Herzegovina has yet to be drawn, they are expected to announce a breakthrough in defining the complex government structure that will rule over it, if and when peace is signed. Consensus has also been reached on constitutional arrangements for the Serb and Muslim-Croat "entities" inside Bosnia. "It's an awkward structure," concedes a State Department official. "But it's a hell of an improvement over killing people."

Nowhere is that fact appreciated as much as in Washington, where a peace agreement would offer an unprecedented coup for an Administration long faulted for its wobbling responses to events in the Balkans. In the past three months, that state of affairs changed completely as the U.S. finally embarked on a course that its European allies and the Bosnian Muslims have been saying it should have taken from the start: to get behind the wheel and begin driving in earnest. "There is no question that Bosnia has been the most serious foreign policy challenge we have had to contend with," said a senior Administration official last week. "The credibility of NATO is at stake. And as it happens, the moment of truth coincides with the opening of election season. With all that, we have to get this behind us by the end of October."

In Bosnia, of course, such timetables are dangerous; 42 months have demonstrated that no agreement is so ironclad that it cannot be blown to bits within hours. And if the present offers hope, recent memories open like a scream. Or like the grave discovered last week in the northwest Bosnian town of Krasulje, containing 540 corpses--the grisly remnants, it was said, of a purge in the summer of 1992.

This time, however, the chances of peace seem better, thanks in large measure to the hard-charging talents of Holbrooke, a man whom a State Department colleague, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, recently described as "a bull who takes his own china shop with him." Holbrooke's penchant for smashing diplomatic crockery has enabled the U.S. negotiator to browbeat the warring parties into agreeing to divide up Bosnia between a Muslim-Croat federation, which will get roughly 51% of the country, and a Bosnian Serb "entity," which will control 49%. He has also got them to accept a presidency that will rotate among the three communities. If all goes well, those and other agreements will pave the way toward a Balkan peace conference later this fall.

In a region where sheer swagger frequently substitutes for the subtler arts of statecraft, Holbrooke's abrasive style and undoubted ego have achieved unprecedented results. Holbrooke's chutzpa has also won him plenty of enemies, in the U.S. and overseas. "There are a lot of folks in this building who would love to get rid of him," notes a State Department colleague. "If he stumbles on Bosnia, people are going to line up to put 39 lashes across his back." But unless and until he trips, no one in the Administration is willing to challenge Holbrooke.

For the achievements so far, Clinton has not only his envoy to thank, but also the fact that events on the battlefield and at the negotiating table seem, for once, to be working hand in hand. Though Holbrooke has served to push things along, the crucial breakthrough came only after the Serbs finally provoked the Western allies on Aug. 28 by firing a shell into a Sarajevo market, killing 38 civilians and triggering NATO's air strikes. While the bombardment kept the Serbs preoccupied, the Croat-Muslim juggernaut was free to surge ahead, and by last Wednesday it stood within 30 miles of the Serb stronghold of Banja Luka, raising fears that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic might intervene. But Milosevic has recently banked his fortunes on posing as a broker for peace--a role he has no intention of jeopardizing by sending in troops. "The bottom line is that Milosevic wants a deal," says a Pentagon official, referring to the part of the peace agreement that will end the U.N. sanctions that have been throttling Serbia's economy since May 1992.

Left to fend for themselves and hampered by the temporary absence of their relentless military commander Ratko Mladic, who was in the hospital reportedly being treated for gallstones, it was not until late in the week that the Bosnian Serb forces finally appeared to stiffen their defenses along a wide arc surrounding Banja Luka. By that time, however, the Croat-Muslim attack had already touched off an exodus of more than 85,000 Bosnian Serb refugees. Many, like Branko Japundja, 50, a wounded Serb farmer who left the hospital where he was recuperating and walked all night to escort his family from their frontline village, descended on Banja Luka after days on the road with little more than the clothes they wore. Thousands now live in the squalid, muddy "collection centers" that ring the town.

They will remain there, in limbo, until the warring parties are able to devise an agreement to end the fighting. That could be a while. After he finishes his talks in New York City and returns to the Balkans, presumably late this week, Holbrooke's next challenge will be to concentrate on the even more demanding task of drawing boundaries between the Serb republic and the Croat-Muslim federation.

Meantime, attention is turning to the U.S. military force that will go to Bosnia as part of the NATO operation to police the settlement. Disagreement is growing in Washington over whether there should be a small force or a larger one, although both would be far more heavily armed than traditional peacekeepers. The minimalists--who last week included a chorus of Republican Representatives--argue that if all the parties sign a peace accord, there should be no need to dispatch an expensive and domestically unpopular military force. The maximalists--including most of the Administration--say that a massive armed presence is needed to guarantee the safety of the troops.

At this point, while Administration officials seem to favor something less than the 25,000 troops Clinton promised two years ago, they urge a number--probably on the order of 15,000--sufficient to prevent an incident like the one in Somalia's Mogadishu, with television pictures of a dead U.S. soldier being dragged through the streets. "If you go in heavy at the beginning," says a State Department official, "you can thin it out once the situation is stabilized. But you have to have an overwhelming force. And the first person who looks at you cross-eyed gets shot right between the eyes." Having staged a belated but impressive entrance into the Balkans, the Clintonites seem to be steeling themselves to exit the same way they went in: carrying a big stick.

--Reported by Massimo Calabresi/Banja Luka, Dean Fischer and Douglas Waller/Washington and Alexandra Stiglmayer/Sarajevo

With reporting by MASSIMO CALABRESI/BANJA LUKA, DEAN FISCHER AND DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON AND ALEXANDRA STIGLMAYER/SARAJEVO