Former President Jimmy Carter said give peace a chance.
President Clinton said give the United Nations a chance.
Presidential hopeful Bob Dole said give the Bosnian Muslims a chance.
No one knows the chances of any of those alternatives succeeding, but those discordant views expressed Wednesday reflect the West’s dilemma about what to do next in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
On the ground in Bosnia, meanwhile, thousands of government troops continued massing north of Sarajevo, apparently in preparation for an attempt to break the Serbs’ encirclement of the Bosnian capital.
In talks in Washington with Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic, Secretary of State Warren Christopher argued against a Muslim offensive and said that lifting the UN arms embargo, although widely favored in Congress, would be a tragic mistake.
Cutting short his visit and heading home after six days of lobbying Congress to lift the arms embargo, Silajdzic portrayed his government’s military moves as defensive. “In the last few months, the terrorist Serbs have taken all the arms from the United Nations, have brought up new arms around Sarajevo, have massed a big number of troops around Sarajevo,” he told reporters.
Rebel Serbs have about 12,000 soldiers and about 500 heavy guns and tanks enforcing their grip. They have cut water, power and most food supplies to Sarajevo.
A Bosnian government offensive could lead to intensified Serb shelling of Sarajevo and the other UN-designated “safe areas,” cause thousands of casualties and trigger a withdrawal of the 22,000-member UN peacekeeping force, known as UNPROFOR.
Whatever the Bosnian intentions, the situation is again reaching what U.S. officials believe is a critical point as Western powers stumble in their efforts to advance a coherent strategy.
Clinton told visiting French President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday that he faces congressional resistance to helping pay the $300 million-plus cost for the new, 10,000-strong rapid reaction force. A financial holdout jeopardizes the European-led effort to strengthen UN peacekeeping operations in Bosnia.
And the Senate is preparing to follow the House in voting for a unilateral American lifting of the arms embargo, a step that Carter said would signify the “ultimate failure” for peacekeeping.
The former president, widely respected for his peacemaking efforts, made a rare trip to Capitol Hill to try to slow the political momentum favoring a lifting of the weapons embargo.
Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carter appealed for fresh peace talks between the Bosnian government and Bosnian Serbs. It was only the fifth time in history a former president has formally testified before Congress, and the first since President Harry Truman 31 years ago.
Carter, who negotiated a four-month cease-fire in Bosnia last December, indirectly criticized the Clinton administration for demanding that the Serbs first accept the Western peace plan-which would leave them with 49 percent of Bosnia rather than the 70 percent they now hold-before negotiations could begin to work out territorial and other compromises.
The former president said Serb leaders had presented him with a plan to pull back to 53 percent of the territory. Although the two sides have very different visions of the future map of Bosnia, he said it was encouraging that the Serbs’ “opening position” for negotiations “is not all that far from 49 percent.”
Carter also minimized one of the central elements of the Clinton administration’s policy: Trying to entice Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to formally recognize Bosnia in hopes of extinguishing the Bosnian Serbs’ hopes for a Greater Serbia.
“That (proposal) he will not accept,” said Carter, instead urging that UN economic sanctions on Serbia be eased if Milosevic is willing to cooperate with Western diplomatic efforts.
At the White House, Clinton discussed the fate of beleaguered UNPROFOR with Chirac, whose nation has the largest peackeeping contingent in Bosnia.
While the administration had leaned on the Europeans to establish the rapid reaction force-to be manned mainly by heavily armed British and French troops-Clinton publicly offered only tepid support “in principle” in light of the problems he faces getting Congress to agree to pay a third of the cost of the force.
In an unusual public appeal for Congress to support a tougher UN peacekeeping presence, Chirac said at a news conference: “The quicker we can do this, the quicker the Serbs themselves will realize that they can’t get away with murder. . . Any delay shall be seen by the Serbs as a glimmer of hope.”
But Congress appears less inclined to strengthen UNPROFOR than to see the peacekeepers withdrawn and the arms embargo lifted. Senate Majority Leader Dole of Kansas plans to offer a binding resolution limiting the role of any U.S. troops to the evacuation of peacekeepers and directing the president to end the arms embargo on the Bosnian government.
