With no cease-fire in sight, the U.S.-brokered agreement establishes a framework for peace that guarantees the rights of Muslims, Croats and Serbs.
Under pressure from the U.S. and its European allies, Bosnia’s Muslims, ethnic Croats and Serbs agreed Tuesday on the basic structure for an eventual postwar national government binding together the current Muslim-Croat federation and the breakaway Serb republic.
Foreign ministers from the Balkan nations capped 24 hours of private talks and diplomatic brinksmanship with agreement on an elected presidency, a national parliament and a judicial system representing all three warring factions in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The 12 paragraph statement of principles, however, does not establish a cease-fire or a plan for how to end the fighting. And many of its provisions add up to only a preliminary blueprint for power-sharing in a new national government once combat ends.
In Washington, President Clinton hailed the accord as bringing the Bosnian adversaries “closer to the ultimate goal of a genuine peace.”
That goal, however, remains elusive. Senior American negotiators said the Bosnian adversaries clearly aren’t yet prepared to end their 3 1/2-year war even as they bargain over the terms of an eventual peace.
Earlier, with fear that the deal was falling apart on the eve of the decisive round of talks, Secretary of State Warren Christopher was up before dawn Tuesday for a lengthy telephone conversation with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic to overcome 11th-hour Bosnian objections. Then Christopher scrapped his morning schedule to personally intervene in the negotiations at the U.S. mission to the United Nations.
The accord is the latest significant, if incomplete, advance in negotiations in the former Yugoslavia since the U.S. stepped up its diplomatic and military involvement in the Balkans.
A recent American-led campaign of sustained NATO airstrikes against Bosnian Serb military targets persuaded the Serbs to withdraw their heavy weapons from Sarajevo, open air and land aid routes to the beseiged Bosnian capital and return to the bargaining table under the auspices of the Serbian government in Belgrade.
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke and his negotiating team, after nearly around-the-clock talks in New York, plan to fly to Bosnia on Thursday to pursue the American peace initiative and to press all sides for an early cease-fire.
Although the ethnic bloodshed continues, the U.S. strategy is to try to set out what Bosnia might look like in the future-both in terms of government and territory-in hopes it will open the way for a cessation of hostilities and a full-scale peace conference.
“If you’re talking about who gets power, how it’s apportioned, what are the major institutions that hold up the state? Those are the critical issues-along with land-that will have to be decided by the end of a peace conference,” said a State Department official.
“And there has got to be a framework for those issues before you can get into a peace conference, or else a peace conference can take years.”
Tuesday’s accord builds on a breakthrough agreement Sept. 8 in Geneva, when the warring factions agreed that Bosnia would remain a single nation divided into a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb republic.
The agreement Tuesday begins to fill in what some American officials call the “connective tissue” among Bosnia’s parts. It also counters criticism that the Sept. 8 agreement was an international smokescreen obscuring a breakup of the country along ethnic lines.
“Today’s agreement moves us closer to the ultimate goal of a genuine peace, and it makes clear that Bosnia will remain a single internationally recognized state,” Clinton said. “America will strongly oppose the partition of Bosnia, and America will continue working for peace.”
The agreement calls for free democratic elections “as soon as social conditions permit,” in the judgment of international observers.
After elections are held, the government of Bosnia would consist of a parliament or national assembly, a collective presidency and a constitutional court. Deep divisions remain over the future government’s size, authority and jurisdiction despite agreement on the basic constitutional elements.
Two-thirds of parliament would be elected from the territory controlled by the Muslim-Croat federation, the other third from Bosnian Serb lands. Any parliamentary actions must have the approval of at least one-third of the legislative votes from each entity.
A collective presidency will be elected along the same proportions as the parliament, but its size remains at issue. The Serbs want a small, weak central authority. The Bosnian Muslims and Croats want a larger, more powerful presidency.
The power-sharing formula is enormously complicated. Presidential decisions would be taken by majority vote, but with the Serbs and Muslim-Croat federation each having veto power. If one-third of any of the groups disagrees with a decision by the presidency and declares it to be “destructive of a vital interest,” the issue would be referred to that entity’s parliament. If two-thirds of the members of that entity’s parliament voted against the action, it wouldn’t take effect.
Asked if he was satisfied with Tuesday’s agreement, Holbrooke replied, “We can’t be satisfied, the war is still going on.”
It is unclear what areas of authority this new government would have.
The agreement was signed by Foreign Ministers Mate Granic of Croatia, Muhamed Sacirbey of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Milan Milutinovic of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, who represents the Bosnian Serbs.
It was apparent the Bosnian government wasn’t pleased with what it regarded as concessions to the Serbs.
For instance, the U.S. yielded to Serb objections and dropped a reference to “popular” elections in the text, a change to which the Bosnians objected, saying it might enable Bosnian Serb leaders to rig the elections to ensure their own political survival.
Sacirbey said the U.S. had pressed his government not to make an issue of whether the new Bosnian courts would have the power to extradite alleged war criminals, among them Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, to stand trial at the UN’s World Court in the Hague.
