Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 13:54:28 CST
From: <U15231@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna
Subject: A. Lewis: Beware of Munich



BEWARE OF MUNICH
jk
By ANTHONY LEWIS
c.1993 N.Y. Times News Service

   BOSTON  Cyrus Vance is one of the great American public
servants of recent decades, a man of courage and unwavering honor.
But I and some others who admire him are increasingly puzzled by
where he is going in his search for a negotiated end to the war in
Bosnia.
   Vance and Lord Owen of Britain are co-chairmen of a Geneva
conference on the conflict. When the latest session adjourned this
week, they flew to Belgrade to ask the Serbian president, Slobodan
Milosevic, to help bring about peace. Afterward Vance said
Milosevic had promised ``he would do everything possible.''
   A promise from Milosevic? He promised last summer to turn heavy
weapons over to the United Nations  and has done nothing about
that or a dozen other promises. He started the Serbian aggression
in Bosnia and elsewhere. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger
has listed him as a possible war criminal.
   Then Vance asked Eagleburger not to meet the president of
Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic, who is visiting this country. Vance
feared that such a meeting might upset his negotiating efforts.
   A small thing, one might believe. But think of the symbol. Here
is the president of a small country that has been cruelly attacked,
100,000 of its people killed, 1.5 million driven from their homes,
thousands of women raped. And American officials should refuse to
meet him?
   Eagleburger at first said he would not see Izetbegovic. But he
changed his mind when the story got out, no doubt because it looked
so shameful.
   The suggested scorning of Izetbegovic matches what seems to me
to be happening in the peace negotiations. The Bosnian Muslims, the
largest group in the country and the victims of Serbian aggression,
are essentially being pressed to accept the results of the
aggression, thinly disguised as a political solution.
   The draft agreement put forward at Geneva by Vance and Lord Owen
would divide Bosnia into 10 autonomous provinces. There would be a
theoretical Bosnian state, but the agreement does not describe it
as ``sovereign.''
   The agreement calls on those who have heavy weapons  that is,
the Serbs  to put them where they can be ``monitored'' by the U.N.
But there is no effective enforcement mechanism.
   There is no provision for protection of minorities in the
various provinces. A special court would investigate alleged war
crimes, but it would have no power to impose penalties.
   With an agreement like that, what Bosnian Muslim would return to
a province from which the Serbs had driven his family and butchered
his friends? In effect, the Serbs will have accomplished the aim of
their murderous ``ethnic cleansing.''
   Yet Izetbegovic and his colleagues have gone far toward
accepting the agreement. They are negotiating with a superior
Serbian force, represented at the table by another accused war
criminal, the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. If they say no,
what hope do they have that anyone will save them from utter
destruction?
   Why would Cy Vance be pressing the victims to accept such an
arrangement? My guess is that he thinks it is the best he can do
for the victims, something that may at least stop the killing in
Bosnia.
   But to come to that conclusion is to ratify appeasement. For a
year now Western Europe and the United States have appeased
Milosevic and his killers, refusing to draw the line. Vance may
simply think it is too late to expect firmness. But I fear that he
has let himself be drawn further and further into negotiation for
negotiation's sake.
   The fact is that American resolve will be essential no matter
what the outcome of Vance's efforts. Or even if the Bosnian parties
accept his draft, it will be meaningless unless the West is
prepared to enforce the terms. And that means American leadership.
There is no way to escape the responsibility.
   The responsibility will be Bill Clinton's, and it should be his
first foreign-policy concern on taking office: to make clear to the
Serbs that if they do not end their siege of Sarajevo and other
military attacks, he will call for the use of force. Appeasing
aggression exacts too terrible a price.
 NYT-01-07-93 1910EST








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