Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 11:33:38 CST
From: <U15231@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna
Subject: Peace At Any Price Is Getting More Expensive

IN BOSNIA, PEACE AT ANY PRICE IS GETTING MORE EXPENSIVE

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By ELAINE SCIOLINO
c.1993 N.Y. Times News Service
WASHINGTON  In 36 hours in Sarajevo last week, 10 people in one
unheated home for the elderly died from the bitter cold. European
Community investigators also reported that an estimated 20,000
Muslim women were raped by Bosnian Serb soldiers in recent months
as part of a terror campaign to drive them from their homes.
   And on Friday, Serb gunmen stopped a U.N. armored vehicle
carrying a Bosnian deputy prime minister, Hakija Turajlic, and shot
him dead in front of his French military escorts.
   Images of horror can sometimes move nations to action, but these
events occurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina  terrain thus far deemed too
treacherous for Western military intervention.
   The leader of the Bosnian Muslims took his case directly to the
American people during a visit to New York and Washington last
week, decrying complacency toward the ``ethnic cleansing'' of much
of his homeland and recalling the appeasement of Hitler before
World War II.
   For Alija Izetbegovic, negotiating with the Serbs as they
systematically murder, rape, starve and freeze his people is
reminiscent of Munich in 1938, where Neville Chamberlain offered up
to Hitler the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia in the
misguided hope of satisfying his territorial lust.
   ``Then it was Czechoslovakia, today it is Bosnia-Herzegovina,''
the Bosnian leader told reporters at the United Nations. ``Then it
was Hitler, today it is Milosevic,'' he added, referring to Serbian
President Slobodan Milosevic, who has inspired the onslaught in
Bosnia.
   Historical analogies can mislead, and the analogy to Munich
the benchmark for failure in pursuing peace at any price  is not a
perfect fit. For one thing, Hitler wanted all of Europe, while
Milosevic wants only a corner of it, for a greater Serbia. But in
other ways the moral choices posed today are even more stark than
Chamberlain's: This time, no one can pretend to not know the nature
of the aggressors.
   ``What was being done in 1938 was done to prevent the outbreak
of war,'' said the noted historian Gordon Craig. ``There were no
existing hostilities but there was the hope that you could secure
peace by making timely concessions. At the present time we are
sitting in the middle of tremendous violence and tremendous cruelty
and practices that remind us all too clearly of the Holocaust in
the Third Reich. There is certainly a strong element of appeasement
here.''
   When Izetbegovic was asked at one point who the appeasers were,
he told his questioner to guess. It seemed a clear allusion to at
least two men: Cyrus R. Vance, the former American secretary of
State, and Lord Owen, co-chairmen of talks held by the United
Nations and European Community.
   It is not that either man lacks courage or determination.
Rather, their critics say, they have placed too much faith in
talking with a Serbian leadership that cannot be trusted.
   The two diplomats have welcomed the Serbs to negotiate a peace
settlement. They have discouraged Security Council members from
enforcing a ban on Serbian use of aircraft (the British say this
could put relief efforts, and the British soldiers involved in
them, at risk).
   They have presented Bosnia's Muslims with a map that redraws the
land into ten provinces  in effect validating ethnic cleansing by
letting Serbs keep territory conquered through terror. ``Too many
Chamberlains,'' Izetbegovic told an interviewer. ``There are too
many Chamberlains in the European countries trying to save peace on
unprincipled compromises.''
   The odd thing about the talks is their impact in America.
Neither the Bush administration nor the Clinton team embraces them
as a solution, but neither wants to criticize them either. Both
believe strongly that Vance's proposals are ill-conceived; at the
same time, both hope beyond hope that the talks will succeed.
   The confusion is consistent with the Bush administration's
record on the Balkans  a series of shifting or indecisive
positions, none of which dealt effectively with an emerging
disaster.
   For a year and a half, the administration essentially took the
position that defending human rights was not always in America's
national interest, particularly if it involved a quagmire where no
one was a hero and everyone was to blame.
   The administration has edged away from that view of the Balkans
only slowly and recently; it seemed to have taken a big step last
month when, in Geneva, Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger
announced a list of Serbs and Croats who should face a war crimes
tribunal.
   But two days later, Eagleburger revealed, perhaps
unintentionally, how strongly he still holds a
pox-on-all-your-houses view. He told a Balkan journalist at a news
conference: ``It's Serbs, it's Croats, it's Bosnian Muslims, the
whole panorama. If you're intent on killing each other, don't blame
it on somebody else. We'll do what we can to help, but in the end
you've got to have some sense that there are limits to your
insanity.''
   The administration, in fact, has done little to follow up on its
war-crimes accusations. Neither has the United Nations, which last
fall created a commission to investigate Balkan atrocities.
   This has left Clinton's aides free to feel unfairly burdened. If
Bush had inspired decisive action, the options today might not be
so narrow, they say.
   Indeed, historians seeking mistakes made along the way have a
dizzying list of choices: the American promise to respect the old
Yugoslavia's territorial integrity (in Milosevic's eyes, a green
light to move into Slovenia); the American recognition of
governments throughout Europe without demanding guarantees for
minority rights; Germany's recognition of Croatia without securing
guarantees for Croatia's Serbs; the West's failure to react
strongly to Serbian bombardment of Dubrovnik; the weak enforcement
of the Security Council embargo against the current Yugoslavia.
   Clinton has already said the West must enforce the currently
toothless U.N. ban on Serbian flights over Bosnia. But grounding
Serbian planes will not lift the siege of Sarajevo, and Clinton's
aides are struggling to formulate a tougher policy, one that might
force Serbian concessions.
   But in doing that, some of Clinton's closest advisers suffer
under another constraint. The secretary of State-designate, Warren
M. Christopher; the designated national security adviser, W.
Anthony Lake; and Lake's designated deputy, Samuel R. Berger, all
worked for Vance in the Carter administration. The deep affection
they feel for their former boss only makes it harder to interfere
with what is going on at his table.
 NYT-01-11-93 0826EST

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