Is peace breaking out in Bosnia? A combination of Western firepower and diplomacy seems to be working. Bosnian Serbs learned not to test NATO’s resolve-at least, not from the air. Early in the week, six Serbian Jastreb ground-attack fighters left Banja Luka on a bombing mission to the Muslim munitions depot at Novi Travnik (map). Two U.S. Air Force F-16s, patrolling the no-fly zone over Bosnia, ordered the jets to descend; when their warnings were ignored, they shot down four of the Jastrebs in what amounted to NATO’s first military action in its 45-year history. There was progress on the political front, too. In Washington, Bosnian Croat and Muslim leaders signed a preliminary agreement to consolidate their territories into a single entity-with economic and military ties to neighboring Croatia. “Finally, we’re moving away from polarization and ethnic tensions toward reconciliation,” says Muhamed Sacirbey, Bosnia’s U.N. ambassador.
But here’s the hurdle. A lasting settlement depends on the Bosnian Serbs. who still control two thirds of the country-and retain most of their artillery. So far, the West has given them little reason to cut a deal. The sudden loss of their aircraft hardly put the Serbs in a conciliatory mood: soon after the incident, they shelled the airport at Tuzla, which NATO had vowed to open, and stepped up their attacks on Maglaj and Bihac. Serbs also fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades into Sarajevo and brazenly moved six 122-mm Howitzers into the “exclusion zone” around the capital-in direct violation of the NATO ultimatum. Still, the alliance issued no new threats of intervention from the air or on the ground. A bold promise by U.N. commanders to force through humanitarian relief came to nothing: Serbs blocked a convoy near Sarajevo and held up aid bound for Maglaj, where no overland supplies have arrived since October. “It is still a matter of who is prepared to confront the Serbs,” says a senior U.N. official. ‘And very few people are." A plea by a U.N. special envoy for another 10,000 troops to enforce cease-fires across Bosnia went unheeded.
The West is playing a curious game: ignoring the Serbs on the battlefield and excluding them, for now at least, on the diplomatic front. The Croatian-Muslim deal completely circumvents the Bosnian Serbs-the very people from whom it will need territorial concessions. “They may be a little nervous that they are being ganged up on and viewed as the only intransigent party-which, of course, we’re trying to do,” says a U.S. administration official. But the pact seemed only to stoke Serbian paranoia. Slobodan Jarcevic, foreign minister of the self-styled Serb republic of Bosnia, called the proposed federation “a monster state,” warning that “if [the Muslims] ever get an outlet to the sea, fundamentalists from all over will start pouring in.”
Washington expects Moscow to bring the Serbs in from the cold. “There’s no need for a multipronged attack on the Bosnian Serbs if the Russians can deliver them,” says the administration official. So far, the strategy has worked. Russia persuaded the Serbs to pull back most heavy guns from Sarajevo, and last week extracted an agreement to open Tuzla’s airport to relief flights. “We’ve launched a competition for leadership in solving the Bosnia problem,” says Sergei Karaganov, a member of Boris Yeltsin’s advisory council. That may help the peace process, so long as the embattled Yeltsin controls foreign policy. But if Russian hardliners ever push for a rival confederation-linking Croatian Serbs and Bosnian Serbs with Serbia-there could still be war, no matter who else wanted peace.
