Fatal Rubbing Of Hands

Sarajevo no longer presents an obstacle to the signing of the whole peace plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina in Geneva and that is the crown result of the latest round of talks on Bosnia in Switzerland. This does not mean that Sarajevo's fate is resolved but it does seal it: as everything else in this unfortunate republic, the capital will most probably be divided, and along ethnic lines at that. The division of Sarajevo is put off for two years however, and the capital will meanwhile be ruled by the United Nations.

The postponement of a ``final solution'' for Sarajevo is a concession to the Moslem side, to which the Geneva scenario has obviously assigned an ignomious role: to deny everything it has been saying since April '92 and to accept everything it has been firmly rejecting since. The concession is merely a tactical step and serves to save face: in reality, the frontlines in Sarajevo are recognised as demarcation lines and the city's demilitarisation will not prevent each side from organising its own police force on its territory.

The vague formula of the UN's two-year rule over the nine city districts (there were 10 of them before the war but Pale, now the Bosnian Serb headquarters, was on this occasion omitted from the list of communes the UN is allegedly to demilitarise) nevertheless enables Bosnian Moslem leader Alija Izetbegovic to return from Geneva as a man who withstood pressures to accept the division of the city that has become the symbol of Moslem resistance to Serbian predominance.

According to the compromise solution, Sarajevo will not belong to either of the three republics within the Bosnian confederation; it will be a demilitarised city governed by a UN administrator, who will be aided by a council made up of four Moslems, three Serbs, two Croats and one ``minority'' representative--most probably a Jew. The Sarajevo region will have the same (broad) competences as the other three constituent republics, except that it will not have its own representatives in the collective presidency of the Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina Republics. The Geneva agreement is said to imply that the Bosnian Serbs will withdraw their artillery to a distance from which they will be unable to shell Sarajevo, which is estimated at around 30 km. This is what the whole ``demilitarisation'' of the city boils down to. The city will obviously be left in the hands of several well-armed ethnic police forces.

Alija Izetbegovic, whom the division of Sarajevo does not suit at all, has gotten some breathing space. He opted for retaining the city, at least on paper, just as he had earlier retained a single Bosnia-Herzegovina, although merely in external, internationally recognised borders. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, for whom the division of Sarajevo is essential, has lost nothing: he retains what he had and trades what he does not hold. He has been negotiating like this since the beginning. The transitional solution for Sarajevo enables both national leaders to leave the round table rubbing their hands, even if it will merely ward off the evil looks of their dissatisfied compatriots.

Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic and his Croatian counterpart Franjo Tudjman similarly rose from a similar table under the watchful eye of Cyrus Vance in January 1992. Both claimed victory. Sarajevo was meanwhile razed and victory remained in the hands of the stronger one. Karadzic is probably counting on a future historical analogy, the semblance of his and Milosevic's destinies.

Alija Izetbegovic, however, seems to have reconciled himself to his fate more easily than anyone could have expected. His guttural laughter while sharing the table in Geneva with ``war criminals'' in front of cameras lacks decency; many who had taken his belligerent rhetorics extremely seriously would be right to criticise him for it. He still intends to call his future republic a civic state and to respect the civic rights of Serbs and Croats living in it. But he has already said (in an interview to the French Catholic herald ``La Croix'' on August 6) that there will be enough room in his republic for Serbs and Croats who will ``love'' it, but that they will be a minority since their majority peoples will be living in the Serbian and Croatian republics. (Lord Owen--out of cautiousness or, maybe consideration--calls them republics ``with a Serbian majority'' and ``with a Croatian majority''). Izetbegovic did not mention to the La Croix reporter the super--powers' accusations that he was forced to accept the division; the only alternative to Bosnia's division is the continuation of war and he said he was opposed to the latter. He added that he had not abandoned his dream of a multi-ethnic Bosnia, but that ``the hour has not come yet.''