Inexpert Games

David Binder, with the ``New York Times'' for VREME

America's policy concerning the Yugoslav conflicts is full of contradictory elements

The most sensible remark about the Bosnian conflict by a United States official in the last 17 months came not from a Bush or a Baker or a Clinton or a Christopher, but rather from Dee Dee Myers, the White House spokeswoman, when she was asked in the last week of August whether the Administration was reconsidering its policy.

Miss Myers, 31 years old, replied: ``There is no good or easy solution and I think there is disagreement, even among professionals, about the best course of action.''

Run it back 20 months and you find that United States has reversed course 180 degrees on Bosnia and Hercegovina and by extension Serbia and Croatia at least three times. In December 1991, Washington opposed international recognition of the Yugoslav successor republics, focusing then especially on Slovenia and Croatia, but with messy Bosnia on its mind.

From February through March 1992, Washington pushed for international recognition of the Muslim led government of Bosnia and Hercegovina in part so that it would have a plausible ground to recognize Slovenia and Croatia (and if possible, but it was impossible, Macedonia). Recognition of Alija Izetbegovic's government in Sarajevo came in the first week of April and so did the civil war.

Fast forward through the horrors of the Bosnian fighting into 1993. The fresh born Clinton Administration opposed, then wanly supported the Vance Owen plan for dividing up the republic. Washington's half heartedness and its continued one sided devotion to Izetbegovic's cause helped bring about the collapse of Vance Owen.

Came the summer, came Stoltenberg Owen with a plan for partitioning Bosnia and Hercegovina on ethnic lines that virtually duplicated the proposal accepted and rejected, then again accepted and rejected put forward by Jose Cutilheiro in the spring of 1992 in Lisbon, Sarajevo and Brussels.

This time, in August, Washington endorsed the very partition it had sharply opposed 17 months earlier. Warren Christopher said so on August 19 in messages to Tudjman, Milosevic and Izetbegovic.

But wait. It's not over yet. In the first week of September, with the collapse of the Stoltenberg Owen talks in Geneva, Clinton and Christopher made still another shift, sending demarches to Belgrade and Zagreb implying that they could forget about what was on the Stoltenberg Owen table, advising Croatia and Serbia that they had to make more territorial concessions to poor old Izetbegovic, and warning of NATO air strikes if Serbs or Croats misbehave toward the Muslims.

``We think that the Serbs and the Croatians should show greater flexibility in working to consider and achieve the adjustments that the Bosnian government has asked for in order to find a more equitable settlement,'' said Mr. Christopher, adding that ``the world'' would hold Serbs and Croats responsible if their ``stubborness and instransigence'' prevented an agreement.

``If while the talks are in abeyance, there is abuse by those who would seek to interfere with the humanitarian aid, attack the protected areas and resume the sustained shelling of Sarajevo, for example, then first I would remind you that the NATO military option is very much alive,'' said Mr. Clinton, both he and Christopher speaking on Thursday.

Jesus, Mary and Allah!

The weird quality of American policy is manifest: Radovan Karadzic is deemed a war criminal running a pseudo republic and so we won't address demarches or any other kind of message to him (although we let him into New York twice in the spring). Mate Boban may be a war criminal, too, but he hasn't appeared on Washington's computer screen, so we won't write to him either. Milosevic is a war criminal, but he is the Vojvoda of all Serbs, so we can still address him. Tudjman has the makings of a war criminal, but our first (ever, and conceivably last) ambassador to Zagreb, Peter Galbraith, is running around being photographed at war fronts wearing a Croatian HVO helmet while sitting in a Croatian tank turret. So maybe we can still write to Tudjman.

Meanwhile, Clinton is under assault by 100 self appointed experts and intellectuals from a dozen countries for not bombing Serbs, from large parts of the Jewish community (who have discovered that Bosnian Muslims are lovable compared to the Palestinians), from the assembled cannons of the mighty American press, from various Republican and Democratic members of Congress, and from four young Foreign Service officers who quit the State Department in disgust after dealing with Bosnia (without having learned Serbo Croatian or living in Yugoslavia).

The Clinton Administration clearly wants to revive peace negotiations in Geneva. It clearly does not want to get sucked into the Bosnian conflict. But next week (Monday) Izetbegovic is due in New York to plead for weapons and bombing at the U.N. and he will probably try to do the same later in Washington. Jose Cutilheiro said in an interview this (last) week that Izetbegovic was already begging the United States for weapons and bombing in April 1992.

It would be nice of Dee Dee Myers were in charge of foreign policy here.