Pushing the Bosnian Rock

Out of respect for the first Americans who died in Bosnia while carrying out their government's orders, U.S. President Bill Clinton waited for the funeral of the victims of the road accident on Mount Igman to end before completing the negotiating team for the former Yugoslavia. The place once occupied by Robert Frasure, Milosevic's colocutor whom "The Christian Science Monitor" marked as the one responsible for the changes in the Contact Group plan which offers the Serbs a more compact territory (wider corridor near Brcko, Gorazde in exchange for territory around Sarajevo) and the possibility of a confederation with Serbia, has now been taken by Roberts Owen, already known as one of the legal architects of the Bosnian-Croat federation from the State Department. However, at the moment the importance of the content of the negotiating team is negligible.

Something else is much more important, something quite new. The death of Robert Frasure, Joe Crusel and Samuel Nelson Drue raised the American stake in the Bosnian war games dramatically. Americans will not die in Bosnia in vain. Since the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis at least half of the American policy towards the Balkans could be brought down to that principle. Though the reasons may sound a bit morbid, Washington will now increase the pressure on Richard Halbrook's colocutors in Zagreb and Belgrade. Frasure did not die in vain: that would be contrary to the American spirit and American understanding of their role in the world. Even Bob Dole's hands are tied. Clinton's bitterest rival in the race to the White House can no longer demand that the president quits his peace initiative because it is "too generous to the Serbs", as he did on Thursday, August 17, two days before the death of three American envoys. The events left Dole with just enough room for a maneuver to declare the Serbs "indirect culprits" for the deaths: if the city had not been not under siege, if the airport had been safe, the roads serviceable, and had there been no war... Frasure, Drue and Crusel would be alive.

At the time of the accident, on Saturday, August 19, the American team was on its way to a meeting with Alija Izetbegovic. Halbrook and the Bosnian president were supposed to meet earlier on Tuesday, but that meeting was cancelled due to bad weather. The short encounter between Halbrook and Izetbegovic which occurred after the accident was not business-like for obvious reasons. The American administration has still not had the opportunity to acquaint the Bosnian president with the essence of the American initiative, but Izetbegovic had both the chance and sufficient time to work out a strategy with which to counter the initiative.

The American initiative, dictated largely by Clinton's domestic political needs, gave Alija Izetbegovic no reason to celebrate. However, his hands are not tied. As the main victims in the Bosnian conflict, Muslims are in some ways privileged negotiators, the side in the conflict which, at least in the eyes of the public and in the West, must be handled with special care. Alija Izetbegovic's government was thus able to meet the American plan with its own counterplan containing no less that 12 provisions. This counterplan was revealed last Friday, as soon as the analysis of American negotiations with Milosevic was completed.

Even before David Johnson, spokesman for the State Department, told American journalists that the talks with Milosevic were "understated", Bosnian Foreign Secretary, Mohammed Sacirbey, "whispered" to the press that Milosevic refused to recognize Croatia. He thus killed two birds with one stone: during the next couple of days the press was more concerned about Milosevic's reservations regarding the American plan, than Alija's rather explicit objections to certain elements of the plan contained in the 12 provisions.

Sacirbey then went a step further by hinting a Muslim opposition to the American peace proposal. On Wednesday, in Washington he hinted that Muslims will "pull out of the peace talks unless Serbian terrorist attacks on Sarajevo and Gorazde stop". During the most recent Serbian shelling of Sarajevo and Gorazde it became obvious that American "considerations" for the Muslims have their limits. There was no automatic retaliation from the air. UN issued a cold statement saying that one shell, no matter how deadly it may be, can not be sufficient cause for air strikes since it does not mean that Serbs intend to take over the enclave (Gorazde). Shelling of Tuzla provoked a similar reaction. Further evidence that American and Bosnian military interests do not coincide comes from the American press in which anonymous representatives of the administration admitted that the "loss of Srebrenica and Zepa may be a bad thing for Bosnia, but it is great for us". This is totally within the context of American plans for Bosnia: the administration is preparing for a possible UN withdrawal from Bosnia this winter, in which case it may have to send as many as 25,000 troops to help the evacuation of "Blue Helmets".

As far as Serbian calculation is concerned, it is quite simple. This plan is better than all of its predecessors: the territory is more compact, and the autonomy promised to the territory is greater. However, in the days of the Contact Group plan, when the territory was less compact and confederation less certain, the Republic of Srpska Krajina was still in existence. Not to mention thousands of human lives. The same applies all the way back to Coutillier's plan. Maybe at some point the Serbs may get the extra one percent on top of the 49 they have been promised. But at what price?