IT is increasingly clear that any hopes of implementing a peace plan

for Bosnia rest on decisions to be taken in the next day or so by

President Clinton. The reality of American power and influence has left

the Vance-Owen peace proposals, which the US Government has declined to

endorse, very much hanging in the air. In Bosnia the fighting and the

''ethnic cleansing'' are continuing and peoples' lives and sanity hang

also, but by a thread. It may seem eccentric to argue for greater speed

in decision-making

after so many months of terrible conflict, but that is what is

required now. The negotiations have been long and wearisome and have

exposed the basic intransigence of the parties involved. They have been

borne by Vance and Owen with remarkable fortitude and skill, yet the

noisome cauldron has been boiled and boiled and we are now down to the

essence which clings to the bottom of the pot. This consists of the

realisation that very little will happen without American support -- and

the realisation that we must wait for President Clinton.

So be it, though we should not forget that people are dying every day

and that they might not understand such lengthy pondering by an

administration which claimed that it took office already moving in top

gear. Another question intrudes into this strange vacuum. The Vance-Owen

peace plan is far from perfect and the estimate of around 20,000 troops

to police it is surely far too low; but it remains the only peace plan

we have. The Bosnian Serbs don't like it because they think it gives

them too little territory, and territory which is also poor in natural

resources. The Bosnian Muslim Government rejects the plan because it

believes the Serbs get far too much land. Yet both parties have been

closely engaged with the peace plan negotiations and may yet feel that

it represents the core of an acceptable agreement.

Will President Clinton and his advisers scrap the Vance-Owen plan by

rejecting it finally and completely, or will they seek to build on it?

The latter course seems by far the most likely in Washington. President

Clinton is said to be in

favour of enhanced relief operations, more sanctions levelled against

the Serbs in Belgrade, and changes to the Vance-Owen map which divides

the warring groups. Presumably he expects the negotiations to continue.

Yet if these hints of his intentions are correct they will do little to

improve the hopes of an expanded and reworked Vance-Owen plan and will

simply allow the fighting to continue unabated. It all begins to seem a

little like empty posturing, but in the

circumstances which have developed we may have no alternative but to

accept.