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.
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