WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 -- Having seen Croatian gains at their expense and facing newly unfettered NATO air power, the Bosnian Serbs should now end a year of opposition and settle for 49 percent of Bosnia, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke said Sunday. At the same time, the United States and NATO are currently rethinking how many ground troops it would take to enforce any peace agreement, he said, and previous statements that the U.S. would provide up to 25,000 troops are no longer 'definitive.' Newsweek magazine suggested Sunday the Clinton administration is sending Serbia a signal that, should this peace initiative fail, it could come under months of NATO bomb attacks, allowing the Bosnian government time to strengthen its forces. The talks in Belgrade with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic that will follow the delegation's meeting in Paris with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic will be 'potentially decisive,' Holbrooke told NBC's 'Meet the Press.' Milosevic, in command of the most potent military force in the area, the former Yugoslav army, is crucial to any decision by the Bosnian Serbs to keep on fighting. 'If this peace initiative does not get moving, dramatically moving, in the next week or two, the consequences will be very adverse to the Serbian goals,' Holbrooke said. 'One way or another NATO will be heavily involved and the Serbs don't want that.' NATO will either 'assist the U.N. withdrawal or there will be more active NATO air (power) over the skies. These are not things the Serbs should want,' Holbrooke said.
'We hope they will recognize that the coming week or two is potentially decisive.' The NATO forces, Holbrooke pointed out, are no longer subject to the 'dual key' United Nations veto. Later, he said he did not want to leave the impression that 'NATO airstrikes start automatically if we don't make a breakthrough in the next few days. I'm not going to give a tight time limit.' However, a brief item in Newsweek magazine Sunday suggested that the Clinton administration is backing up the Holbrooke mission with not-so- veiled threats aimed at the Serbs. Newsweek said it has learned that the Clinton administration is planning a nine-month bombing campaign against Serbia and Serb-held positions in Bosnia if the latest peace initiative fails. The nine months would be time enough, the magazine said, to allow Bosnia forces to be equipped and trained to face the Serbs, apparently assuming the arms embargo imposed on the Bosnian government would be lifted. The magazine story said European acceptance of the plan would be necessary and that NATO allies would not approve unless the peace plan were adjusted to win a greater chance of Serb acceptance. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has been quoted in recent days as saying he could still accept nothing less than 64 percent of the disputed territory. Holbrooke returned to the United States a week ago to bury three members of his delegation killed in an accident on the Mount Igman road into Sarajevo. 'We want to maintain and we insist on maintaining a single Bosnian state within its current internationally recognized borders,' Holbrooke said. 'We want to have the integrity of Croatia maintained but we don't want the question of eastern Slavonia ... retaken by force and we're working on that very actively.' Holbrooke said the U.S. believes the 'human rights and group rights of all three communities, the Croats, the Bosnians and the Serbs, must be respected. We know there are people in all countries from all groups. ' Following a peace which the United States and NATO 'are committed to help enforce' the United States also wants to have 'an overall economic reconstruction plan for the region,' he said. So far, however, there has been no movement yet on the 'critical issue' of whether the Bosnian Serbs will follow the two other parties and accept the year-old plan worked out by the 'Contact Group' of countries, Holbrooke said. Asked how effective he can be with the Bosnian Serb leaders after repeatedly labeling them indicted war criminals, Holbrooke said the international war tribunal's action is something over which he can not negotiate. 'The war tribunal process will not be part of this negotiation. We're not going to negotiate this issue.' 'At Srebrenica, a month ago, people were taken into a stadium, lined up and massacred,' Holbrooke said. 'It was a crime against humanity of the sort that we have rarely seen in Europe,' Holbrooke said. 'I'm not going to cut a deal that absolves the people responsible for this.' Holbrooke said the original 'Contact Group' plan and 'everything we have been producing accepts the fact that the state of Bosnia- Herzegovina will have two entities; one will be Bosnian Serb -- they'll get 49 percent of the land and their own administrative structure if that's what the parties want -- the other half will be the federation of Bosnians and Croats headquartered in Sarajevo.' Later, Holbrooke repeated, 'The United States remains committed, as do our 'Contact Group' members, to 51-49 percent. If the parties themselves want to adjust it later in some minor way, that's fine.' He said the United States believes the word 'partition' means, not 'cutting the country in two,' but instead 'overlapping but separable administrative structures within a single state.' 'We are not in the business here of producing a 1938-type Munich settlement which carves up Bosnia, however, the administrative arrangements are open to negotiations,' he said. 'The Bosnian government itself, in Sarajevo, has said repeatedly that the kind of special parallel arrangements that already exist between the Croats of Bosnia and the country of Croatia can also exist with the Serbs of Bosnia and the country of Serbia, once an agreement is reached,' Holbrooke added. Holbrooke said the peace process is being pushed hard now because 'winter is coming; the British and the French have talked about pulling the U.N. out before the winter if something hasn't happened.' A U.N. pullout 'will lead to more fighting, a scavenger hunt for the remains of the equipment and weapons, more chaos and the death of any peace plan,' he said. Also, he said, there is a 'genuine, expressed desire by some of the parties that the United States make an all-out push.' Domestic U.S. politics and the approaching 1996 presidential election are not a factor, he said. The vote by the Congress to lift the arms embargo imposed on the Bosnian government, if it is reaffirmed by another vote that overrides President Clinton's veto, 'would be very costly because the British and French would start the withdrawal.' The United States will 'only put military personnel on the ground in Bosnia in the circumstance of a peace agreement accepted by everyone and they will not be under any form of U.N. command,' he said. The United States military and the NATO command is involved in an 'intense dialogue' being conducted 'at this very moment' on the number of troops it would take to enforce a negotiated settlement, he said, depending on the 'shape of the actual settlement.' Holbrooke declared that a previous plan to put 25,000 U.S. ground troops or more on the ground to enforce a peace agreement 'is not currently under discussion. A basic new planning exercise is under way within NATO' and 'those earlier numbers should not be regarded as any way as binding or definitive.' Croatia, having 'liberated a good chunk of it,' now controls about 96 percent of its own territory. The remaining 4 percent 'is explosive, ' he said. Although the United States believes the territory is part of Croatia and that keeping it is a 'very important part of our negotiations' it nevertheless should not be reclaimed by 'an attack because we think it escalates the danger of a wider conflict.' The national security adviser in the Bush administration, Brent Scowcroft, said after listening to Holbrooke, 'I think it is fair to say that there is no resolution that all three parties will find acceptable.' 'The Croatians have not finished,' he added, also on NBC. The remaining 4 percent of Croatian territory it does not control, in eastern Slavonia, 'is probably economically the most valuable piece of real estate because it contains a small oil producing area of Yugoslavia,' he said. In addition, the Bosnian government forces, seeing the success of the Croatian offensive, may feel 'they can do better be continuing fighting than they can be putting themselves in the hands of the 'Contact Group. '' Ominously, the Bosnian Serb forces, which have faced a major reversal, 'potentially have the whole Yugoslav army behind them,' Scowcroft said, and Serbia's Milosevic 'has yet to be heard from. He's been very quiet.'
washington X X X in Sarajevo.' Later, Holbrooke repeated, 'The United States remains committed, as do our 'Contact Group' members, to 51-49 percent. If the parties themselves want to adjust it later in some minor way, that's fine.' He said the United States believes the word 'partition' means, not 'cutting the country in two,' but instead 'overlapping but separable administrative structures within a single state.' 'We are not in the business here of producing a 1938-type Munich settlement which carves up Bosnia, however, the administrative arrangements are open to negotiations,' he said. 'The Bosnian government itself, in Sarajevo, has said repeatedly that the kind of special parallel arrangements that already exist between the Croats of Bosnia and the country of Croatia can also exist with the Serbs of Bosnia and the country of Serbia, once an agreement is reached,' Holbrooke added. Holbrooke said the peace process is being pushed hard now because 'winter is coming; the British and the French have talked about pulling the U.N. out before the winter if something hasn't happened.' A U.N. pullout 'will lead to more fighting, a scavenger hunt for the remains of the equipment and weapons, more chaos and the death of any peace plan,' he said. Also, he said, there is a 'genuine, expressed desire by some of the parties that the United States make an all-out push.' Domestic U.S. politics and the approaching 1996 presidential election are not a factor, he said. The vote by the Congress to lift the arms embargo imposed on the Bosnian government, if it is reaffirmed by another vote that overrides President Clinton's veto, 'would be very costly because the British and French would start the withdrawal.' The United States will 'only put military personnel on the ground in Bosnia in the circumstance of a peace agreement accepted by everyone and they will not be under any form of U.N. command,' he said. The United States military and the NATO command is involved in an 'intense dialogue' being conducted 'at this very moment' on the number of troops it would take to enforce a negotiated settlement, he said, depending on the 'shape of the actual settlement.' Holbrooke declared that a previous plan to put 25,000 U.S. ground troops or more on the ground to enforce a peace agreement 'is not currently under discussion. A basic new planning exercise is under way within NATO' and 'those earlier numbers should not be regarded as any way as binding or definitive.' Croatia, having 'liberated a good chunk of it,' now controls about 96 percent of its own territory. The remaining 4 percent 'is explosive. ' Although the United States believes the territory is part of Croatia and is keeping it as a 'very important part of our negotiations' it nevertheless should not be reclaimed by 'an attack because we think it escalates the danger of a wider conflict.'
