by Stefen S. Rosenfeld

International Herald Tribune, Paris, August, 2, 1993

Washington - It is the right moment to be reminded by the human rights nags at Helsinki Watch that the United Nations has dithered on its pledge to set up an international tribunal to prosecute war crimes in the old Yugoslavia.

No prosecutor has been appointed since the pledge was made in February, no judge nominated, no file opened, no defendant named, and meanwhile evidence disappears and witnesses and survivors scatter. Worse, war crimes go on.

The reminder is timely because something is coming along that threatens to throw an ultimate monkey wrench into the United Nations' address of atrocities in this and future ethnic wars.

I refer to the peace talks or, to be more precise, the carve-up talks on Bosnia. For good reason, the Serbs are usually singled out as the villain, but the fact is that any of the Serbian, Croatian and Muslim leaders who are participating, plus countless others, could yet be accused of war crimes. Hence the self-generated pressure on those at the table to bargain out a mutual amnesty and get on to other matters.

In short, they all may join bloody hands - the Serbs, bloodiest of all, the Croats and even the suffering but not altogether innocent Muslims - and grant each other political absolution. Nor will outsiders be in a position, as were the World War II allies in respect to Hitler Germany, to impose a victors' justice.

The hard part is that principle may be sacrificed not simply to individual evasion but to perceived national interest. It was right, goes the argument now infolding, for the United Nations to threaten war crime trials for deterrence puroposes when the war in Bosnia was raging, but it is just too complicated and perhaps a bit mischievous to follow through now that losers and winners are talking about a settlement. For even a belated and inadequate peace agreement will at least serve to head off new war crimes, although it does not punish past ones.

War crimes are among the grossest of human rights violations. But in almost any dispute, the human rights dynamic changes when a denouement seems to be taking shape. Priorities change, and moral absolutes start losing their sharp edge. Rights violations that earlier seemed unconscionable and deserving of the most rigorous condemnation start to look fit for the bargaining table.

Fatigue and cynicism may contribute to this tendency, but a faith in the future may also be at work. Who among us has a positive certainty or a general rule about whether justice or reconciliation is the wisest course in these circumstances ?

Much remains to be sorted out in Bosnia and beyond, but this spongy ground is where event are moving now. That contributes to potential tensions between the Yugoslav parties and concerned foreigners.

This development puts a heavy burden on the international caretakers of human rights principle. Nor for them to make the agonizing compromises that national leaders and public may be under pressure to weigh. Theirs to serve the requirements of individual victims of wrong, in Bosnia now and in other times and places to come.

Read the stomach-churning details of eight cases that Helsinki Watch researched in order to show up the United Nations' evasion of the murder, rape, torture and destruction of the Yugoslav wars. (Reflecting what many people take to be a rough but fair distribution of group offense, the eight cases include five perpetrated by Serbs, two by Croats and one by Muslims.)

These crimes cannot be left unexamined without mocking justice in the places where they were committed, and without inviting a repitition of such violations elsewhere. Moreover, a cave-in on war crimes, added to the United Nations' failure in Yugoslavia to keep the peace and to provide sufficient humanitarian aid, would teal even further at the standing of the world organization.

Helsinki Watch chips in hopefully that a war crimes tribunal is "an essential component for defusing ethnic and nationalistic tensions" in the former Yugoslavia. I am not so certain of that. Trials could sharpen tensions, too. But the human rights group is surely ont the mark in saying: "Even if no defendant can ever be brought to trial, a thonough investigation of alleged war crimes will establish a historical record of the events, which in turn will individualize what is now too often seen as collective guilt".

Says Helsinki Watch: "In addition, regardless of whether defendants can be compelled to stand trial, indictments alone will be a sanction against the accused; an indictment and the resulting arrest warrant would turn the individual into a political pariah, subject to immediate detention if he ever steps outside the boundaries of his isolated state". The Washington Post