SERBS ARE THE ENEMY

Neutrality in the Bosnia war was morally untenable from the start.

The UN can not tell the Bosnians to accept a fait accompli partition, so it cannot deny their right to fight

by Edward Mortimer

(The Financial Times, 26 july 1995)

They still do not get it. Mr Michael Portillo, Britain's new defence secretary, said on Sunday that the deployment of the Rapid Reaction Force near Sarajevo did not signal a change in the UN mission. "There is no shift in any sense from peacekeeping to war fighting," he said. "We wish to provide protection to peacekeepers who are trying to save lives."

Confusion is, if possible, worse this week than last. British officers on the spot are still talking about "the warring factions" and then referring to the Serbs as "the enemy". British troops digging in on Mount Igman are still using whitepainted vehicles and wearing blue berets, as UN peacekeepers traditionally do, while the French are wearing their own national berets and have camouflaged their vehicles.

This is not just symbolism. A peacekeeper makes himself as visible, and therefore as vulnerable, as he can, to show he does not expect to be treated as hostile by either side. A war fighter camouflages himself because he expects to shoot and be shot at.

Not surprisingly, the Bosnian government forces are themselves confused. They have been letting the whitepainted vehicles through checkpoints but holding up the French ones. Logically it should be the other way round, because the Bosnian government has many times complained about the supine and neutral attitude of the UN. It should welcome French troops who are visibly prepared to fight, rather than British ones still dressed as neutral peacekeepers.

Mr Portillo's attitude is downright irresponsible. He is a party to preparations for war against the Serbs, both in the air and on the ground. Yet he allows his troops to be put in highly visible and vulnerable positions where they will be easy targets for retaliation.

It is high time that he and others in western governments

accepted that neutrality in this war is no longer an option. All last year General Sir Michael Rose, the then UN commander, worked for a general ceasefire in Bosnia. By the end of the year he achieved it, and one was nominally in force for the first four months of this year.

But it was predicated on the idea that negotiations would produce a solution based on the peace plan put forward by the Contact Group, comprising the US, Russia, Britain, France and Germany.

This plan would have confined the writ of the legitimate government in Bosnia to just over half the country, even though it represents at least two-thirds of the people. (It is probably more, given that many Bosnian Serbs are bitterly opposed to theracist separatism of Mr Radovan Karadzic's Serb Republic. Two hundred thousand are said to be still living in the area controlled by the Bosnian government, and quite a few are serving in its army.)

Even so, the Bosnian government was persuaded to accept the plan. But Mr Karadzic showed no sign of doing so, despite all the alleged pressure from Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia.

If the government had stuck with the ceasefire in these circumstances, it would have been tantamount to accepting the cease" lines as permanent borders. No state was actually proposing this, so no state had a right to be surprised or shocked that the Bosnian government resorted to further hostilities in the hope of improving its position. Certainly no state contemplated retaliating when it did so.

So the war resumed and the Serbs chose to take the offensive against the "safe areas" in eastern Bosnia, starting with Srebrenica. They say they were responding to "Moslem provocation" and in a sense they are right. It was "the Moslems", that is, the Moslem-led multiracial government, who took the initiative in resuming the war, so as not to accept the fait accompli of partition achieved by genocidal methods in 1992.

But because the UN cannot tell them to accept that partition, it cannot deny 'I to fight. Moreover, the repetition of those genocidal methods in Srebrenica, gruesomely corroborated by the eyewitness testimony of Dutch peacekeepers and by the preliminary

report of Mr Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the official UN human rights investigator, reminds us why a neutral stance in this conflict has been morally untenable from the beginning.

In fact the role of the UN may be coming to an end in Bosnia. The Russian veto in the Security Council makes it unlikely any coherent strategy for confronting the Serbs will emerge there. France's decision not to issue blue berets to its men in the Rapid Reaction Force is logical. If the force can achieve anything, it can do so only as the ally of the Bosnians who are trying to defend themselves and retrieve at least a part of their country.

Other states willing to keep forces in Bosnia should accept that their role will be to assist the Bosnian government. Article 51 of the UN affirms "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security" ' In this case the council has tried to take such measures but has proved incapable. Member states are surely entitled to draw their own conclusions.

But if troops are to be kept in Bosnia to help in its defence, it becomes absurd to maintain even the semblance of an embargo on weapons deliveries to the Bosnian government. Why make life more difficult by denying weapons to the people you are trying to help?

Keeping troops in Bosnia and lifting the embargo should no longer be seen as alternatives but as parts of the same strategy for reversing aggression and punishing genocide.