BALKAN PEACE MAY BE IN SIGHT, BUT CROATIA HAS THREE OPTIONS

by William Pfaff

(The Herald Tribune, 10 August 1995)

PARIS - The question now is not whether Bosnia will be partitioned, but how. The Croatian government of Franjo Tudjman has three possible courses of action before it.

It can stop its war now, having reconquered Krajina and Bihac, or when Eastern Slavonia is retaken, if it chooses to risk a confrontation with Serbia in order to have all of Slavonia, which borders Serbia. Mr. Tudjman could then enjoy his acclaim for having re-established Croatia within, substantially if not totally, its prewar frontiers. He would have acted within international law in doing so.

Ethnic cleansing, on present indications, has not been practised by the Croats, in its accepted sense of deliberate and systematic terrorism. It has not been needed, since the Serbs of Krajina mostly have fled of their own accord, in fear of revenge for what they did to the Croats in 1991. Mr. Tudjman and his countrymen would, if they stop now, be in the good graces of Germany and the United States, and, grudgingly so, of the European Union and Russia.

But Mr. Tudjman is unlikely to do this' It would leave Bosnia to Serbia. The forces of the selfproclaimed rebel Serbian republic in Bosnia have been reinforced by the Serbian militias fleeing Croatia. This changes a military balance already unfavorable to the Bosnian government forces.

With the continuing connivance of Belgrade, the Serbs probably can overrun Sarajevo and what remains of Bosnian independence, assuming that there is no outside intervention in support of the Bosnians. Military intervention is definitely not part of Senator Bob Dole's plan, and we have seen what UN Protection Force guarantees are worth. If the Croats pull out of the war now, Bosnia probably is finished.

A greater Serbia which had swallowed up Bosnia would make an uncomfortable neighbour for Croatia. The old Yugoslavia would have been parcelled into two decidedly unequal states (three, including Slovenia, but the Slovenes, over by Italy and Austria, are happily out of all this).

Tudjman's alternative could be to help himself to western Bosnia, attacking his former allies from the rear, and dividing up Bosnia with the Serbs. This plan has been bruited between Mr. Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic since at least 1991. The partition line was even sketched out by NU. Tudjman at a London Guildhall banquet in May, for the edification of the British Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown.

Mr. Tudjman's sketch-map gives Sarajevo to Croatia, together with most of the area of southwestern Bosnia that now is held by Bosnia's mostly Muslim government forces. Serbia would get more or less the territories already held by General Ratko Mladic's Bosnian Serb militias. The result would be two countries, both incorporating a sizable minority of betrayed and oppressedex-citizens of what had been the internationally recognized democratic state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

That is the first disadvantage of this plan for Mr. Tudjman. He would acquire an embittered and insurgent Bosnian minority population just after having gone to war to dispose of his subversive and separatist Serbian minority.

The other disadvantage would be that Mr. Tudjman instantly loses all of the credit, potential respectability, and possibilities of sympathy and aid from Germany, the United States and the European Union that he has just acquired. He would join President Milosevic, General Mladic, and Radovan Karadzic (if he survives his present difficulties) in the camp of cynical aggression - all of them international pariahs.

What third course is open? It is for Zagreb to maintain the present, American-brokered Croatian-Bosnian federation, and continue to facilitate the Bosnians rearmament and defense. The Bob Dole option would have Zagreb doing this in cooperation with the United States. The real aim of this, of course, would be to reopen general peace negotiations with Serbia, this time with Croatia the patron and sponsor of Bosnian independence and democracy.

This surely is what Secretary of State Warren Christopher had in mind when he said on Sunday that Croatia's actions have provided new ground from which peace negotiations might be relaunched.

A settlement is easier to imagine today than at any time since the war began. Croatia should now be a satisfied power. Mr. Milosevic, who wants sanctions lifted and a safe way out of the war he started, ought to be satisfied by a settlement which gave Serbs even a part of that 49 percent of Bosnia's territories assigned to them in the so-called Contact Group Plan of May 1994, which the Bosnian government accepted.

Mr. Karadzic, in Pale, would not be satisfied by such an outcome, but his career seems in jeopardy,to the advantage of General Mladic, the new Bosnian Serb strongman, who (for the present at least)is allied with Mr. Milosevic.

Such an outcome would not really satisfy the Bosnians, who have suffered the most in this war, but there is nothing better available.It is not yet known whether even this settlement will become available. It is still Mr. Tudjman's move.