Second Look

IS LATE REALLY BETTER THAN NEVER? IN BOSNIA nobody knows, but the thinking in Washington and Western Europe seems to be "Let's find out." It is getting very, very late for intervention there. Sarajevo's 400,000 residents are reaching the end of their food supplies, since relief flights were suspended on Dec. 1. But few are keen to accept the offer of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to guarantee safe passage to all civilians leaving the city -- an all too facile and cynical turnabout after eight brutal months of Serb barrage.

Nonetheless, NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels worked out contingency plans that ranged from air enforcement of the U.N. ban on Serb military flights over Bosnia to sending troops to create safe havens for potential victims of ethnic cleansing. A senior State Department official believes enforcement of the no-fly zone to be a near certainty, perhaps to be followed by a lifting of the ban on weapons sales to Bosnians.

And if it really is too late? In hopes of heading off future conflict, the U.N. is considering dispatching 700 peacekeepers to Macedonia. Ethnic tension there, already high, could explode if Slobodan Milosevic is re-elected President of neighboring Serbia on Dec. 20.