Serbia's Spite

By Bruce W. Nelan

WITH A BROAD SMILE, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic told would-be peacemakers in Geneva last week that he had persuaded the leader of Bosnia's Serbs to accept their plan for partitioning war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was, he said, a "very important step toward peace." The mediators, U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance and European Community representative Lord Owen, indicated that they believed him. Both gave Milosevic credit for pressing the Bosnian Serb boss, Radovan Karadzic, to accept the plan.

If Milosevic is now in the market for peace, and is carrying Karadzic with him, it can only be because war has brought him almost all that he hoped to tear out of Bosnia. "The Serbs are not going to cease firing until satiated," says a State Department official. After more than nine months of fighting, an estimated 125,000 have been killed, more than a million refugees are homeless, and Bosnian Serbs hold 70% of the republic. An internationally sanctioned accord now would reward the Serbs, who make up only 31% of the Bosnian population, for their aggression. Milosevic would then be another de facto step closer to his dream of creating a Greater Serbia in the former Yugoslavia.

Whatever his motivations, Milosevic had little reason to reject the Vance- Owen plan. Talking about peace has repeatedly allowed the Serbs valuable time to consolidate their conquests. So after Karadzic said no at the international negotiations in Geneva last week, Milosevic had a long, private talk with him and persuaded him to say yes.

Whether the Vance-Owen plan is the key to peace is questionable. It would force the legitimate Bosnian government, which represents other ethnic groups in addition to the Muslims, who make up 44% of the population, to accept partition of the country. The two mediators have designed an elaborate scheme for twisting Bosnia into 10 autonomous provinces, to be ethnically apportioned among Muslims, Serbs and Croats. The patchwork blueprint can hardly be mapped, let alone offer a structure capable of standing up to the waves of hatred that flow through the real Bosnia. Rather than tamping down ethnic animosity, the design seems to guarantee perpetual quarreling; it would also hand the Serbs the fruits of their "ethnic cleansing." Owen admits as much, saying, "The proposals are not necessarily what I would like most, but they reflect reality on the ground."

Outside observers react to the plan in much the same way. "It is a defeat for the West and international law," says Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at London's King's College. Though Vance is a former U.S. Secretary of State, Washington does not fully support -- or denounce -- his plan. Says a U.S. official: "It essentially recognizes most of the gains made by ethnic cleansing and genocide."

Under the circumstances, such skeptics may be reassured by the strong possibility that the plan will never go into effect. Karadzic conditioned his acceptance on a demand that the ultra-nationalist assembly of the self-styled Bosnian Serb government must vote its approval. He predicted the assembly would do so this week, but not everyone believes it will.

If the assembly does accept, that would be only the beginning of a long and complicated process. First, the sides would have to implement a durable cease- fire and settle the disputed demarcation of the 10 proposed provinces. Then would come the demilitarization of the area and arrangements for elections. At each step the Serbs, who dominate so much of the country, could discover any number of pretexts for not pulling back to their designated areas. And Muslims are most unlikely to try to resettle in Serb-controlled areas.

Enforcing all these procedures would, in any case, depend on the U.N. and its local presence in Bosnia. Referring to the assassination of a Bosnian leader two weeks ago, a U.S. official says, "The U.N. can't even protect the Bosnian Vice Premier in its own armored personnel carrier on a road it supposedly controls." The weakness of the U.N. is also visible in Croatia, where it is supposedly supervising large areas that Serbs seized in 1991. The U.N. has not disarmed the Serbs there, has not resettled Croats in their homes and has not re-established local government.

Karadzic may have had some of this in mind when he said, after announcing his agreement, "I think there are still a lot of possibilities to reach our objectives." A senior State Department official in Washington says, "Milosevic has succeeded in convincing Karadzic that it is best to wait." Milosevic's long-term objective remains the eventual annexation of the Serb- controlled areas of Bosnia by Serbia. In this, as in all other aspects of Milosevic's single-minded determination to dominate, the West comes up hard against what the Serbs themselves call inat -- spite.

Serbs have long believed that the world has it in for them. This time they have persuaded themselves that they are facing an imminent onslaught and must prepare for what they think of as their historic martyrdom. On Orthodox Christmas Eve two weeks ago, Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic, 71, a Serb writer, appeared on television to warn of demands for "national capitulation" from the West. "If we don't accept," he predicted, "we are going to be put in a concentration camp and face an attack by the most powerful armies of the world." These outside forces, he said, are determined to subordinate "the Serbian people to Muslim hegemony."

Strange as such rhetoric sounds, it is echoed throughout Serbia. A great majority of Serbs, including some who detest Milosevic, perceive the outside world as inherently anti-Serb. To varying degrees, Serbs see themselves as victims of double standards, willful misunderstandings and great conspiracies. All nations tend to pull together under pressure, but in Serbia there is an even stronger tradition, founded on centuries of subjugation by the Ottoman Empire, of defiance in the face of insuperable odds. Though the Turks are long gone, Serbs still dwell on their fear of living under Muslim domination. The cumulative effect, visible in last month's elections, which Milosevic and his allies won easily, is increased support for virulent nationalism. "Milosevic's main weapon," says Milos Vasic, a journalist at the Belgrade weekly Vreme, "is the systematic maintenance of a siege mentality."

Much of the Serbs' evident sense of impending disaster is of their own -- and Milosevic's -- making. The West has not been aggressive, or even firm and decisive, in its handling of Serbia, which has fomented and backed armed rebellion in major portions of Croatia and Bosnia while suffering scant punishment. In view of the West's performance so far, Milosevic's confidence is understandable. If the Vance-Owen accord collapses, he and his Bosnian ; allies can sit tight. If it holds, he can shift his resources to his pursuit of Greater Serbia in the Kosovo and Macedonia regions of the former Yugoslavia.

But there are many things short of accepting the Serbs' fait accompli or sending ground troops to fight them that the U.N. or the NATO allies could do to end the bloodletting -- if they had the political will to carry them out. They could blockade Serbia to make sanctions work, and launch air strikes against Serb fighters in Bosnia. If Serbia were to join the battle, Western air forces could bomb military targets in Serbia as well.

Such a clear demonstration by the West that it will not allow Europe to fall back into the turmoil of ethnic and religious wars of yesteryear, complete with massacres, rape and concentration camps, would force Serbs to confront themselves and their defiance. Up to now, the self-defeating gradualism of the West has put too little painful pressure on the Serbs to halt their aggression.

With reporting by James L. Graff/Belgrade, William Mader/London and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington