Down to The Wire Again

WITH FAST-MOVING SERB COMBATANTS ON ONE track and the painfully deliberate forces of international diplomacy on the other, the struggle to resolve the civil war in Bosnia has turned into a hare-tortoise race. With more than two- thirds of the former Yugoslav republic under their control, Serb nationalists continued to drive eastward, occupying about one new village a day, toward Muslim Srebrenica. A U.N.-sponsored relief effort to airlift the ill and injured out of Srebrenica collapsed when Serb gunners shelled mission helicopters, killing two.

At U.N. headquarters, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim, finally signed on to a four-part peace plan calling for dividing the Balkan country into 10 semiautonomous regions. On Friday General Ratko Mladic, the commander of Bosnia's Serbs, agreed to a cease-fire early this week. Whether that amounted to a real military pause just short of the goal -- or a ploy -- remained to be seen.