A PEACE HERE, A PEACE THERE

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Once more the globe-trotting peace missionary, Jimmy Carter, has surprised the diplomats. Last week he went to Sudan, where a bloody conflict has long seemed less a civil war than an exercise in mutual extermination, and emerged with the promise of a two-month cease-fire.

This Carter achievement seemed particularly startling. For a dozen years, the Muslim Sudanese government in the north and the south's black Christian and animist rebels have tried to kill as many people on the other side as possible by deliberate starvation and by bombs and bullets. Between them they have snuffed out more than 1.3 million lives. But Carter, in this case as in others, was undaunted, and once more has got results that looked most unlikely: a cease-fire during what is prime season for heavy fighting.

As often with Carter's diplomacy, the long-term value of his intervention is in doubt. "It was negotiated on behalf of the guinea worm,'' gibed a State Department official. Indeed, the combatants had agreed to stop fighting largely to allow aid workers to treat a terrible parasitic disease. While the pause might open the door to negotiations, it seems unlikely to end Sudan's relentless slaughter. Carter did not address the fundamental conflict over the government's insistence on imposing Islamic law throughout the country.

Even so, any break in so murderous a conflict is welcome. And the truce in Sudan well illustrates the strange phenomenon of Carter diplomacy. This time, at least, nobody is likely to denounce it as an unconscionable bribe to an outlaw state, as some did the North Korean agreement Carter got started last June--or as helping to legitimize a band of killers, the view some took of the cease-fire he brokered in Bosnia in December. Nor will he be accused of undermining official U.S. policy, a charge still heard six months after his last-minute success in paving the way for a peaceful landing of U.S. troops in Haiti.

But it does raise anew the oddly unnerving specter of Carter, in his sensible shoes and armor of self-righteousness, tackling the world's diplomatic problems one by one. How does this private citizen, whose own presidency sank under accusations of weakness and appeasement, manage to make himself a force in world diplomacy?

To begin with, there is the role of the Carter Center in Atlanta, which has some 200 employees working on projects around the world full time. The former President will not use the words "mini-State Department" to describe his operation. But he does say, "We analyze the major conflicts of the world. So if we get an unexpected opportunity to deal with a problem, we don't have to start from scratch. In a few hours, I can have on my desk here a fairly sophisticated briefing."

Carter stays in touch with dozens of foreign leaders who often cannot approach or be approached by Washington. It may be his prestige as a former President and his well-advertised willingness to talk in friendly fashion with the world's worst pariahs that give him entree to such ostracized chieftains as the late North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung or Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. When they want to float a proposal, he is a sympathetic vehicle with an excellent channel to Washington. His wide-ranging humanitarian programs have earned him vital connections. John Garang, a principal leader of the southern Sudanese rebels, "has been to Plains to attend my Sunday-school classes," Carter says matter-of-factly, and "as for the government in Khartoum, I've been going there since 1985 primarily on humanitarian projects."

Thus eradication of the guinea worm opened the door to the cease-fire. After first getting the approval of Garang and other rebel leaders, Carter asked Sudanese President Omar Hassan el-Bashir to stop shooting long enough to let the medical effort proceed. Initially, Carter relates, Bashir said "it was too much of a military sacrifice." Carter replied that he seemed "insensitive to the humanitarian needs of the south"-hardly a strong condemnation, given the allegedly genocidal nature of the war the government has been waging. But, says Carter, "if I condemn someone as a human-rights violator or an obstacle to peace, it can be very damaging." In other words, if Carter says you're bad, you must be despicable.

For the former President, making peace is not just a choice but a divine commandment, and he brooks little opposition. Many Administration officials consider his near messianic approach to be overweening and arrogant, but what one of them calls "a preternatural self-confidence'' often blows a lot of obstacles away. He is hardly deterred by official policy either. He went ahead with his free-lance negotiations in North Korea, says an Administration official, "because he had very strong views that we were heading toward war.''

It is Carter's willingness to negotiate with the bloodiest tyrants, and even to praise and flatter them, that makes him most effective--and most controversial. He firmly believes it is necessary to talk to the Kims and Karadzics, and to Saddam Hussein, whom Carter has communicated with through intermediaries. Unconcerned with his popularity at home and largely immune to press criticism, he contends that one cannot open a productive negotiation by denouncing the man across the table. Says Chester Crocker, a former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs: "There's value in reaching out to an isolated leader. He understands that one way to handle a polecat is to treat him like a human."

The deeper question is whether Carter any longer knows the difference between polecats and pussycats. One person who observed his negotiations with Raoul Cedras, the Haitian junta leader, is convinced that Carter was cynically acting the role of good cop while the rest of his delegation played bad cop--but another who was there is just as sure that Carter convinced himself Cedras was a man of military honor rather than a murderous thug. Michael Mandelbaum, professor of American foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, notes that as President, Carter intensely stressed human rights, but that now he places conflict resolution above everything else. Argues Mandelbaum: "If you care about moral issues, you can't necessarily believe that any deal is better than none."

Results are the acid test. The record suggests that while Carter may open doors, they do not always lead to lasting accomplishment. The record:

NORTH KOREA: Carter last June headed off an Administration plan to impose sanctions with a promise from North Korea to stop bomb-related activities at its nuclear power plants in return for further talks on its nuclear program. The talks eventually led to a declared freeze on the nuclear program in exchange for new, less dangerous reactors from outside. But some Republicans think that set a bad precedent for bribing an outlaw regime not to build atom bombs. And North Korea has been raising objections that could squelch the deal.

HAITI: Despite what looked like grossly excessive Carter favoritism to the Cedras junta, the U.S. profited by entering the country without having to shoot. GIs landed peacefully, Cedras and company fled into exile, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was restored--all at the minimal price: one American soldier killed, one wounded. As the U.S. hands over responsibility to the United Nations, though, violence among Haitians continues.

BOSNIA: At the cost of conferring unseemly legitimacy on what most of the world considers a band of genocidal Bosnian Serb war criminals, Carter won a three-month cease-fire signed in December. But neither side has made real progress toward peace. Fighting has resumed and is widely expected to burst out in full force when the cease-fire expires at month's end.

However one strikes the balance, the record is likely to get some more entries. For all their mutual irritation, Bill Clinton is unlikely to rein Carter in. A former President with a zeal for foreign policy and a fairly clear idea of what he wants can be useful to a current President who often tries to spend as little time on international affairs as he can.

--Reported by Dean Fischer/ Cairo, J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Sylvester Monroe/Atlanta

With reporting by DEAN FISCHER/ CAIRO, J.F.O. MCALLISTER/ WASHINGTON AND SYLVESTER MONROE/ATLANTA