PITY THE PEACEKEEPERS

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The words sounded drearily familiar. Bosnia's Serbs "have gone too far," intoned German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. "This is where we draw the line." NATO Secretary-General Willy Claes asserted that "the international community cannot accept any longer to be humiliated" -- just as so many other statesmen had insisted so many, many times in the past three years.

It seemed that this time, for once, words would be matched with action. And they were, sort of, in what might be called a Balkan-style chain reaction. A heavy NATO bombing raid was swiftly countered by Serb shelling of supposed "safe areas"; that brought a second, more intense NATO bombing attack, which in turn prompted the Serbs to take more than 200 U.N. peacekeepers as hostages against still more air raids. There the explosive situation stalled, as everyone from troops on the ground to diplomats on their cellular phones teetered between the dangers of excess belligerence and empty bluster.

On Saturday a skirmish erupted in Sarajevo that was a microcosm of the escalating confrontation. At 4:30 a.m., two Bosnian Serbs disguised as French peacekeepers, complete with blue helmets and flak jackets, infiltrated a U.N. observation post on the Vrbanja bridge and spearheaded the Serbs' capture of the post -- and 12 French U.N. prisoners. Four hours later, a platoon of French troops responded in the first-ever combat engagement for territory between Serbian and U.N. soldiers, recapturing one end of the bridge. In the process, two French soldiers and four Bosnian Serbs were killed.

But with so many U.N. peacekeepers held hostage -- in some cases chained by the Serbs to ammunition dumps or near other potential bombing targets -- the French willingness to strike back did not translate into rhetorical resolve on the part of the allies. Top U.N. officials, backed by the Russians, argued against further confrontation. Meanwhile, the British, the Germans and the Americans continued searching for a way to avoid both a full-scale continuance of the air campaign and the humiliation of yet another backdown.

The lead-up to this showdown began with increasingly open Serb violations of a heavy-weapons exclusion zone enforced by NATO around Sarajevo. The Serbs had already been shelling the Bosnian capital from inside the zone, breaking the February 1994 agreement. Last week they made the nose thumbing official by brassily pulling three artillery pieces and a mortar out of a U.N. impoundment depot, firing them at Sarajevo and ignoring a U.N.-NATO ultimatum to hand them back. That was too much even for Yasushi Akashi, the top U.N. official in Bosnia. He had vetoed several previous requests by local U.N. commanders for bombing strikes, but this time he approved one. It came Thursday and was more than the usual pinprick: a squadron of 15 NATO planes flying out of Italy -- mostly American but including a sprinkling of other craft -- bombed ammunition dumps just outside Pale, the Bosnian Serbs' so-called capital.

The Serbs retaliated by shelling five of the six U.N.-established "safe zones" in Bosnia, killing 76 people. It was the highest death toll in months and triggered a second air raid on other Pale ammunition dumps Friday that might have done serious damage: observers noted a heavy explosion and a thick column of smoke. The Serb response was to seize or detain more than 200 members of the U.N. peacekeeping force in various locations in Bosnia; some were merely kept under a sort of house arrest, but TV showed pictures of a few being held in chains at the ammunition dump and other likely bombing sites as human shields. The Serbs announced that they would kill one U.N. hostage for every future bomb that falls on their forces.

And then -- the moment of truth. In the past, when the Serbs have responded to a NATO air strike by shelling civilians and taking hostages, NATO has made threats but backed down. This time, would the strikes continue, hostages or no? Following the Serbian bridge attack and French counterattack, there were hints of more bombing, notably from U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry, who cut short a visit to Italy to meet with his British and German counterparts at London's Gatwick airport on Saturday. At a news conference, Perry declared that the credibility of the international community was at stake. But the impression he left was that further confrontation was on hold -- as one Washington official had put it earlier, "to let tempers cool."

In the past, the Serbs have been adept at backing off just enough from provocations to allow the situation to quiet down; and it is possible they might conclude that their increasingly brazen violations are exhausting the patience even of some of their friends. Notably, Russian President Boris Yeltsin expressed pro forma opposition to the air strikes but added that his government had warned the Serbs that they must stop violating agreements with the U.N. "They did not do this, so they got it," said Yeltsin.

But to achieve any deeper and more lasting effect -- getting the Serbs to agree to the latest Contact Group peace plan, for example, or even to open negotiations about that plan with the Bosnian government -- might well take a long and intense bombing campaign for which there seems to be no stomach in either the U.S. or Europe. Says Warren Zimmerman, former U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia: "Any fool would know the Serbs were going to react the way they have. There's only one response to that, which is to hit them again, and possibly again and again, even at the risk of some harm to the hostages. If that doesn't happen, the U.N.'s weakness will be so apparent that it will encourage the Serbs to play the hostage game even more than they have already." His tone leaves little doubt that that is just what he expects.

For the time being, the U.S. will have all it can do to keep the roughly 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers, formally known as UNPROFOR (for U.N. Protection Force), from being withdrawn from Bosnia. In the midst of supporting the bombing, British and French officials continued last week to talk of removing their contingents, which would gut the force. As news came of the French peacekeeper casualties at the bridge, Jacques Chirac, the new French President, explicitly threatened a pullout if French soldiers cannot be protected better against snipers and hostage takers. He dispatched an aircraft carrier to provide more support.

The U.S., in fact, sold the air strikes partly as a way of keeping UNPROFOR in business. The idea was to prove to the Serbs that they could not harm the peacekeepers with impunity, a contention the so far unpunished Serb hostage taking calls into question. The Clinton Administration would regard UNPROFOR's withdrawal as a disaster that would remove the last restraint on the enthusiasm of Serbs, Muslims and Croats for slaughtering one another. A pullout, says one official, "will lead to a total unraveling and end any chance of a political settlement." The U.S. has a selfish interest too. Though no American troops are members of UNPROFOR, Clinton has promised to send as many as 25,000 U.S. ground troops to protect departing peacekeepers. That conjures up a vision of American soldiers being killed or wounded in the unheroic cause of covering a retreat.

But if the alternative is a heavy bombing campaign that nobody wants? The U.S. and its allies seem bereft of ideas. The latest diplomatic effort was to press Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to recognize the Bosnian government, on the theory that this would further isolate the Bosnian Serbs. It is questionable how much that might have helped, but anyway, the initiative failed; Milosevic refused unless the U.S. and its allies permanently lifted their trade embargo against Serbia. For a while last week it looked as if the Bosnian conflict was approaching a fateful turning point. But now it looks no closer to a solution than last month. Or last year. Or in 1992, when the war began.

--REPORTED BY MASSIMO CALABRESI/ZAGREB, JAY BRANEGAN/BRUSSELS, J.F.O. MCALLISTER AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON

With reporting by MASSIMO CALABRESI/ZAGREB, JAY BRANEGAN/BRUSSELS, J.F.O. MCALLISTER AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON