UNSHAKABLE VACILLATION

By Bruce W. Nelan

Just before dawn last Saturday, a convoy of three buses and an ambulance rumbled out of Bosnia and into the Serbian university town of Novi Sad. Out climbed 121 U.N. soldiers -- mostly Canadian, British and French -- who had been held hostage by Bosnian Serbs for six days. They were tired and grimy but in good shape, except for six who had been injured in a road accident. Sitting on a bed in a hotel in Belgrade, a 21-year-old from the Royal Welch Fusiliers said, "All I want now is sex, but I can't say that, can I? Just say I want to see my girlfriend." The men reported they had been treated well. "By the end of the week, they couldn't do enough for us," said the fusilier.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic promptly took credit for the release, announcing that the Bosnian Serbs had accepted his appeal as a sign of readiness to start "resolving the crisis." But the crisis was far from over. On Friday a U.S. Air Force F-16 had been shot down over the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka. Serb commander Ratko Mladic reportedly claimed to have found the pilot, but there was no immediate confirmation. A senior official in Washington said Saturday he hoped that it was true and that the Serbs would release him promptly.

Even as some hostages were being freed, 19 others were seized. About 250 U.N. peacekeepers, many of them soldiers from NATO countries, were still captives of the Bosnian Serbs, taken in retaliation for NATO air strikes on Serb ammunition dumps two weeks ago. Fighting was under way in several parts of Bosnia; Sarajevo remained without water and electricity. Relief deliveries through Serb-held territories were halted. Atop the rubble, the unpredictable Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, was proclaiming that all U.N. resolutions and nato mandates were void. He was, in effect, declaring war on the world.

For three years, the West has sought a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Bosnia while sending in U.N. peacekeepers to shuttle around a war zone and provide humanitarian aid. By the end of last week, that policy was in tatters, and the situation presented unavoidable choices. The peacekeepers could be removed and the Bosnians left to fight it out in what would be a bloody denouement at best, and at worst a prelude to a wider Balkan war. A withdrawal would also require a large number of troops and lots of money, and it would dishonor every country and organization involved, particularly if they left hostages behind. A second option would involve NATO's getting tougher with the genocidal, hostage-taking Serbs, but that might lead down a path of commitment for which no Western government has the stomach. Or NATO and the U.N. could simply soldier on, hoping for a diplomatic settlement but perhaps only buying some time until the next crisis.

When in doubt, buy time. At a seaside meeting in the Netherlands last week, NATO foreign ministers announced their determination to stay in Bosnia, to strengthen their forces on the ground and take up positions that can be more readily defended. The Clinton Administration, fearing serious damage to the Atlantic Alliance if the U.S. were to stand aloof, announced the next day that it would consider sending troops to help the allies reconfigure their forces. That offer wins the support of 65% of the respondents to a TIME-CNN poll, but provoked a torrent of criticism in Congress, and by Saturday the Administration was furiously backpedaling. For all their show of determination, the allies had actually decided very little. The new policy -- leave the peacekeepers and hope for a deal, some way, somehow -- is an extension of the battered old policy, and the cruel dilemma of Bosnia remains.

Karadzic's hostage taking, possibly to his surprise, caused spine stiffening amid talk of national honor in both Britain and France. Far from considering a withdrawal, the two countries turned quickly to reinforcement. Prime Minister John Major ordered 1,200 more troops, backed by artillery, to join 3,500 British soldiers already serving with the 22,000 peacekeepers deployed in Bosnia. An additional brigade of 5,500 will move out later this month. The idea, says an aide to Major, is to build a unit "with an offensive role." U.N. resolutions authorize the peacekeepers to use all means necessary to get relief supplies through, but up to now they have not had the muscle to do so against Serb resistance. If they were in serious danger, U.N. peacekeepers could call in air strikes by NATO planes -- a move that has twice resulted in hostage taking by the Serbs. Now the British expect to be able to take better care of themselves with their own forces on the ground.

The French, who had earlier been demanding either firmer action or a pullout, acted as host of an alliance meeting on Saturday in Paris to discuss the formation of a multinational "rapid reaction" force of as many as 5,000 troops. This force would be based in Bosnia and would be equipped with helicopters and mobile artillery. Peacekeepers under threat would be able to call on it for support and to keep the Serbs from rounding up U.N. hostages at will. French officials, who regularly complain about the American refusal to contribute ground troops, tried again to persuade Washington to take part. Defense Secretary William Perry, who attended the Paris meeting, said the U.S. would help with logistics but not with ground troops.

U.S. policy had in fact looked tougher earlier in the week. Washington dispatched a small fleet to the Adriatic led by the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, carrying 50 warplanes, and amphibious assault vessels, carrying 2,000 Marines specially trained for combat landings. The U.S. had pledged in the past that it would provide troops to police a peace settlement if one ever came about and also to help peacekeeping forces withdraw if they ever made that decision. But last week's offshore buildup was not clearly intended for either of those contingencies.

At the NATO ministerial meeting in the Netherlands last Tuesday, Secretary of State Warren Christopher told his counterparts the U.S. was ready to provide heavy equipment and communications gear to help the peacekeepers "regroup" into six or so defensible enclaves. Meanwhile in Washington National Security Adviser Anthony Lake had sent a memo to the President, and Perry made an impassioned presentation in person to Clinton, who has not been deeply involved or very interested in Bosnia policy. They succeeded in convincing him that if British or French troops were endangered or bogged down during the regrouping, the U.S. should be ready to help, even by putting troops on the ground.

Clinton chose the Air Force Academy's graduation ceremony in Colorado on Wednesday to explain what was going on: "We have obligations to our NATO allies, and I do not believe we can leave them in the lurch." Briefers tried to explain the offer as simply an extension of previous policy, but that did not sell on Capitol Hill, where most leaders opposed it. By week's end the Administration was emphasizing that it had agreed only to consider seriously any such requests that might come from its European allies. Privately, many officials were hoping the Europeans would not take them up on the offer. As he headed off to Paris, Perry said, "We don't expect to be asked, and we are not planning to do it."

Military planners have only begun to determine the form of the reconfiguration. Presumably the troops will concentrate in the existing "safe areas" -- Sarajevo, plus the enclaves of Bihac, Tuzla, Zepa, Gorazde and Srebrenica. But the last three, in eastern Bosnia, are so isolated and tightly surrounded by Serbs that it might not be feasible to turn them into mini-fortresses. Even so, their guardians can hardly just walk away, leaving the Muslims seeking refuge there to face another round of "ethnic cleansing." It does seem likely, though, that U.N. soldiers will have to abandon the scattered collection depots around the Bosnian capital where they have been guarding tanks and artillery that the Serbs turned over near the safe areas. Similarly, UNPROFOR, the multinational U.N. Protection Force, would probably have to close down many small observation posts around the country.

The Western military presence is to be reinforced and reconfigured to make it stronger. But stronger for what? If UNPROFOR shifts its focus to protecting itself, pulling back into defended strongpoints to be less vulnerable, it will be unable to escort relief convoys along mountain roads and into the isolated valleys of Bosnia, which was its original purpose. If, on the other hand, the reinforced peacekeepers roll out in strength, ready to smash through Serb roadblocks to deliver aid, the Serbs will treat them as non-neutral combatants, and they will join in the war -- without enough strength to win. It has already become almost impossible for the peacekeepers to carry out their impartial, humanitarian mandate; the latest plan may make the contradictions of their mission even less easy to reconcile.

If the peacekeepers cannot fulfill their mission, why not just remove them? Because that could turn into a real, if hard to define, disaster. "All the governments looked into the pit of withdrawal," says a U.S. State Department official, "and just recoiled from it because that drags you in and leads almost inevitably to some sort of further entanglement." A U.N. pullout might be followed by a lifting of the arms embargo on Bosnia or by further air strikes, so the Serbs would be likely to fire on the departing troops and take hostages. If a pullout is a prelude to abandoning the Bosnians, the Muslims might shoot their betrayers or try to swamp the NATO helicopters in a Balkan replay of the U.S. evacuation of Saigon.

For Clinton, who has pledged as many as 25,000 U.S. ground troops if they are needed to help extricate the peacekeeping force, avoiding that outcome is a policy in itself. "The nightmare behind a lot of these [recent] decisions," says the State Department official, "has been the withdrawal scenarios." Marshall Harris, who quit the State Department two years ago in protest over its Bosnia policy, says, "The Administration is scared out of its wits of a withdrawal -- even to the extent of putting in troops to get unprofor to stay."

With the peacekeepers stuck while the war goes on, the West's only hope is diplomacy, but few see a ready diplomatic solution. At their meeting, the foreign ministers agreed on another attempt to get Milosevic to bring pressure to bear on Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic, his erstwhile protaga, to make peace. Serbia is still under severe U.N.-imposed economic sanctions, and would like to have them lifted, which might happen if Milosevic could persuade Karadzic to negotiate a reasonable settlement with the government of Bosnia. American officials say Milosevic and Karadzic are "mortal enemies," and a diplomat says, "They both realize there's not enough room in the former Yugoslavia for both of them."

The U.S. last week sent special negotiator Robert Frasure to Belgrade to try again to work out a deal with Milosevic. Christopher was frank about what he had in mind: "We want to isolate Karadzic." Specifically, the NATO allies hope to persuade Milosevic to recognize the sovereignty of Bosnia and Croatia, thus giving up, at least for now, his plan for a Greater Serbia. By accepting Bosnia's borders, he would be acquiescing in the breakup of Yugoslavia. The quid pro quo would be to lift some sanctions and allow Serbia to import oil. American diplomats put on a positive face, but they do not expect quick results from the negotiations with Milosevic. They are "not going well," a senior official said Saturday.

At the end of March, the Security Council asked Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to review the mission and suggest changes. The council met on Friday to begin considering his report, which contains four options. The first is early withdrawal, and the second is maintaining the status quo; Boutros-Ghali does not advocate either of those. The fourth calls for a smaller unprofor based in the six safe areas and authorized only to support relief efforts. This is more the classic form of peacekeeping, but it requires that all the warring parties agree to it.

The third of Boutros-Ghali's options takes into account British and French determination to send in more troops and use arms to carry out their mandate. The Secretary-General says if that is their intention, fine, but it is not consistent with a U.N. peacekeeping mission. He recommends that this sort of force -- now in the making -- be reshaped not as a U.N. operation but as a multinational intervention force under command of the countries contributing troops, as was the case initially in Somalia and Haiti. "He's saying," explains a U.N. official, " 'If you want to do more, do it yourselves, because you haven't given me the resources to do it.' " Even more than that, Boutros-Ghali wants the U.N. to return to traditional peacekeeping. Since there is no peace to keep in Bosnia, Option 3 has the force of logic behind it, but London, Paris and Washington insist on retaining the U.N. label. Without it they would turn into a multinational army at war with the Serbs.

What remains is the familiar grim stalemate at a higher level of tension. After the British and French plans take effect, U.N. forces will probably find themselves in armed camps, where they can protect themselves but not the civilian population outside. The Serbs show no sign of willingness to stop fighting and start talking. On the diplomatic track, the only effort under way is Washington's attempt to sweeten an offer Milosevic has rejected before. Even if he agrees to recognize Bosnia for now, he can always change his mind later and resume his quest for a Greater Serbia after the oil is flowing again.

The bombing attacks on the Serb ammunition dumps two weeks ago were an act of desperation. U.S. and European leaders knew the Serbs were likely to shell cities and take hostages in response. But the Serbs had been shelling Sarajevo anyway and were brazenly violating a nato edict excluding heavy weapons from a 12-mile zone around the city. The allies believed they had to do something, anything, to stand up to them. The new show of allied firmness may turn out to be no less desperate and no more effective.

--REPORTED BY EDWARD BARNES/NOVI SAD, MASSIMO CALABRESI/ ZAGREB, J.F.O. MCALLISTER/WASHINGTON, MARGUERITE MICHAELS/NEW YORK AND BRUCE VAN VOORST/NOORDWIJK

With reporting by EDWARD BARNES/NOVI SAD, MASSIMO CALABRESI/ZAGREB, J.F.O. MCALLISTER/WASHINGTON, MARGUERITE MICHAELS/NEW YORK AND BRUCE VAN VOORST/NOORDWIJK