Call It Anything but Peace

Bosnia-Herzegovina has fallen. The attempt to create a secular, multiethnic, multi-religious state in one of the constituent republics of what was Yugoslavia has been crushed by the neo-fascist ambitions of Serbia and Croatia. On Tuesday Bosnia’s President Alija Izetbegovic, under extreme duress, agreed to a division of his nation into autonomous zones.

In essence, a secret partition agreement made in Graz, Austria, by representatives of Croatia and Serbia is about to be implemented. Bosnia’s Muslims--those who have not yet been expelled or slain in “ethnic cleansing”--will inevitably be confined to ghettos within the Serbian and Croatian zones: Given their scattered distribution, they cannot form a viable, territorially contiguous state.

In Geneva, amid the politesse of international diplomacy, the agreement may be hailed as an end to the fighting, but in the hills of Bosnia, over the coming winter, it will be butchery. The butchers could have been beaten back.

Bosnia was prepared to fight on if the West, notably the United States, permitted it to buy weapons. Alas, the Bush Administration insisted on enforcing the U.N. arms embargo against the unarmed Bosnians as well as their heavily armed attackers. The failure of a last-ditch attempt by Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic to move acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger became the coup de grace .

But nations can rise from the dead. Even at this late hour, the Bush Administration can state unequivocally that it will never grant diplomatic recognition to a Serbia enlarged by territorial conquest and will withdraw diplomatic recognition from Croatia if it annexes any portion of Bosnia-Herzegovina. And if Izetbegovic or other Bosnian leaders set up a government in exile, it should be recognized as the legitimate government.

Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic has now been undercut both by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s seizure of much of the governmental apparatus of federal Yugoslavia and by Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic’s role in the Geneva partition agreement. If Panic should choose to flee Belgrade and set up a government in exile, that government too could be recognized as legitimate, at least for a period of transition.

In short, though the West, led by the United States, has failed to halt an international atrocity, it must not now compound the failure by calling the atrocity peace.