U.S. May Widen Role in Bosnia : Balkans: Officials say they will consider sending in ground troops to move and protect regrouping U.N. forces. The stance still rules out a combat deployment.

WASHINGTON —  The Clinton Administration on Tuesday appeared to be heading reluctantly toward having the United States assume a broader role in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s bloody three-year civil war.

Amid mounting attacks by separatist Bosnian Serbs on United Nations peacekeepers, U.S. officials said they will consider sending American ground troops to Bosnia to help move and protect the 22,000-member U.N. force there as it regroups in positions that can be better defended.

While U.S. officials insisted that American personnel would not assume a combat role, the declaration by aides to President Clinton marked a departure from the Administration’s previous stance that the United States would send ground troops to Bosnia only to help evacuate U.N. soldiers or to police a political settlement there.

“We’ve said we’ll be there . . . to respond,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry, who portrayed the new stance as part of the stated U.S. commitment to assist the peacekeepers in a noncombat role. “We understand what our obligations are as a leader of the [NATO] alliance, and the President would be prepared to act on that type of request.”

The declaration came four days after Bosnian Serbs began seizing U.N. peacekeepers in retaliation for North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strikes.

U.S. officials stressed that they won’t know precisely how their allies will want American troops to serve in Bosnia until military planners complete their analyses, now under way behind closed doors.

But the U.S. forces would probably be involved in assisting U.N. troops in strife-torn Bosnia as they move from widely scattered positions to a smaller number of more strongly fortified concentrations. The new positions may be linked to each other by U.N.-protected roads.

Meeting in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, with foreign ministers of Britain, France, Russia and Germany, Secretary of State Warren Christopher said the United States is ready to help its allies by supplying equipment and airlift capacity, if necessary.

British army troops began flying into Bosnia, marking the start of an influx of reinforcements that is to add more than 6,000 British soldiers within the next few weeks.

About 2,000 U.S. Marine specialists in amphibious warfare were dispatched Tuesday for the Adriatic, where the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, with 50 warplanes, is already deployed. The dispatch of the Marines was described as only a precaution by officials.

But in an interview on the “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” Secretary of Defense William J. Perry said the Marine specialists could be part of a NATO force to help withdraw U.N. troops, with prior congressional approval.

Aides insisted that the new U.S. military assistance role in Bosnia, if undertaken, would not mark a policy shift because it grows out of U.S. promises to support the U.N peacekeeping contingent.

“We’ve said we would participate in a North Atlantic Treaty Organization-run evacuation or withdrawal from Bosnia . . . and we have agreed to work with our allies in strengthening” the U.N. peacekeeping forces, said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon.

U.S. officials declined to rule out a mission to rescue the peacekeepers who are being held hostage by the Bosnian Serbs. But U.N. officials said such a risky effort was unlikely.

The prospect of any U.S. casualties in the Balkans could inflict a heavy political penalty, as Administration officials are well aware. But they argued that the American public is in fact deeply torn on the issue, wanting to see justice done, and U.S. soldiers’ lives protected.

“When the American people check in on this issue they want to know two things: ‘Are we sending troops? And is there a holocaust going on? “ said one senior official. “. . . The problem is, if you say there is a holocaust, they want to do something about it. But they don’t want our people to get killed.”

This ambivalence is borne out in the polls. While surveys have shown a strong aversion to dispatching U.S. troops, a University of Maryland poll taken this spring found 64% approved of the use of force to stop “ethnic cleansing,” the combatants’ use of murder, rape and other means to expel their foes, including civilians, from certain areas. And 60% said they would approve of using such force even if U.S. troops risked significant casualties.

Although other Republican presidential candidates oppose any U.S. troop involvement, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) did not immediately reject all use of U.S. forces in Bosnia.

“Under certain circumstances, yes,” said Dole, who has sharply attacked Clinton on other aspects of the Bosnian policy, during a campaign stop in New Hampshire. “To rescue personnel, but not to rescue equipment.”

During his 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton castigated then-President George Bush for failing to stop Bosnian Serb aggression. “The legitimacy of ‘ethnic cleansing’ cannot stand,” he said.

But once he was in the White House, Clinton’s moral position collided with a self-imposed limit: He insisted that whatever happened in Bosnia, no U.S. ground troops would be sent into combat there. His resolve on that point was stiffened by public opinion polls that showed a large majority of the public feared a quagmire in the Balkans.

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A Force for Peace

The breakdown according to nationality of the U.N. peacekeeping troops deployed in the former Yugoslav federation.

Figures as of March, 1995 Argentina: 863 Bangladesh: 1,241 Belgium: 890 Britain: 3,376 Canada: 2,059 Czech Republic: 958 Denmark: 1,225 Egypt: 430 Finland: 470 France: 4,546 Indonesia: 220 Jordan: 3,387 Kenya: 975 Lithuania: 33 Malaysia: 1,541 Nepal: 900 Netherlands: 1,636 New Zealand: 249 Norway: 820 Pakistan: 2,993 Poland: 1,142 Russia: 1,337 Slovakia: 567 Spain: 1,397 Sweden: 1,209 Turkey: 1,478 Ukraine: 1,148 United States: 848 Source: United Nations Protection Force