A Guide to the New Bids for Peace

The search for ways to stop brush fire ethnic wars has spawned a flood of new diplomatic approaches to peacekeeping. Here are some of the key concepts and organizations:

Peacekeeping: Deployment of military forces to troubled areas after a truce is already in place to deter forces on either side from renewing their combat. The United Nations has sent peacekeeping forces to many parts of the world, from the Middle East to Cambodia--most recently, to former Yugoslav republics.

Peacemaking: As diplomats are using the term, it is the deployment of forces to areas where fighting is still going on to impose a truce. So far, the United States and its allies have said they do not want to send “peacemaking forces” to the Balkans.

Peace-building: A term for diplomatic and military initiatives aimed at heading off local conflicts before they happen--from old-fashioned mediation to a newly proposed effort to protect the rights of minorities.

The United Nations: The main international organization involved in peacemaking and peacekeeping since its foundation in 1945. But the United Nations does not have its own troops, so it must call on individual nations to provide military muscle for its missions.

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE): A 52-member grouping of all the nations of Europe plus the United States and Canada. Launched in the Cold War, CSCE has been working to become a center for defusing and mediating all of Europe’s conflicts.

But CSCE commands no troops--so this week, the organization decided to create a formal link to three of Europe’s military groupings:

--The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the 16-member alliance of the Cold War,now seeking to reinvent itself as a defense umbrella for the entire Continent.

--The Western European Union (WEU), the nine-member security wing of the European Community.

--The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), composed of most of the republics of the former Soviet Union, which decided to set up a peacekeeping force, drawn largely from the new Russian army, to intervene in ethnic conflicts.