NEWS ANALYSIS : Islamic Nations to Press for Military Aid to Bosnia

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia â€”  The Islamic world, split by lingering wounds from the Gulf War and mounting tension in the Persian Gulf, is attempting to unite behind a major new push for military aid to the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina in what many officials see as a new testing ground for Islam and the West.

Facing growing unrest among radical Islamic groups over the failure of Islamic governments to come to the aid of Bosnia’s Muslims, Islamic foreign ministers meet here today to embark on a diplomatic offensive to demand international military intervention in Bosnia and an end to the arms embargo that Islamic leaders say has left the Bosnian Muslim community powerless to defend itself.

The emerging consensus among nations as politically diverse as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Jordan indicates growing common fears that a failure to act on behalf of Bosnia’s Muslims threatens to radicalize the Islamic opposition throughout the Middle East. It could leave the Islamic world powerless partners in the new world order that was to have emerged at the Gulf War’s end.

At issue in the debate is the evolving relationship between Islam and the West: Will they be potential partners or rivals amid growing conflicts in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia? The answer in large part will determine the nature of the political landscape left by the end of the Cold War.

“Bosnia is a bridge between the West and Islam, a bridge that can be used both ways,� Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic said in an interview. “This can put Western-Islamic relations on the wrong track or the right track. After communism is gone, some people look for confrontation between Islam and the West. If they need it, this is the chance. If they want cooperation, this is also the chance.�

Saudi Arabia, the wealthiest and among the most influential of the Islamic nations, is moving to silence its own critics who have complained about the Saudi regime’s inaction on the Bosnia issue, pledging to commit its considerable diplomatic and financial capital to end Serbian aggression against Muslims and Croats in former Yugoslav republics.

For the first time, Islamic governments are indicating that they are likely prepared to commit the majority of any ground forces needed to drive the Serbs out of Bosnia and that they may be ready to defy an international arms embargo if military intervention does not take place, according to interviews with officials at the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s emergency meeting in this Saudi port city.

“The Muslim countries are willing to provide whatever ground troops are necessary,� said a Saudi Foreign Ministry official, reporting that Saudi Arabia is preparing to lead a new diplomatic effort to persuade the United Nations to approve armed intervention, or at least a lifting of the arms embargo.

“You have to deter force by force,� said the official. “And if you can’t do it through the U.N. or as an international coalition, then the least you can do is remove the international arms embargo and let them defend themselves. It’s a warped kind of logic when you’re telling the Bosnians: ‘We will not defend you, and we will not allow you to defend yourselves. We will simply watch you die.’ �

Silajdzic, Bosnia’s foreign minister, said he expects that Muslim nations will soon begin supplying weapons and cash for weapons in defiance of an international arms embargo if the United Nations does not move to provide military aid or lift the weapons ban.

“I think all of the countries will be ready to break the embargo,� Silajdzic said. “There is such a climate, everybody says enough is enough (and) we shall accept arms from anyone who offers them. It’s our right. To maintain the embargo on a country being devastated by a war machine, there is a big question mark on it. The world should either stop the aggression or let us stop it. The alternative is to lie down and die.�

Bosnian officials have attempted to play down the religious and ethnic overtones of the violence in Bosnia, whose victims have been not only Muslims but also Christian Croats in the Serbian “ethnic cleansing� campaign that has evolved into Europe’s most violent conflict since World War II.

But Muslim fundamentalist groups--including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan and Islamic radicals in Iran and near the Persian Gulf--have seized on the plight of Bosnian Muslims as an example of the powerlessness of Western-backed regimes in the Arab world to act positively on behalf of the world’s Muslims.

Saudi King Fahd, who regards himself as the leader of the Islamic world because of his nation’s custodianship of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, has come under special criticism for failing to direct Saudi government support to Bosnia’s Muslims. The estimated $70 million to $100 million in humanitarian aid contributed from Saudi Arabia has come exclusively from private donations, including $8 million from King Fahd himself.

Many Arabs say Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states could have helped stem the violence by providing financial incentives to the cash-strapped Serbian regime.

“Think of it. Saudi Arabia is the country that contains the two holiest places of Islam. If they can’t take action for Muslims being butchered in Europe, who can?� said one Gulf analyst.

Arab diplomatic sources said King Fahd sent a long personal letter to President Bush last June, pledging Saudi political, financial and military backing for armed intervention in Bosnia.

Islamic Conference officials said it is likely the resolution to be adopted at Wednesday’s conclusion of the meeting, which includes 36 of the group’s 47 foreign ministers, will call on the United Nations to authorize immediate military intervention in Bosnia or, failing that, a lifting of the arms embargo.

Arab diplomatic sources said the Saudis immediately will take the new resolution to Washington and New York, in an attempt to persuade the United States to provide air cover for a U.N.-sanctioned international ground force that could be primarily made up of troops from Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey.

Failing direct military intervention, some Arab sources said they believe that a large influx of cash from wealthy Islamic countries would allow Bosnians to buy weapons they need from within Bosnia, or from Croatian or compromised Serbian sources, without those arms’ having to be pushed through a Serbian blockade.

So far, Iran is the only nation that has attempted to openly defy the arms embargo, by sending a planeload of light arms to Sarajevo earlier this year; it was intercepted by U.N. inspectors.

But Islamic Conference officials said they regard international backing as crucial for any such effort to succeed. “The Islamic world doesn’t want to be obliged to intervene alone,� said Hamid Gabid, an official of Niger who is secretary general of the Islamic Conference. “This is a problem which can only be solved in the context of the international community.�

Without international intervention, he said, Muslim leaders run “a risk, a real risk� of seeing Islamic public opinion becoming increasingly radicalized. “You have private individuals who can utilize the notion of jihad (holy struggle) to act on their own,� he said. “You have popular organizations which can do the same thing, mobilizing radical tendencies which exist in several Islamic countries. . . . I hope there will be a response from the U.N.�