A Feeble Step Toward Peace : Accord on government for Bosnia is welcome, but a truce remains elusive

Peace in Bosnia, when it comes, will be a fragile thing. The foreign ministers representing the warring factions signaled that Tuesday when they signed an agreement in New York creating a rotating presidency for the country, if it survives the conflict. That weak formula for governance is precisely the one that helped unravel Yugoslavia four years ago. Another lesson still unlearned.

That the will for a political solution is not yet at hand was clear when the diplomats--from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Yugoslavia (representing the Bosnian Serbs)--failed to agree to a cease-fire. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard C. Holbrooke, who has led an American peace initiative, accepted the unpleasant inevitability. “We don’t like talk and fight,� he said, “but that’s what they are going to do.� For now at least. Both sides still have fight in them, and untold scores to settle. This is a war as ugly as only old neighbors can make one. Nevertheless, progress has been achieved. The siege of Sarajevo has been raised with the belated but judicious application of NATO air power.

Now the question of outside power is on the table again. If it comes to peace, who will maintain it? President Clinton has talked of sending as many as 25,000 U.S. troops into the Balkans to keep the warring armies apart--if they are ever separated. America’s NATO partners collectively would supply the same number. The West rides to the rescue. A problem is that Bosnia is not exactly West. The Serbian-ruled rump Yugoslavia seems to see itself as distinctly East, and so do its Russian political patrons.

That leads to a ticklish question. Can NATO monitor the peace and keep the Russians out? Moscow thinks not. Says Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev: “A NATO-only operation would probably create some tensions in the region.� Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, counters: “Certainly Russia’s participation in such a force is important. Of course, to us, NATO command and control is central to our participation.�

The Russians could be players here. They could help; but it’s going to be another hurdle for the peacemakers.