May 17, 1996
U.S. Report Says Chances Poor for Bosnia to Hold Together
By STEVEN ERLANGER
ASHINGTON -- A draft intelligence report circulating in the American government warns that the chances are poor that Bosnia will hold together as the multi-ethnic, unified state called for in the Bosnian peace agreement, senior American officials say.
The National Intelligence Estimate -- a classified effort to pull together a consensus view of the American intelligence agencies -- questions the public position of the Clinton administration that the civilian effort in Bosnia is on schedule and going well.
The report comes as American allies are expressing concern that the United States, which has 20,000 troops in Bosnia as part of a NATO-led peacekeeping force, is being overly optimistic about the chances for a fair election there this fall so long as Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who has been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, retains power and influence.
Senior American officials have predicted regularly that Karadzic will soon be gone as the Bosnian Serb leader, undermined by the Serbian president in Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic. But Milosevic has been slow to act.
Under the peace agreement reached in Dayton, Ohio, last November, both Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb military leader, Gen. Ratko Mladic, are supposed to give up their positions and be handed over to the tribunal in The Hague for trial.
According to senior American officials, the National Intelligence Estimate is still "a work in progress." But they say that the current draft is sharply pessimistic about the effort to build a unified, multi-ethnic Bosnia. It predicts that the elections, if held, will be along ethnic lines in a country increasingly divided among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims.
According to the draft analysis, the leaders of all three groups, none of them especially democratic, want to preserve their power bases and fear the dilution of their control in a multi-ethnic state.
The report says that the goals of the Dayton peace accord are incompatible with a situation in which Karadzic, a public advocate of Bosnian Serb separateness, maintains power and influence.
And it says that the Muslim-Croat federation the Americans pushed them to create two years ago, in large part to protect the Muslims from being swallowed up by the Serbs and Croats, remains largely a figment of the American imagination.
American officials from President Clinton to Secretary of State Warren Christopher tried to put new substance into the Muslim-Croat federation on Tuesday, bringing Muslim and Croatian leaders to Washington and pushing them to integrate the command structure of their separate armies, create a joint civilian-led defense ministry and joint economic institutions to manage taxes, investment and economic aid.
The draft estimate, intended to help guide policymakers but not necessarily reflect their views, is normally circulated to them for their comments and questions, officials say. White House officials asked the authors to consider other questions and evidence that might lead to less pessimistic conclusions, officials say.
The need to do something soon to curb Karadzic was stated publicly this week by Michael Steiner, the senior deputy to Carl Bildt, who is in charge of implementing civilian components of the Dayton accords. Steiner said that progress is being made to improve freedom of movement within Bosnia with the new help of the NATO forces there, but that there are "psychological checkpoints."
He said there is "a deeper insecurity in the minds of the people, who see the same leaders in power, and these leaders not behaving in a way that indicates to people that the peace will hold."
Steiner appealed to the United States and its allies to remove Karadzic from power or sharply limit his influence. "As long as Karadzic remains in power, we can't expect the elections to come out the way we want," Steiner said.
Milosevic has told American officials that the elections would themselves solve the Karadzic problem, since as an indicted war criminal he is banned from running in them. "But for us that's not enough," Steiner said. "Karadzic would spoil the whole atmosphere."
The elections themselves are necessary for establishing the multi-ethnic, unified institutions of the weak central Bosnian government called for in the Dayton accords.
Senior American officials argue that while Bosnia is a mess, it is improving, and that the incremental progress being made on civilian questions like freedom of movement and resettlement of displaced people is in rough line with the schedule laid out in the peace accords.
"It's a cumulative process, and we knew it would be painful and we have to keep the pressure on to squeeze progress out of" the faction leaders, a senior official said. "Instead, everyone asks if the parties are prepared to move to the end point right now, and we never expected that. The true test will be if at the end of the year there is something standing and self-sustaining."
For example, American officials say they recently "read the riot act" to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, NATO, the police, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and Bildt's office to get them to focus on the need to promote freedom of movement and resettlement.
There are new efforts to get the peacekeeping troops deployed in visible, imposing ways to intimidate those trying to prevent freedom of movement, the officials say, and NATO has now appointed a two-star general to work with a task force on the elections.
At the same time, a top American official working on the elections with the security and cooperation organization, William Steubner, resigned over the lack of progress in preparing for a free and democratic vote.
There is a general agreement in the American government that Karadzic "intends to try to thwart an open election," a senior State Department official said.
But rather than risk the military confrontation and possible hostage-takings that could follow the forcible arrest of Karadzic, the official said that the United States, remembering the difficulty of seizing a clan leader during the American operation in Somalia in 1993, says "it's better to delegitimize him than to take him out, and the debate is over how best to do it."
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