June 8, 1996

Swiss Diplomat Resists U.S. On Certifying a Bosnian Vote

By CHRIS HEDGES

ERN, Switzerland -- The Swiss diplomat in charge of determining whether conditions exist for fair elections in Bosnia is resisting intense pressure from the Clinton administration to announce that the vote should go ahead as scheduled in September, according to Swiss and American diplomats.

The decision by the Swiss foreign minister, Flavio Cotti, to maintain independence from the administration on one of its touchiest foreign policy goals has provoked intense diplomatic activity and some sharp exchanges, the diplomats said. Cotti is serving as chairman of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, charged under the Dayton peace accord with overseeing elections in Bosnia if it determines that they can be free and fair.

At the meeting in Geneva last weekend between the presidents of Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Secretary of State Warren Christopher, American officials tried to force Cotti to announce that elections would proceed, the diplomats said. But the Swiss official ignored the American demands, "crossing his arms and glaring silently at the Americans," according to a diplomat who was in the room.

The State Department then tried to extract a promise from him to give the green light in Florence on June 14 at a meeting of foreign ministers from the region. But he has refused to commit himself.

"If even minimal conditions are not met, then I believe it will be better to delay elections," Cotti said in an interview Friday.

"If these elections degenerate into a farce and a drama, then it will be a negative exercise for all of the parties involved."

Under the American-brokered Dayton accord, national elections are to be held by Sept. 14 as part of the process of re-stitching together the regions of Bosnia now dominated by Muslims, Serbs and Croats.

But diplomats had assumed that the Serbian separatist leaders who have been indicted for war crimes, the political leader Radovan Karadzic and the army leader Gen. Ratko Mladic, would have been forced from power by now, that refugees would have the ability to return to their homes and that all sides would cooperate with international supervisors, none of which has occurred.

The administration, facing its own election in November, is anxious to avoid delays that would suggest that the Dayton plan is a failure, or that American troops might need to stay in Bosnia past the end of the year.

American and European officials also argue that creating a national assembly and presidency would help the long-term prospect for unity, however tainted the election. The Muslim-dominated Bosnian government and some international monitors dispute this, fearing that the planned elections will only legitimize the country's ethnic divisions and past ethnic cleansing.

Cotti refused to indicate whether minimal conditions to hold elections were now in place, saying he did not want to "make public my personal opinion." But he added that while he would take into consideration the opinions of the nations involved in the peace process, their positions "will not be decisive for us."

"We have to act from our own conscience," he said. "My impression now is that we need to make further progress."

The 57-year-old Swiss official has made four trips to Bosnia since the peace agreement was signed in December to meet with leaders and various opposition figures. He is planning a fifth visit.

By the end of June or the beginning of July, he said, he will ask Robert H. Frowick, the American diplomat who heads the monitoring group's mission in Bosnia, to make a recommendation on elections. That recommendation will be discussed at the permanent council of the group's members in Vienna, which includes virtually all Western nations, including the United States, as well as Russia, and then passed on to Cotti for approval or rejection.

Cotti must make a decision by July 14 if elections are to go ahead, allowing for two months of campaigning, by Sept. 14, the date called for in the Dayton plan.

But Cotti, in the words of an exasperated American diplomat, "is taking his position as chairman of the OSCE more seriously than we expected."

After a report this week in The New York Times that Frowick had instructed his field staff to stress "positive" developments in weekly reports, Cotti wrote a stern letter to Frowick, saying he expects a fair and accurate assessment of events in Bosnia.

Diplomats who have worked closely with the Swiss official said he is deeply concerned about the inability to remove Karadzic -- who controls the Bosnian Serb police and media -- as well as attacks on minorities and opposition leaders, the lack of freedom of movement and inability to guarantee free expression. These problems have been noted in all regions but are considered worst in the Serbian and Croatian parts of the country.

"The presence of indicted war criminals is an obstacle to free elections," Cotti said.

He says he fears that if Serbian, Croatian and Muslim nationalists control and dominate the elections, those who want to rebuild an integrated Bosnia that cuts across national lines will have no voice in the country. Allowing nationalists to usurp the vote, he believes, would only bolster the ethnic intolerance that triggered the war.

"If we do not hold free and fair elections, if minorities and opposition parties are not given a voice in the process, then elections will serve only to create new conflicts, even armed conflicts," he said in his office.

"Elections will not eliminate nationalism," he said. "Nationalism deeply colors the soul of the population there. But we need to establish conditions so these minorities, who are against nationalist policies, can be represented in the parliament. It would be important progress if we established a parliament where different tendencies were represented."

"It will be impossible to type all this into a computer and get an answer," he said. "We are not perfectionists. These will not be perfect democratic elections, such as those in the United States or Switzerland, but some minimal conditions have to be met. It will be a difficult evaluation."