A Little Bombing Is a Dangerous Thing

As each day passed, the designation of Gorazde as a U.N.-sanctioned "safe area" seemed increasingly like a cruel joke. Two rounds of NATO air strikes early in the week had done little to ease the Serbs' tightening vise around the besieged Muslim enclave on the Drina River. By Friday, Serb forces had moved artillery and armored vehicles into the surrounding hills and pounded away at the city of 65,000 civilians with howitzers, mortars and tank cannons. On Saturday afternoon, as Bosnian radio reported fretfully that tanks were rolling through Gorazde and firing into residential areas, NATO dispatched six planes to search for a Serb tank lobbing shells into Gorazde from the city's outskirts. Bad weather forced the planes back, but not before a surface-to-air missile launched by the Serbs downed a British Sea Harrier jet. The pilot parachuted to safety in a Bosnian village, but the episode only escalated the tensions. Would NATO step up air strikes? Would the Serbs make good on their vow to take the city by dusk?

As darkness settled on Gorazde, neither scenario came to pass. Instead, Yasushi Akashi, the U.N.'s chief civilian representative in Bosnia, suddenly announced that he was close to signing a pact with the Serbs. According to Akashi, the U.N. would stop combat air patrols above Gorazde if the Serbs agreed to a cease-fire and released U.N. personnel held across Bosnia beginning last Monday. The Serbs must also withdraw to the outskirts of Gorazde and allow a multinational U.N. protection force to police the front lines around the city. The deal, brokered with the help of Russian mediator Vitali Churkin, offered face-saving possibilities for all parties. But given Serb proclamations just hours earlier that they intended to take Gorazde, and the ease with which cease-fires come and go in Bosnia, hopes were slim that the accord would actually hold.

After two years of anguished but feckless soul searching by NATO about its proper role in the Bosnia mess, the organization's halfhearted display of military muscle in the skies over Gorazde did little to enhance its reputation. On Saturday, before the tentative agreement with the Serbs was announced, six former U.S. officials, among them former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, blasted Bill Clinton for a "posture of moral and political abdication," and called for further NATO air action. And barely hours before Akashi released word of the accord, he issued a statement calling a halt to the U.N.'s Gorazde venture. "I believe it would be meaningless in present circumstances for ((the U.N. peacekeeping force)) to fulfill its activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina," he said. A U.N. official in Zagreb made the point more forcefully: "Either we close up shop or we come back with a huge army."