WAR ON ALL FRONTS

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In Sarajevo, for example, NATO is likely to favor air strikes if the Serbs resume heavy shelling, but the emphasis so far has been on ground reinforcements. France and Britain are adding another battalion each to the new rapid-reaction force in the Sarajevo area. The purpose of the force is to keep open a supply route into the hungry city across the heights of Mount Igman. The troops are willing to use their artillery and heavy mortars to protect aid convoys, and have done so. That is new: U.N. resolutions have always allowed peacekeepers to use force if it is necessary to deliver humanitarian aid, but that right has almost never been exercised. However, the Mount Igman force is not willing to respond to Serb bombardment of Bosnian trucks, only U.N. ones. When a Bosnian convoy was shelled last week, the rapid-reaction force did nothing. By replying, it would have violated an even more basic tenet of the U.N. mission: that the peacekeepers maintain strict neutrality.

The allies insist that the UNPROFOR mission should be sustained, but they now argue that--at least where Gorazde is concerned--the U.N. and NATO will aggressively exploit the right to use force, including air strikes, that U.N. resolutions have always granted. One reason for treating that claim with caution is UNPROFOR's record so far. The U.N. force is obliged to protect the civilians who live in the safe areas and can call on the allies for help. But how good a job did the U.N.-NATO partners do protecting the civilians of Srebrenica and Zepa?

The next test of will has arrived in Bihac. Though the Croatian army is surging forward, it is still almost 50 miles south of the enclave. Inside the pocket, Serb shells are raining down--1,000 in one hour on Friday. Almost no aid shipments have arrived in the encircled zone for months, and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says the first confirmed deaths from starvation occurred there two weeks ago. The only hospital in Bihac is out of antibiotics and anesthetics, though amputations are still being performed. Aid workers call Bihac "a humanitarian catastrophe."

The way the newly streamlined U.N. military command sees its role in this crisis points to another reason for caution when interpreting the agreements made in the last two weeks. Even if NATO does help the U.N. enforce its resolutions with utmost aggressiveness, it will still be bound by its neutrality, which means the Bosnians will often be left out in the cold. This might now be called the Mount Igman model. At a press conference in Brussels last week, Janvier was quick to point out that there is a difference between the Bihac pocket, which is a large swath of territory, and the official U.N. safe area, which encompasses only the city of Bihac. "I think," said Janvier, "that the actions we can prepare will eventually deter an attack against the safe area of Bihac."

In other words, even if the six armies are at war in the pocket, neither NATO nor the U.N. feels impelled to get involved. Only if the city proper or the peacekeepers inside are threatened will the Western allies be drawn in. That policy conforms with the letter of the U.N. resolutions, no doubt, but it offers little hope to the residents of the Bihac pocket or to a Bosnian government trying to defend what is left of its country.