SILENCE OF THE GUNS

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NATO's prolonged bombing clearly threatened to damage U.S.-Russian relations, and more bombs brought with them the danger of a bigger war were Moscow to decide to provide direct military support to the Serbs. Perry hinted to Grachev that the Clinton Administration was working on a compromise. Meanwhile the U.S. sent Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott to mend fences in Moscow and urge the Russians to take a more active part in peace efforts. As Talbott left, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev appeared mollified, saying the U.S. and Russia had to remain partners.

Washington was so eager to find a way to end the bombing offensive that some policy planners had fudged on the weapons withdrawal. One Pentagon option under consideration last week would have halted the air strikes if Mladic had merely agreed to lift the siege of Sarajevo and stop shelling the city. His guns could remain in place to be monitored by U.N. observers on the ground. Luckily for NATO, that idea never emerged from the interdepartmental debate in Washington. Instead Milosevic hauled NATO's chestnuts out of the fire by ordering Mladic to accept a pullback of mortars 82 mm and above and artillery 100 mm and above. The Bosnian government protested that this allowed too many weapons to remain but in the end went along with the agreement.

Mladic had a reputation of being willing to stand up to Milosevic in the past, so why did he cave in this time? All indications are that he and his Bosnian brethren were in a bind tighter than NATO's, and getting worse. In recent months Croatian forces have recaptured Western Slavonia and the Krajina, swaths of territory that had been seized by Serbs in 1992. At the same time, Croats, Bosnian government forces and their Muslim allies went on the offensive in northwestern Bosnia and relieved the siege of Bihac, a Muslim enclave in the north. Under the allied pounding of the past two weeks, the vaunted Serb air-defense system has been neutralized, leaving ground targets vulnerable to attack by day or night. Bosnian forces with their allies last week retook another large area in the west and were closing in on Banja Luka, the biggest Serb stronghold in Bosnia, although they may not take it.

The capture of Banja Luka, says a Western diplomat in Belgrade, "would be huge, and it could happen. Apparently the Serbs just aren't fighting." Though the Bosnian government has promised to adhere to a cease-fire around Sarajevo, it has made no apologies for its offensives in other areas. Some analysts suggest the Bosnian Serb forces are not making much of a stand in the northwest and center of the country because they see no point in taking casualties to hold on to territory they assume will be allotted to the Muslims and the Croats under a negotiated peace. "Mladic seems to be recognizing political reality," says a U.N. official in Sarajevo, "and is not willing to fight for land that is inevitably going to be given up anyway."