TIME TO KEEP THE PROMISE

FOR TWO DAYS LAST WEEK, THREE OF Bill Clinton's top national-security advisers trudged up the steps of the U.S. Capitol and tried to explain to Congress why the White House wants to send up to 20,000 American soldiers to Bosnia. The Senators who listened had plenty of questions for the President's emissaries. Some of the queries were pointed, others acerbic, a few downright hostile. One, however, stood out for the succinctness with which it cut to the heart of the matter. It came from Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe, who is known for making crisp and at times incendiary remarks (he once denounced the Environmental Protection Agency as a "gestapo bureaucracy"). "If we're going to have hundreds of young Americans dying over there," demanded Inhofe, glaring at Defense Secretary William Perry, "is this mission justification for their deaths?" Perry stared straight at his inquisitor. "Yes," he replied unflinchingly.

That response, which was emphatically echoed by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and John Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would be a bold statement for members of any presidential Administration. But it is especially daring considering that more than three years of war in the Balkans have barely managed to capture the attention, much less the conscience, of American voters. Last Friday, as news arrived that as many as 2,000 Muslims may have been massacred by Bosnian Serbs near Banja Luka, a TIME/CNN poll indicated that only one-third of Americans believe the U.S. has a moral obligation to stop the fighting in Bosnia. Despite public skittishness, however, last week's testimony made three things clear. When and if a peace agreement is reached, the President is determined to send troops to Bosnia. Congress, for its part, has no appetite for approving that decision--but also has little stomach for standing in Clinton's way. And the White House is still struggling with questions that experts say cannot be ignored if Clinton hopes to avoid the disasters of previous deployments in Lebanon and Somalia.

It is more than a little ironic that on the threshold of an election campaign, Clinton, who has never given so much as a single speech exclusively devoted to Bosnia, is undertaking his largest and riskiest foreign venture in this part of the world. But he feels bound by a promise, made during his first month in office, to back a peace agreement with U.S. soldiers. The subsequent years of seemingly incessant Balkan warfare made it unlikely Clinton would ever have to redeem that pledge, but remarkable diplomatic progress in recent months--much of it stemming from the efforts of Clinton's envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke--has forced the President to confront his commitment. Last week the indefatigable Holbrooke was flitting between the Balkan capitals in an effort to, as he told TIME, "get fuller compliance" on the region's fragile cease-fire. It was his final trip before three-way peace talks, refereed by the U.S., kick off Oct. 31 in Dayton, Ohio. While those negotiations promise to be rancorous, the Presidents of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia are eventually expected to emerge from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base with an agreement. And soon thereafter, 20,000 U.S. soldiers will be en route to blood-soaked Bosnia.