EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ENDS; NO BOSNIA FIX

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The Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe ended today with an agreement to prevent future conflicts, but notably without new ideas to deal with the current battleground: Bosnia. The CSCE -- which encompasses the U.S., Russia, Canada and many European nations -- agreed to establish its own peacekeeping force and to police shaky truces in countries once a part of the Soviet Union. But this week even an effort to issue a statement condemning Serb aggression was killed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. "The Russians blocked everything," Mahir Hadziahmetovic, the Bosnian delegate, complained bitterly. "There will be nothing in the final document on the most burning crisis in Europe." Why did Yeltsin -- who till now stayed his hand despite repeated condemnation of his Serbian allies by the West -- take this stance? TIME State Department correspondent Ann Simmons says Yeltsin "may be playing to domestic pressures to show that Russia hasn't fallen from superpowership, that it can still tackle the U.S. and disagree with the U.S."
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