Greater Serbia Marches On

It is hardly El Alamein or Stalingrad, two decisive battles of World War II, but the siege of Srebrenica, the Muslim enclave under attack by Bosnian Serbs for the past 11 months, is taking on similar symbolic significance. As Srebrenica goes, so may go the outcome of the yearlong war in Bosnia — with its multitude of broken truces, its more than a million refugees, its tens of thousands of dead and wounded and its steady spread of "ethnic cleansing," accompanied by rape, pillage and summary execution. Serbs, who constituted a third of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina a year ago, control 70% of its territory today. Even as Bosnian President Alijka Izetbegovic was signing a U.N.-brokered peace plan in New York last week, the Serbs, in a final land grab, were stepping up their offensive on the Muslim enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa in eastern Bosnia while their artillery pounded the capital, Sarajevo. What appeared to be the final push to round out a Greater Serbia was under way. The week ended with talk of yet another cease-fire, but few observers were confident that a truce would hold.

In Belgrade, Cedric Thornberry, the deputy head of the U.N. Protection Force, warned that Srebrenica was likely to fall to the Serbs in the next 15 to 20 days failing a cease-fire on the ground or a diplomatic miracle at the U.N. Said he: "There are clear indications that the Bosnian Serb army has not just strategic but territorial ambitions in the whole area." Then he added, with undiplomatic emotion, "I think everyone should concentrate on trying to stop the Serbs from getting into Srebrenica; someone has to stop the Serb advance."

The fall of the town, jammed with more than 60,000 malnourished people, mostly Muslims, would open to a Serb takeover a region that has been designated as an essentially Muslim province under the cantonal scheme drafted by U.N. peace mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen. A clear-cut Serb victory would also force the U.N. and, specifically, the members of the Security Council to recognize what frustrated U.N. representatives on the ground have been saying privately all along: humanitarian aid, international opprobrium and political mediation are not enough to stop the Serb expansion. But gloves-off pressure has been proving to be virtually impossible to mobilize and, in any case, would no doubt come too late to save Bosnia from de facto partition. At the request of Russia, the U.N. Security Council had to , postpone a decision to authorize NATO warplanes to patrol a no-fly zone over Bosnia. Reason: concern that hard-liners in Moscow, who sympathize with the Serb cause, would use the decision against President Boris Yeltsin in his power struggle with parliament.

The war was generating its own pressures. With his people facing hunger and death in the face of the Serb onslaught, Izetbegovic signed the Vance-Owen peace proposal, which would divide Bosnia into 10 largely autonomous provinces along ethnic lines. The Croats already had agreed. That left Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic as the only holdout. Karadzic has never concealed his distaste for the scheme, if only because it would interfere with Serb plans to create a united state embracing all Serbs living outside the original republic of Serbia.

To that end, Serb military pressure on Srebrenica is unlikely to ease for long if diplomacy alone is applied. As if to underline that message, Serb gunners — whether under orders or not — opened up on the landing area in the town from which U.N. helicopters have been trying to airlift seriously wounded Muslims. "This was the ultimate in despicable behavior," said Brigadier Roddy Cordy-Simpson, the British chief of staff of the U.N. force in Bosnia

Equally angered was Lieut. General Philippe Morillon, the French U.N. force commander who the previous week had managed to move a relief convoy into Srebrenica and evacuate some of the wounded — and in the process emerged as a hero. Having given Srebrenica's people his soldier's word he would protect them, Morillon then flew to Belgrade to appeal for support from Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who, he said, "alone can bring pressure to bear" for a cease-fire. After two days of talks, Morillon announced he had obtained a cease-fire from all sides. There have been scores of cease-fires over the past year in Bosnia, broken by one side or the other, a recurring tactic in a war for territory. For the moment, Morillon's chief weapons — the official optimism he carries with him like a banner and his repeated references to the power of world opinion — have won a respite for the besieged Moslems. But Srebrenica is not saved yet, nor is it clear that the Serbs have given up their ambitions.