BUDAPEST, Hungary - On the eve of a 53-nation presidential-level summit on European security, officials argued until midnight over the text of a statement today that would mention Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The lack of consensus pointed out one of the dilemmas facing the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe - how to strengthen its commitment to making Europe secure in the wake of international failure to stop the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
We must "strengthen CSCE and be able to deal with future crises like Bosnia in a positive way," Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Sunday. "The fact that Bosnia has been such a tragedy should not cause us to throw up our hands and fail to engage in conflict resolution wherever we can."
Incoming House speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who Sunday called for military action against the Bosnian Serbs, argued that the war has made mockeries of the West's security pacts. NATO, he said, looked "pathetically helpless," and the United Nations was "literally incompetent in Bosnia."
So Gingrich is unlikely to welcome the new U.S. suggestions to make CSCE a formal organization rather than a low-budget $40 million conference.
He and other new GOP leaders may also find inadequate U.S. proposals to punish Serbia by suspending it from CSCE, leaving it represented only as an empty nameplate at the conference table.
The new tough tone from Washington finds some resonance among Bosnian Muslims, who for three years lobbied the United Nations to lift the arms embargo that keeps them at a strategic disadvantage with the Serbs.
"I agree with Newt Gingrich," said Bosnia's U.N. Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey. "It's dabbling with fiction to try and talk about the future of CSCE while trying to interfere with its sorry present."
But talk they will.
President Clinton's speech today is expected to suggest enhancing the role of CSCE with select peacekeeping forces. "I prefer to engage in peace strategies rather than war strategies," Christopher responded to Gingrich's fiery comments.
And Russian President Boris Yeltsin on Sunday reiterated his fears of NATO's expansion. "Russia is against the North Atlantic Alliance expanding the sphere of its influence to the East, since then NATO's frontiers will approach the border of the Russian Federation," he said, urging instead the expansion of CSCE.
Just as Bosnia-Herzegovina dominated the agenda of last week's NATO meeting, it threatens to overwhelm the CSCE summit.
Christopher said U.S. envoy Charles Redman will brief him on meetings with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic that Christopher says were "useful but not decisive."
French and British allies are likely to report no major breakthroughs as well today, after outlining to Karadzic Sunday a diplomatic push that may allow Bosnian Serbs to confederate with neighboring Serbia.
Worried that the Europeans will offer the Serbs their own independent nation, ambassador Sacirbey called the visits to Serb rival Karadzic "almost like Satan worship."
Allied officials are also considering going to Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo, for negotiations Tuesday when the summit ends.
