State Dept. Aides Urge Use of Military Force in Bosnia

WASHINGTON —  About a dozen career State Department officers who handle the day-to-day U.S. policy on the bloody ethnic war in Bosnia-Herzegovina have urged the Clinton Administration to use military force to stop Serbian aggression, a senior department official said Thursday.

The official said that the officers told Secretary of State Warren Christopher in a memo that the present policy of diplomatic and economic sanctions should be written off as a failure and that the United States should consider military intervention.

After receiving the memo, Christopher met with the officers to discuss their views, the official said. The secretary assured them that their opinions would be considered during a top-level re-evaluation of Bosnia policy, which was launched last week and is expected to be completed shortly.

The authors of the memo are all mid-level officers in the department’s European Bureau, the official said. Most are desk officers concerned with policy on Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and other republics of the shattered Yugoslav federation.

“We are only attempting to end the genocide through political and economic pressures such as sanctions and intense diplomatic engagement,” the memo said, according to today’s editions of the New York Times, which apparently had obtained a copy of the document. “In effect the result of this course has been Western capitulation to Serbian aggression.”

Not to intervene militarily, the memo said, “would teach would-be conquerors and other ethnic bigots throughout the world that their crimes will go unpunished.”

The message was only the latest complaint by mid-level State Department officials that both the Clinton Administration and the George Bush Administration have failed to take action needed to stop atrocities that verge on genocide. So far, the calls for military action have been rejected by the White House.

However, Christopher has expressed growing frustration at the continued Serbian aggression. He told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week that the United States has come to a “hinge point” where it must consider measures that were previously rejected, such as bombing artillery positions and arming the outgunned Bosnian government forces.

“The secretary certainly thinks it is a healthy thing when people who feel strongly about something express their views,” the senior official said when asked for Christopher’s reaction to the memo.

President Clinton met for several hours Tuesday with Christopher, Defense Secretary Les Aspin and other top officials to review Bosnia policy. Aides said that no decisions were reached.

The Pentagon is known to be wary about using U.S. military force in Bosnia, despite growing pressure from the State Department to take firmer action.

The New York Times also reported that Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has sent Clinton a memo urging air strikes to protect Muslim towns in Bosnia.

Albright said that, if other European countries decline to help, the United States should act alone to slow the supply of arms to the Bosnian Serbs and show American resolve, the newspaper said.

Clinton has said that the United States will act only in cooperation with other nations, presumably under the authority of the U.N. Security Council. So far, Britain, France and Russia, all nations with veto power in the Security Council, have rejected proposals for any sort of military action, including exempting Bosnia from the U.N.-imposed arms embargo that covers all of the former Yugoslav federation.

However, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday that an existing Security Council resolution authorizes any member state to use military force to ensure the delivery of relief supplies. He said that the provision would permit U.S. warplanes to bomb artillery positions that are menacing relief convoys or to take similar measures.

The department discussed its understanding of the scope of the Security Council resolution in a letter to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), who has called for U.S. military action. The letter could be intended to prepare public opinion for U.S. air strikes.

Presumably, the existing resolution would permit Clinton to take military action without violating his pledge to avoid go-it-alone steps.