U.S. Envoy Tries to Get Bosnian Leaders to Cooperate

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, crisscrossing the Balkans in an effort to save his Bosnian peace plan, tried to reconcile feuding Bosnian leaders Thursday.

Holbrooke talked with members of the Bosnian Cabinet and then the three-man presidency, leaders of an ineffective federal government of Muslims, Serbs and Croats that is supposed to be putting the two halves of Bosnia-Herzegovina back together.

“We have a long way to go,” Holbrooke told reporters after inconclusive talks with the members of the presidency. “We have made progress, but we are way behind.”

The talks resumed and continued into this morning.

Even getting the three men to meet--let alone cooperate--is difficult. Thursday’s was the first presidency meeting in about three weeks attended by its Bosnian Serb member, Momcilo Krajisnik.

Holbrooke negotiated among combatants in the 3 1/2-year Bosnian war to help secure the Dayton, Ohio, peace accords that formally ended fighting between Serbs and a Muslim-Croat alliance in December 1995. Before they became allied, the Muslims and Croats also fought each other.

Under the agreement, the sides are supposed to cooperate in Bosnia’s federal government and ensure that refugees are able to return to their old homes. International officials also say the apprehension of war crimes suspects is crucial to peace.

“Everybody is an obstacle,” Holbrooke said. “But if I have to rank . . . them, I would say the Serbs are the biggest of the three--but all three sides are in noncompliance to some degree.”

Haris Silajdzic, the Muslim co-chair of the Muslim-Croat Federation’s Council of Ministers, suggested that international mediators eventually may need to step in to arbitrate, as authorized under the Dayton deal.

“We have practically drained all possibilities to come to a solution by ourselves,” Silajdzic said.