The Latest Crime in Bosnia

Finally, the Serbs have won. After months of killing, raping and shelling, the Serb forces have brought the Bosnian government to its knees. The peace talks under way are not a compromise. They are a legitimization of the Serbian victories.

But these victories are not the end of the Balkan horror story--just the close of another bloody chapter, with the worst still to come. If settlements are soft on Serbia, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic could cause a European crisis that will dwarf the current one, and put millions more lives at risk.

After months of meaningless cease fires, negotiations over the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina are progressing rapidly. The Serbs, the Croats, and even the Muslims appear to have accepted in principle the division of Bosnia into ten autonomous provinces, mainly divided along ethnic lines. While there is still debate over the specifics, dissection is now unmistakably Bosnia's fate.

The current peace plan is in large part due to the efforts of Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, the co-chairs of the United Nations-sponsored conference. For months they dissuaded the U.S. and the U.N. from taking military action in Bosnia, saying that peace was just around the corner.

And what a peace it is. Attacks by the Bosnian Serbs, funded and supplied by Serbia, will be rewarded--Serbian aggressors will win exclusively Serb provinces within Bosnia, which will soon become formal or informal extensions of the Serb state. Worse than the settlement itself though, is the message it will send to Milosevic.

Milosevic has a dream of a Greater Serbia that will encompass large swatches of Bosnia, Croatia and the disputed province of Kosovo. The Serb leader has carved out a section of Croatia already, and now is on the verge of solidifying his control over much of Bosnia.

Again, Milosevic has taken what he desires without any serious repercussions. In his view, violence remains the most effective means of achieving his goals, and the settlement does nothing to convince him otherwise.

Comparisons with the Nazis have abounded throughout the Yugoslav crisis, and there are some grisly parallels. The human suffering Milosevic has furthered is apparent enough. His orchestrated policy of "ethnic cleansing" has produced over a million refugees, hundreds of thousands dead, and more than 20,000 women brutally raped in a warped plan to produce more Serbian children.

In addition, Milosevic appears immune to the sting of world condemnation that is often effective in other situations. Like leaders of Nazi Germany and many Communist countries, he is adept at manipulating negotiations and at baffling Western diplomats who view negotiations as a give-and-take process.

Fortunately, Milosevic is not another Hitler. He has nowhere near the industrial and military power to threaten Europe that the Nazis did. But he does have the means to throw much of Europe into a crisis that could lead to war.

Any attempt to "cleanse" Kosovo of its population by violence or intimidation would put Serbia and Albania at each other's throats. At that point, either Greece or Turkey could enter the fray, quickly provoking the other to join the opposing side. Then large-scale Western intervention would be a matter not of debate, but of necessity.

In their passion for negotiated settlements, Vance and Owen have forgotten that leaders like Milosevic view negotiations as solely a means of continuing their conquest. The peace talks are convenient for the Serbian leader now because his forces have already captured two-thirds of Bosnia. Now, he is looking for a way to secure those gains while defusing the pressure for military action.

Vance and Owen are unwitting tools for achieving these ends. Their continual denunciations of any military options are in essence a gift to Milosevic.

Dividing Bosnia into ethnic sections may very well be the only possible short-term solution. But the aggressors must pay. The weaponry of both the Bosnian Serbs and Serbia must be confiscated and destroyed, either by agreement or by force. The Bosnian Muslims should be armed sufficiently to defend themselves from any future attacks.

Without this type of harsh penalty on the aggressors, Serbia will continue to use the same methods in other disputed areas, with horrible consequences for all of Europe. Milosevic needs to know that aggression has a price, and Vance and Owen seem incapable of teaching him. They have earned a large part of the blame for both the recent bloodshed and the bloodshed that is likely to come.