GOBLINS TO SAINTS

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

THE CONFERENCE, ONCE SUPposed to open on Halloween, will begin instead on All Saints Day. And though planners resolutely refused the temptation to crack any jokes about that timing, the symbolism is as appropriate as it is unintentional. Presidents Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia are unlikely ever to be candidates for canonization. But they can at least avoid going down in history as the hobgoblins who condemned the Balkans to an endless immersion in hell if they agree on a way to end the bloodshed in Bosnia.

Such an outcome is, to put it most mildly, not assured. All the arrangements for the so-called proximity conference, at which the U.S. will play both host and mediator, are based on a perceived necessity to contain the three Presidents' impulses to devilry. The meeting is being held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, largely because it is a site where the men can be held in near isolation. There they will be unable to hop a taxi to a TV studio and in a few minutes be on camera denouncing one another, as they might in Washington or New York City.

Moreover, the Dayton scenario offers a chance to bring the principals together where possible and shuttle among them when there is an impasse. A conference center at the base, named after comedian Bob Hope, will be available on the chance that they will eventually proceed from proximity to togetherness. But initially, at least, they will stay in separate generals' quarters, chosen to head off any arguments as to who got the poshest accommodations. When direct talks fail, they will negotiate through U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, who can move from one group to another, as he already has for almost three months. Secretary of State Warren Christopher can drop in quickly as and if needed.

Diplomatic chest thumping continued right up to the eve of the meeting, and no one could be sure whether it represented only the usual staking out of maximum positions or something more ominous. Izetbegovic, in an interview with the New York Times, said he would sign nothing unless he was assured that Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic would be dismissed as leaders of the Bosnian Serbs--presumably by Milosevic, who is representing both his own country and the Bosnian Serbs at the talks. Karadzic and Mladic cannot attend in person, since they are indicted war criminals wanted for trial in the Hague.

American officials were more worried that Tudjman might torpedo the proximity conference. The Croatian President made it clear to President Clinton in a meeting last Tuesday that he would attend for only a few days and then leave the negotiating to his Foreign Minister, Mate Granic. Worse, he was muttering about taking eastern Slavonia by force if it is not returned to Croatia peacefully in a month or so. The oil-rich territory was seized by rebel Serbs in 1991; negotiations for its return are under way outside the Dayton conference. Clinton, according to State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, personally remonstrated with Tudjman about giving up the idea of using force. With good reason: it could pit the Croatian and Serbian armies against each other in the bloodiest war yet to tear the former Yugoslavia.

The negotiators are expected to spend at least half their time defining the nature and powers of a government that will preserve Bosnia as a single country--but will be composed of two distinct pieces, a Serbian "Republika Srpska" and the already existing Muslim-Croat federation. These entities are also to be given latitude to forge links with Serbia and Croatia proper.

Cynics suggest the eventual formula can only cloak a de facto partition, but Izetbegovic and the U.S. State Department swear they will never agree to any such deal. To create a true state composed of two (or maybe eventually three, given the abiding tensions between Muslims and Croats) discrete and often hostile parts, however, ranks not far below the difficulty Christian theologians have faced in reconciling the idea of one God with the Holy Trinity. Holbrooke provides one hint of potential resolution: "Given the lessons of history, Bosnia is not likely ever to have a strong central government. A loose federation, a weak presidency, seems to me inevitable."

Everyone has agreed on a roughly 49-51 split of Bosnia's land between the Serb entity and the federation. But fierce disputes rage about who gets which specific pieces of territory. The width of a strip of land called the Posavina Corridor, which connects Serbia with the Bosnian Serbs, is the most contentious of these quarrels.

Finally, if nothing else scuttles the talks, there is the status of Sarajevo--considered by Holbrooke to be "the Jerusalem [the most intractable problem] of the Bosnian situation." Muslims want an undivided city to serve as the capital of both Bosnia and the Muslim-Croat federation. Serbs want to divide it into ethnic sections, possibly separated by Berlin-style walls.

The negotiators do not have endless time to solve these conundrums. The cease-fire is scheduled to last 60 days. There is no formal deadline on the proximity conference, which is supposed to be followed by a full-fledged peace conference in Paris. But a State Department source asserts that if it is deadlocked after two or three weeks, that will mean it has run into troubles too tangled for a proximity conference to resolve--leaving open the question of where they could then be taken up.

In any case, Holbrooke intends to drive the participants at the same breakneck pace he has been forcing since mid-August. Over the weekend he was polishing a full draft of a proposed peace treaty that Christopher expects to put before the three Presidents as soon as talks begin. Holbrooke's tempo has some critics, notably in the French Foreign Ministry. They contend it results in the papering over of contentious details that may crop up later to wreck a seeming agreement. Holbrooke's answer is that stopping to iron out all the details is a sure formula for having negotiations--and war and bloodshed--drag on forever.

As recently as early July, it would have seemed sheer fantasy to think that in four months, all sides would be meeting with a real cease-fire in effect and at least the broad outlines of a settlement agreed on. But it was precisely because all concerned were forced then to peer into a terrifying abyss that they began pulling back from the brink.

Over the course of the last six months, several events occurred that made the peace talks possible. First of all, after Muslim "safe areas" had fallen to Serbs in July, President Clinton concluded that what a diplomat calls his "muddle through" policy had been a disaster. The Administration thus became more forceful about finding an answer. Then there was a crucial meeting in London that resulted in a shift of authority on the ground from the U.N. to NATO. Finally in August, the Croats launched a scorching offensive on the Serbs in the Krajina region, and the Croat-Bosnian federation attacked the Serbs in northwestern Bosnia. The Bosnian Serbs lost more and more ground, and in late September they were ready to deal.

Since August, the tightly wound Holbrooke has been at the center of the action. Reporters are likely to find him in the early hours of the morning roaming hotel corridors in his bare feet, looking for someone he can drag into his room to chat with while keeping one eye on cnn. He power-naps for 15 minutes or so, sometimes during meetings while supposedly listening to a translation. Aide Rosemarie Pauli-Gikas is assigned, among other tasks, to pinch him awake at the right moment.

Holbrooke's approach is high decibel as well as high energy; he once snapped at Izetbegovic, who was quibbling over the points of an agreement: "We're not going to have a peace conference without a cease-fire, and if we get a cease-fire, we'll have a peace conference. So you decide here and now."

Serbs use the term "to get Holbrooked" to mean being subjected to the diplomat's badgering; Holbrooke's staff jokes that the Serbs agreed to a cease-fire just to get him to shut up for a while. Nonetheless, the approach paid off in a lightning series of agreements: Aug. 30, Milosevic announced he had the Bosnian Serbs' accord to negotiate for them; Sept. 8, broad settlement was reached on constitutional principles for a new Bosnia; Sept. 14, Bosnian Serbs agreed to withdraw heavy weapons from around Sarajevo and allow U.N. access; Oct. 5, a cease-fire agreement that seemed finally to have taken hold; and now the proximity talks.

Can that pace be kept up? The omens are not entirely favorable. One indispensable condition for peace does finally exist: a battlefield stalemate that all sides would run a big risk trying to break. On the other hand, the three Presidents are coming into the talks with very different goals that will not be easy to reconcile. A senior U.S. official sums them up this way:

Izetbegovic: "His goal is limited--to survive. Basically, he wants a single state under a revolving presidency in which he is the dominant factor."

Tudjman: "His major objective is to recover the last sliver of his land not under his control, eastern Slavonia. He probably wants to cleanse his land of non-Croats as well. He wants to control, at a distance, the Croatian parts of Bosnia."

Milosevic: "He's tough to read. Being bright and tricky, he's dangerous. He wants an end to the immediate fighting. He wants the sanctions lifted. Our great fear is that after a so-called decent interval he'll try to absorb all of Bosnia. He may try for an Anschluss."

Holbrooke is coldly realistic. "What I've got is agreement on vague principles," he says. "That's a long way from peace." Indeed, he likens himself and other U.S. negotiators to a football team "on our own 20-yard line" with no clear game plan. "All we know is we want to score a touchdown--and we began this drive on our own goal line."

--Reported by J.F.O. McAllister and Elaine Shannon/Washington and Bruce van Voorst/Bonn

With reporting by J.F.O. MCALLISTER AND ELAINE SHANNON/WASHINGTON AND BRUCE VAN VOORST/BONN