Owen says peace plan needs muscle: EC envoy calls for military backing from West

LORD OWEN, the EC envoy, said yesterday that the peace plan for Yugoslavia, if it is accepted by all three parties to the conflict, will need military backing from the West if it is to work.

The settlement was, he agreed, 'a peace made in Hell' and had emerged as a result of negotiations. It did not represent the will of the mediators, himself and Thorvald Stoltenberg, and required Nato support. 'If governments decide they are not going to put forces on the ground, then there are consequences to that. There is no use in shooting the negotiators in frustration,' he said.

'I believe it can be implemented with a very strong mandate, but it does mean the US, France and the UK being ready to come in with all the other European countries,' he added.

Lord Owen and Mr Stoltenberg were in The Hague yesterday to give evidence before the International Court of Justice, which began hearing a Bosnian request for international protection against genocide. Representing Bosnia, Francis Boyle said the peace plan equated with Hitler's demand for Sudetenland.

'There are no limits to the cruelty, rapacity, territorial ambitions and bloodlust of (Serbia and Montenegro),' Mr Boyle, one of two agents presenting Bosnia's case, said. 'If not prevented by this court, (Serbia) plans to annex and to incorporate approximately 75 per cent of the state of the Republic of Bosnia.'

The court, which will take some weeks to reach its verdict, was asked to rule that any plan which involved annexing Bosnia or partitioning its territory be 'deprived of any legal effects whatsoever'.

'We have repeatedly and most emphatically rejected the proposal to sign our own death certificate as a sovereign member state of the United Nations,' Mr Boyle said.

Muhamed Sacirbey, Bosnia's second agent at the hearing, said: 'The genocide continues and we are now being forced to negotiate with the perpetrators of this crime while the threat of continued genocide is held as a loaded gun at our head. Negotiation is no substitute for justice.'

Mr Sacirbey, who is also Bosnia's UN envoy, suggested to reporters after the hearing that the Geneva peace plan would prove unacceptable to Bosnia. 'We must assume we need to go back - not to the battlefield but to the negotiating table,' he said.

The Geneva negotiators have made it clear they believe all options for further compromise have been exhausted.

Dragan Klaic, page 28