The warlord lurking inside Bosnia's President: Alija Izetbegovic tells Robert Fisk in Zagreb why he could not sign the Vance-Owen peace accords

BEHIND the head of President Alija Izetbegovic, in the inappropriately named Red Lounge of Zagreb's Esplanade Hotel, there hung yesterday a pastoral landscape in oils by the Yugoslav painter Durstek. A muddy river was making its way gently through a plain of green fields, the faint red roofs of a peaceful Balkan village on the horizon, just a hint of snow-tipped mountains beyond. Land - if not peace -was very much on the mind of Mr Izetbegovic.

The Bosnian President had come to tell us why he had not signed the Geneva peace accords on Saturday, and the theme of his discourse was predictable. He was not to blame. How could the Serbs be rewarded with the very villages they had ethnically cleansed? Why could the participants not have accepted his set of maps of a new, decentralised Bosnia? Why should the Serbs be allowed to hold a belt of territory separating the Muslims of Bosnia from those of the Montenegrin Sandjak?

And then there was the little matter of the heavy artillery belonging to the three armies fighting in Bosnia. 'It was said that heavy artillery is supposed to come under the supervision of international forces and that it will be kept away from the perimeters of big cities. But this definition is very unclear.'

Look, President Izetbegovic explained, at Croatia's experience. Look how easily the Serbs had broken into the artillery stores in Krajina a week ago and used the weapons against the Croats. No mention was made of why the Serbs did this - because the Croats had attacked Krajina across United Nations lines to seize back Serbian-occupied land north-east of Zadar.

And so it went on. At times, Mr Izetbegovic - minus, for once, his black beret with its blue and gold Bosnian fleur-de-lys - was an avuncular, grey-haired old politician, eager to please, anxious that Messrs Owen and Vance should not misunderstand his motives for rejecting their plans. Even now, he was prepared to re-discuss his objections to the artillery storage plans with General Satish Nambiar, the long- suffering and much-overwhelmed commander of the UN Protection Force in former Yugoslavia.

But there could be no compromise over the Vance-Owen map of the 10 proposed Bosnian provinces. And at this point, quite suddenly, President Izetbegovic's voice changed from European politician to militia leader. 'The proposals we could not accept - our main arguments for not accepting these proposals - come from the 'ethnic cleansing' of five specific areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina,' he said, his rising anger suddenly moving the sound-level meters of the television cameras into the red danger zone. 'The present plans show that those areas which have been 'ethnically cleansed' are to come under the control of the army which carried out the 'cleansing'. Nobody can expect us to accept that these areas should stay under the Chetniks, and that a million of our people will not be able to return to their homes.'

The village of Prijedor in western Bosnia had been 'a slaughterhouse' for its Muslims. It could never be ceded to the Serbs, as under the Vance-Owen map. Nor could the Serbs be rewarded with Cluj and Sanski Most, two other towns on whose Muslims they had inflicted 'barbarous horrors'.

The argument was clear enough - more than that, it was valid - but it was the change in President Izetbegovic's demeanour that was disturbing. In a few seconds, a friendly old statesman had become a ferocious Slav warlord, words spitting from his lips. It happened with almost the same speed that Slobodan Milosevic had been transmogrified from war criminal to statesman two weeks earlier. Sitting four feet from Mr Izetbegovic, it was easy to understand how Lord Owen must have felt in those closed-door Geneva meetings. One half expected to see smoke rising from the red roofs of Durstek's oil painting.

Prijedor, Cluj and Sanski Most must be joined to the province of Bihac. Brcko - 'there was the biggest slaughterhouse of Muslims in this region' - must be joined to the province of Tuzla. Twenty thousand Muslims who had been fighting, surrounded, for nine months were to be attached to Serbian territory in Bjelinja. They too must be attached to Tuzla. Mr Izetbegovic had given to Mr Vance and Lord Owen what he called a 'real map' for the area to study.

With the first Geneva document, on the constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina, he had no complaint. This emphasised the nation's democratic character. 'It was important that it emphasised that it should be a decentralised state, not a federal or confederal state - this was acceptable to us, so we signed it.'

And he also hoped for help from the new US administration, the real reason - so Messrs Vance and Owen suspect - why he rejected the Geneva plans. Was it not a fact that President Izetbegovic was gathering hope from the possibility of massive US military involvement? 'I won't count on this,' he replied with an equally massive smile. 'It would be a very good thing. But we don't count on it. To be honest, we only believe in ourselves.' What he did want was an end to the arms embargo so that Bosnians could 'defend themselves'.

Downstairs in the lobby, there lurked the thin figure of General Nambiar, there to discuss heavy artillery with the ruler of a third of Bosnia. 'I don't think I'll have anything to say to you,' the general told a journalist. 'It is for the President to speak if he wants to.' You did not need to tell Mr Izetbegovic that yesterday.

What an unlovely war, page 19

(Photograph omitted)