US seeks 'rolling conference' to win peace in Bosnia

DAVID USBORNE

New York

The United States special negotiator for Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke, is aiming to convene a rolling peace conference, perhaps as soon as the middle of next month, to protect the progress made so far.

Mr Holbrooke, who returned to Bosnia from Washington yesterday, has told members of the contact group guiding the political negotiations, including Britain, that he is anxious to end his current pattern of diplomacy, where long periods of shuttling around the region are followed by single days of meetings between them, as in New York on Tuesday.

"The type of achievements that the shuttling and one-day meetings can provide is limited," a European diplomat said. "They want to go to a conference type event in the next few weeks. We are beginning to see things coming together so that there could be a conference."

Although a fresh step towards building a constitution for a new Bosnia- Herzegovina was taken at Tuesday's talks, diplomats report that the atmosphere at the meeting was not encouraging. So irritated was Warren Christopher, the US Secretary of State, with the Bosnian Foreign Minister, Muhamed Sacirbey, over his reluctance even to attend the talks, that at one point he pointedly refused to shake his hand.

"There was definitely a high level of irritation," a US official remarked, adding that Mr Holbrooke had difficulty keeping his patience with Mr Sacirbey.

If the process can be kept on the rails, a peace conference could be convened in about three weeks' time, after two more scheduled meetings of officials of the contact group in Rome next week and Moscow the week after. It is thought it might take place in Geneva.

In the meantime, Mr Holbrooke has several difficult issues to mediate, notably the question of territory and the fate of Sarajevo, which the Muslim government wants to remain unified while the Serbs want to control a portion of it.

On the immediate issue of a ceasefire, Mr Holbrooke may be calculating that the promise of a peace conference itself might be enough to end the fighting. "The next step really is a ceasefire and what you might do is use the start of a conference as a carrot," a US official said.

t Zagreb - defying international condemnation, Croatia said yesterday it would proceed with the repatriation of tens of thousands of refugees to Bosnia, AP reports.

"Croatia will start the repatriation in an organised way and in phases," said Adalbert Rebic, the head of Croatia's refugee agency. "This is a state policy, and as such it is irrevocable."

Chris Gunness, the UN spokesman in Zagreb, warned that any forced repatriation of refugees to a war zone violated their international rights.