U.S. Envoy Pessimistic on Bosnia : Balkans: Leader of new negotiating team sees little hope latest trip will bring peace, but vows to try.

WASHINGTON —  Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, leading a rebuilt U.S. negotiating team, offered little hope Friday that his impending trip to Europe would end with peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina but said it was necessary to try.

Asked about the team’s chances, Holbrooke, interviewed on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” said: “I’m not going to predict success. The success chance is pretty small. In Bosnia, the worst-case scenario usually takes place, but we’re going to give it an all-out shot.”

Later, in a meeting with reporters at the State Department, he tried to dilute this pessimism but not by much. Asked again about chances for success, Holbrooke declared: “I am not going to bet on games I’m playing in. . . . My job is to maximize the chance for success. . . . I think I slipped a little this morning and said ‘pretty small’ . . . and those two words got taken out of context. . . .

“We’ve got a window of opportunity which is small and a window of danger which is large,” he went on. “It’s an uphill struggle, but we are committed to it and we think there’s a chance.”

The U.S. peace initiative, delayed for a week because of the deaths of three U.S. envoys in a vehicle accident on the dangerous Mt. Igman road outside Sarajevo, will resume when the new Holbrooke team meets with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic in Paris on Monday. The team will travel to the rump Yugoslavia later in the week.

Holbrooke, who said some elements of the U.S. plan must remain confidential, denied that it would split up Bosnia. He said that, while the U.S.-proposed map would divide Bosnia by putting 51% under the control of a federation of Bosnian Croats and Muslims and 49% under control of Bosnian Serbs, Bosnia would still be “a single internationally recognized state.”

Still, he listed the peaceful, negotiated partition of Czechoslovakia into two nations--the Czech Republic and Slovakia--as one model that Bosnia could follow. And he acknowledged that he might be engaging in “different semantic uses” from his questioners.

As in previous attempts at negotiation, Holbrooke said, the main obstacle to the U.S. peace initiative is the refusal of the Bosnian Serbs to accept it. “So I would call on the Bosnian Serbs once again to participate in this process, not try to destroy it,” he told the news conference.

He also cast doubts on the political strength of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who has been in conflict recently with his top general. “The Bosnian Serbs must in the end be a party to a deal,” Holbrooke said. “Karadzic, himself--I’m not sure what his role is going to be. I don’t know what his standing is.”

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Holbrooke also warned members of Congress that, if they override President Clinton’s expected veto of legislation that would end U.S. participation in the United Nations’ arms embargo on Bosnia, they “would . . . wreck whatever chance the peace process has.”

After receiving reports of an attack by Bosnian government soldiers on British peacekeepers in the U.N.-designated “safe area” of Gorazde in eastern Bosnia, Holbrooke issued a statement with Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey reaffirming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization pledge to defend Gorazde with air power if it is attacked by the Bosnian Serbs.

According to U.N. officials, the peacekeepers killed two Bosnian soldiers when the Bosnians tried to seize supplies and weapons from the British. U.N. spokesman Alexander Ivanko called the attack by the Bosnian soldiers “an act of banditry.”

The Bosnian government opposes U.N. plans to pull out all but a few peacekeepers from Gorazde and to defend the besieged town only with air power; the government troops were evidently trying to take equipment from the British before they left.

Setting down his team’s schedule, Holbrooke said it would meet with Izetbegovic on Monday and with representatives of the Contact Group--the United States, Russia, France, Britain and Germany--on Tuesday. There also would be meetings with envoys from various countries and agencies concerned about the Bosnia crisis.

U.N. Balkans mediator Thorvald Stoltenberg, who met in Lisbon with Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and plans to meet with the Americans in Paris, told a news conference that the U.S. initiative “may be the last chance for peace. If it fails, the situation will be very dangerous.”

Holbrooke denied reports that he and White House National Security Adviser Anthony Lake had pressured the Europeans into accepting the U.S. peace initiative by threatening to lift the arms embargo. “We never threatened the Europeans,” Holbrooke said. “Tony Lake . . . outlined his plans, the proposal. Everyone supported it in general terms, not every detail. . . . At no time did Tony threaten them or bargain with them. He outlined it, and we were very encouraged by their support.”