Deal or Failure, Bosnia Talks Set to End Today : Balkans: U.S. imposes deadline on Dayton negotiations. Gamble could result in triumph or humiliation.

Working against a U.S.-imposed deadline, the leaders of Bosnia’s warring factions struggled in the early morning hours today to sort out hotly disputed details of a plan to end Europe’s bloodiest conflict in half a century.

In a dizzying throw of the dice, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and his aides scheduled a public ceremony for today to either initial a peace treaty or admit that the 19-day conference has been a failure.

“The time for debate has passed,” State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said. “The time for decision has arrived.”

By violating a cardinal rule of international bargaining--which dictates that the parties must be kept talking as long as there is a chance for progress--Christopher set the stage for either the Clinton Administration’s greatest foreign policy triumph or its most humiliating failure.

But a senior official insisted there was little to be gained by prolonging the bargaining at Dayton’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

“If we didn’t set a deadline, they’d be here until Christmas,” the official said.

Although U.S. mediators reported substantial progress during the marathon talks that started Nov. 1, Burns conceded: “One day last week, we thought we were making a lot of progress. The next day, things seemed to fall apart.”

But late Sunday, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman returned to Dayton to participate in the end of the talks. Before he left Zagreb, the Croatian capital, Tudjman told reporters that he anticipates a peace agreement because, if the talks had failed, “I would probably not have been called to go there.”

As the negotiators ground toward today’s deadline, the major sticking points were the division of territory between Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Muslim-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serbs--each side will get about half of the country, but exactly how it will be divvied up is in dispute--and the constitution of the postwar nation. Both issues are crucial because they directly affect power sharing in the war-torn country.

While few details emerged of the bargaining over the postwar map, one dispute became a stark public issue. Kresimir Zubak, the Bosnian Croat who serves as president of the Muslim-Croat federation, said he would refuse to sign off on any plan that increased Serbian holdings in the Posavina corridor through territory where Bosnian Croats have lived for generations. Zubak objected to plans to widen the Serb-controlled area from about eight miles to about 12 miles at the expense of Bosnian Croats.

The strategic corridor links Serb-held land in Bosnia with Serbia to the east. Bosnian Serbs captured the northern corridor at the beginning of the war in 1992 and “ethnically cleansed” it of non-Serbs.

Meanwhile, the Bosnian Croat news agency quoted a commander of the Croatian militia brigade from the Posavina area as saying his troops are ready to seize territory by military means if they do not get what they want in Dayton.

“We are still making preparations for liberating the occupied parts of Posavina, should we receive an order to do so, which may be expected if the politicians fail to achieve just agreements,” Brig. Gen. Djuro Matuzovic said. “We are daily following the events in Dayton, making at the same time preparations for the worst--warfare in winter conditions.”

But even an agreement in Dayton would produce its own perils, both for the warring parties and for the 60,000 troops, including nearly 25,000 Americans, who will be called on to police the peace.

For President Clinton, peace would mean both a remarkable diplomatic success and a daunting political problem. On Sunday, as the negotiators talked in Dayton, Republican congressional leaders warned that Congress is unlikely to endorse the dispatch of U.S. forces to the region.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Clinton “has failed to convince anyone that there is a sound reason for risking young Americans’ lives in Bosnia.”

Interviewed on ABC, Gingrich said Christopher and Defense Secretary William J. Perry fell flat last month when they tried to explain Bosnia policy to congressional committees.

“They sent people up to testify at hearings; they lost ground in the hearings,” he said. “The more they testified, the less support there was. I just think it’s very dangerous to commit young Americans in a dangerous area without having the country unified behind them before they land, and I think the President has done almost nothing to explain to the country why his Bosnia policy makes sense.”

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) stressed on the Senate floor Sunday that Congress will refuse to endorse the contribution of U.S. troops unless a peace agreement meets such conditions as the lifting of the arms embargo on the Bosnian government. He also insisted that there be a detailed exit strategy for U.S. forces.

Paradoxically, the issues surrounding the separation of the warring factions and the deployment of international peacekeeping troops were wrapped up early in the talks. Also decided well before the deadline was the procedure for elections in a postwar Bosnia.

* TROOP CONTROVERSY: A pact would bring U.S. closer to a risky deployment. A10