U.N. Handicap in Balkans: ‘Will Wasn’t There’ : Peacekeeping: Top diplomat searches for answers and new direction amid debris of disastrous mission.

For many who were part of the United Nations’ star-crossed peacekeeping venture in the Balkans, emotions run high as they begin the administrative task of winding down their mission.

Although officially relieved of its responsibilities in Bosnia since last week, the U.N. Protection Force will not cease to exist until the end of next month. The world body’s continued peacekeeping role in the eastern, Serb-occupied corner of Croatia also continues for at least two more weeks, or longer if the United States gets its way.

But prolonged periods of being attacked as ineffectual failures by angry politicians just about everywhere in the West have left a lingering mixture of resentment, frustration and disillusionment among those who served under the blue and white flag here and saw the words “blue helmet” reduced to a synonym for incompetence.

They are resentful about being made the scapegoat for a seemingly impossible task, frustrated at not being better equipped and allowed to do more, and disillusioned that the well-intended mission to help the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina somehow went so wrong.

The ease with which NATO-led forces have--at least initially--won the cooperation of Bosnia’s warring factions and accomplished the first crucial task of a partial pullback of forces from key positions around Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, has only accentuated these emotions and seasoned them with a sense of irony.

Kofi Annan, the former head of U.N. peacekeeping in New York and now the world body’s most senior diplomat here, recalled how Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic summed up this irony.

“To him, the world seemed upside down,” noted Annan. “When the war was going and combat troops were needed, it was lightly armed peacekeepers who came. Now the war is over and 60,000 combat troops arrive.”

While Annan could see the contradictions of these events, as one of the U.N.’s most respected civil servants he is also searching for answers and a new direction amid the debris of the disastrous mission.

“Member states have to think very carefully about what happened,” he said. “Where were they when the international community and the United Nations needed them? Where were they when we informed the [Security] Council we needed 34,000 troops to protect the [six U.N.-designated Muslim] ‘safe areas’ and were told we weren’t going to get them?” (The Security Council eventually sent 7,000 troops.)

During an hourlong interview, the soft-spoken, 56-year-old Ghanaian-born civil servant boiled down the reason for the U.N.’s impossible mission in the Balkans to a simple, five-word explanation: “Basically, the will wasn’t there.”

While he professed understanding for U.S. reluctance to become more deeply involved in the region, he said he was puzzled by the lukewarm attitude of key European nations about doing more to back the forces they had already committed to the Balkans.

“All the European nations, with the exception of Holland, which felt we should be a bit more assertive on the use of air power . . . , said you’re doing exactly what we are expecting you to do.”

But for Annan, the response to the avalanche of criticism heaped on the United Nations in the wake of its Bosnian mission has been neither the bitterness of many of his colleagues nor the detached rationale of his immediate boss, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, that “to be a civil servant is to be certain that no one will say thank you.”

Instead, he has launched a quest for how to do it right next time--and Annan remains convinced there will be a next time for the United Nations.

“I believe the U.N.’s business is peace and security,” he stressed. “Wherever there is a threat to international peace and security, it should concern the United Nations. If we accept this concept . . . then the Bosnia situation has some lessons for us.”

Among them:

* Never again go into a peacekeeping mission without good intelligence or some sense of how the mission probably will develop. This should include a comprehensive, soundly based risk and threat assessment. “Then, as an international community, organize ourselves to go in with the right force structure, the right equipment, with the capability not only to protect our troops but also to protect the mandate,” he said.

* Never again deploy with inadequate forces to a crisis area merely out of a need to be seen doing “something.” “No general, no government, would go to war or take on an operation until it is ready,” Annan claimed. “We need to think in terms of the task, of what is required, rather than just doing ‘something.’ ”

* Where possible, try to involve the United States. “The United States has a unique leadership role,” he said. “When the Americans participate, others come. When the U.S. leaves, others do too. We saw that in Somalia.”

* Begin to build a political consensus that will support future U.N. peacekeeping missions. “That is our single weakest point, the lack of a political will, a collective resolve [to confront crisis in an effective, robust way],” he added.

Annan admits that in the present political atmosphere, restoring U.N. credibility, especially to a level at which U.S. congressional leaders will swing behind it in a crisis, constitutes a tall order.

“I think we are in a difficult situation,” he said. “The mood in the present Congress makes [the U.N.] difficult to sell, but we shouldn’t give up our efforts to educate and explain. I’m optimistic that this too will pass and that, over time, the Congress will conclude that the United Nations is the only instrument we have [to confront international crises], that there are weaknesses and we have to strengthen them.

“And I don’t think the problem is in the [U.N.] structures, or in the secretariat,” Annan added. “It’s in the attitudes of the member states.”

Times staff writer Stanley Meisler in Washington contributed to this report.