Bosnia votes

Measured against the destructive military conflict still raging less than a year ago, Saturday's national elections in Bosnia marked a clear advance. But measured against the promises of reconciliation and democracy contained in the peace agreement reached in Dayton, Ohio, the elections were disappointingly deficient. If peace is to be sustained, and the current trend toward authoritarianism and ethnic partition checked, the countries sponsoring Dayton, led by the United States, will have to energize their diplomacy in the weeks and months ahead.

Bosnia remains devastated and traumatized by the 42 months of warfare that divided the country, tore apart its cities, left 250,000 people dead and drove more than a million from their homes. It was no mean achievement that some two million Bosnians, including hundreds of thousands of refugees who submitted absentee ballots, cast their votes for a three-member national presidency, a 42-seat national parliament and separate local legislatures for the Muslim-Croat and Serb-controlled regions. Municipal elections originally scheduled for Saturday were postponed because of registration irregularities.

But the strong turnout was not the only measure of this election. Because the groundwork for free and fair elections was inadequate or absent in numerous areas, many voters were faced with a narrow range of candidates. The opposition parties and independents who ran on more conciliatory platforms rarely got a fair chance to campaign. Nationalist thugs disrupted their rallies and intimidated potential voters. The media skewed news coverage against them and shut out their campaign messages.

Few violent incidents marred the voting, in part because few voters dared to board the NATO-protected buses that would have carried them across ethnic dividing lines to vote in their former hometowns.

If the balloting produces large majorities for the main Serbian, Croatian and Muslim nationalist parties, that can only reinforce the psychological and territorial boundaries that already divide Bosnia along ethnic lines. Final election results will not be known until later in the week and must be certified by international monitors.

So long as Dayton's prohibitions against formal partition are enforced, the nationalist parties will feel pressure to make practical deals with each other to meet day-to-day needs. Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic plan to meet in Paris soon to discuss cooperative steps that might reduce the frictions in Bosnia. But for even these modest gains to be consolidated, the United States and other countries supervising the peace accord will have to make sure that the new national institutions meet and begin functioning without delay.

-- The New York Times