Iron will needed in Bosnia

The Bosnian Serbs' response to the international community's latest final warning was swift, flagrant and deadly.

Only minutes after the chairman of Friday's 16-nation London conference on Bosnia issued an ultimatum to the Serbs to halt their attacks on UN-protected areas or face heavy aerial bombardments, the rag-tag ethnic army launched a rocket barrage on the safe areas of Zepa and Bihac with artillery and used tanks, rockets and mortars to strike a UN humanitarian convoy and a French peacekeeping base in Sarajevo, killing dozens more civilians and two French soldiers.

The UN mission has been a failure to date.

But for all its shortcomings, its torpid cautiousness, its appeasement of the Serbs' systematic dismembering of Bosnia, it still holds out the best hope of limiting the devastation that has so far occurred.

Should the UN mission collapse the consequences would reverberate beyond Sarajevo.

Not only would the credibility of the UN and NATO be left in tatters but there is the frightening possibility the Bosnian conflict could spill over into Macedonia, Kosovo and beyond.

To avoid this, the UN and NATO must finally make some demonstration of political will.

The next act of Serbian aggression, the next attack on civilians, or a UN safe area, must be met with an overwhelming aerial response.

The leading outside powers in Bosnia, the Dutch, the French and British now have the unfettered power to make their own decisions.

Their first assignment should be to temper Serb aggression.

The second should be restore a balance of power among the antagonists.

Only from such a position of equal strength can a negotiated settlement be found.

Once again, the UN, the U.S., NATO and the European powers face the moment of truth.

The choices at the moment are appeasement of Serb aggression, military chaos, or a struggle to find a political solution.

The final choice is obviously the most preferable but it will require discipline and an iron will, characteristics that have been in short supply in Bosnia up until now.

-- The Nation, Bangkok