Stick to the Bosnia plan

It develops that Bosnia's beleaguered Muslim government wants the discriminatory United Nations arms embargo lifted, but not right away. Early lifting, it fears, will expose it immediately to heavier battering by its better-armed Bosnian Serbian foes through a difficult winter and before it could expect to profit itself.

This forecast by the Moslems, whose victim status gives them a special claim on international regard, tends to confirm the apprehension that lifting the embargo would widen the war without conferring much, if any, advantage on the underdog Moslems. But politically a delay in implementation would ease the conflicting pressures on President Bill Clinton: Congress urges him to lift the embargo and Russia and the Europeans to keep it in place.

This development, if it is real, would still leave Bosnia in desperate straits. If the military balance is not going to be altered soon, then other steps need to be taken to enforce the five-nation peace plan. For all its flaws, this plan is the only internationally supported vehicle with any chance to stop the war, partly peel back the Bosnian Serbs and bring some relief to what remains of Moslem and multiethnic Bosnia.

-- The Washington Post