• by IPS Correspondents (zagreb, croatia)
• Monday, December 19, 1994
• Inter Press Service

ZAGREB, Croatia, Dic 19 (IPS) - Former United States President Jimmy Carter has begun his personal peace mission in the former Yugoslavia -- despite criticism that the Serbs may use the trip to undermine other ongoing negotiating efforts.

United Nations and Western officials are worried that the Serbs have invited Carter to the region in an attempt to scuttle ongoing peace efforts. On Monday afternoon he met with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Long-time mediators are increasingly, if reluctantly, coming to the conclusion that the Serbs will not agree to a peace settlement that does not recognise the quasi-state they have created by expelling, terrorising, and killing hundreds of thousands of Slavic Muslims.

The Carter invitation may be an attempt to obtain a settlement which will grant them diplomatic recognition or will re-invigorate a peace process to mask continued war, officials believe. They say that the promises the former Democratic president hopes to extract from the Serbs miss the mark and are easily reversible.

Attempts to get Carter to negotiate for a U.N. presence in areas where the Serbs have been expelling Muslim civilians came to nothing, a U.N. official said. He added that there were "very deep misgivings" about the venture.

The trip comes after weeks of heavy Serb pressure on the U.N. mission in Bosnia that has brought the operation to a virtual halt. International peace efforts, which the United States, Russia, France, Germany and Britain brought to a head in July are foundering with repeated Serb rejections.

The two-and-a-half-year old peace talks appear to have reached an impasse that only major concessions from either side will break. Officials are concerned that the Carter visit will encourage further Serb intransigence.

The former president flew to Sarajevo Sunday afternoon with aides and his wife aboard a United Nations plane. He is scheduled to spend most of Monday meeting with the rebel Serb leadership in their self-declared capital, Pale, a mountain village 30 miles east of Sarajevo.

At the end of November, the U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali left Bosnia without meeting the Serbs after a disagreement about a meeting place. Boutros-Ghali said the international community had recognised only the Sarajevo government and refused to go to Pale for talks.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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