Two UNs at war with each other

THERE are at present two UNs on divergent courses. There is the UN in New York, under increasing US pressure to authorise Nato air strikes against Serbian positions around Sarajevo. And there is the UN in Bosnia, which shares with the Serbs an anxiety to avert air strikes, which would threaten not only the Serbs but also the mainly British and French UN troops. Deployed for humanitarian purposes, they would be ill-prepared to sustain Serbian revenge attacks following on from the air strikes.

This week the UN leadership in Bosnia has been engaged in the tricky business of using the threat of air strikes to get the Serbs to back away from the siege of Sarajevo, to a perceptible extent. The Serbs take those threats, coming ultimately from the direction of New York, seriously enough to make tactical concessions likely to delay and even avert air strikes, without abandoning their strategic objectives.

So a deal has been concluded between the Serbs and the UN (Bosnia), under which the Serbs withdraw from their recently conquered positions in the Mount Igman area, and will hand over these to UN forces. And it does appear that Serbs are withdrawing in significant numbers from these positions, even Lord Owen has doubts about the reality of the withdrawal. This development will strengthen, at least for the time being, the hands of the many officials and others, not only in Britain and France but also in the United States, who fear, and with good reason, that air strikes might make conditions in former Yugoslavia worse than they are now.

I share those misgivings, but I am not in the least reassured by the Mount Igman detente. I fear that the UN negotiators did not bring with them a long enough spoon when they sat down to sup with the Serbian commander on the spot, the formidable General Ratko Mladic. For there is a Serbian condition to the deal, which the UN (Bosnia) is not in a position to meet, though its representatives have apparently refrained from saying so. That condition is that the UN must assume 'total control over the area' to ensure that 'the Turks' (which is what the Serbs call the Bosnian Muslims) do not return to any part of the area evacuated by the Serbs.

The UN cannot discharge this responsibility. As a report in this newspaper by Marcus Tanner in Sarajevo yesterday stated: 'The task (of controlling the whole Mount Igman area) is way beyond the UN's already stretched manpower resources.'

General Mladic, of course, knows this very well already. But the UN (Bosnia) will at some point, and quite soon, have to acknowledge this incapacity to meet the precondition for full Serbian withdrawal from the area. The general can be relied on to be understanding about this. He will say in effect: 'Take your time, we can wait. But in the meantime, we shall have to ensure that the old Turk doesn't move back into the area that your forces are not yet in a position to control.'

This will mean that the Mount Igman area will be policed, for an indefinite period, by the UN forces and Serbian forces jointly, with the latter in greater force and with recent combat experience. Inevitably, the Serbs will see the UN forces as their hostages against air strikes. In the mess, over their slivovitz, they must be cracking many a gory joke over that one. But they should not laugh too long. While the UN (Bosnia) has played into their hands, the real danger to them - and it is a growing one despite the Mount Igman detente - comes from the UN (New York). New York will not take its signals from the UN (Bosnia) because a far more powerful signal is reaching it from Washington, and the UN (New York) does not control Washington. The boot is very much on the other foot.

The present state of the relationship between the United States and the United Nations is dangerously ambiguous. The US, as sole remaining superpower, dominates the UN and sets the course for its various 'peace-keeping' operations. This is the actual nature, though not the proclaimed one, of the New World Order.

The United States associates itself with the various UN operations, but on its own terms, according to its own agenda, and conserving its autonomy, while nominally acting under the authority of the UN. Thus in Somalia, the storming of General Mohamed Farah Aideed's house was in reality a US-planned operation designed to boost President Bill Clinton's ratings in the polls. But ostensibly it was a United Nations operation, and UN personnel as well as aid workers were placed in jeopardy by it.

How the US currently regards its relations with the UN is dramatically revealed in a leaked document published by the Washington Post last week. According to that newspaper, the document - a classified draft of a Clinton directive - 'endorses the United Nations as a world policeman and commits Washington to support multinational peace-making and peace-keeping operations, 'politically, militarily and financially' '. It goes on: 'But the document rejects any open- ended US commitments and directs American military commanders to disobey UN orders they judge illegal or militarily imprudent.'

In theory, of course, it is the Secretary- General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who alone has the authority to authorise Nato air strikes. In practice, no secretary-general, since the foundation of the UN (and even throughout the Cold War), has refused to co-operate with Washington on an issue in which a US president considered vital US interests to be involved. I do not believe Mr Boutros-Ghali is an exception.

If he is, and if he opposes air strikes (as endangering the UN forces deployed in Bosnia), then he has one resource available to him. He can put the matter before the Security Council, where (judging by recent statements) Russia would probably veto it. But even that would not end the matter. The US would bring the matter back to Nato, urging that Nato is not bound by a Russian veto. In short, the White House alone will determine whether or not there will be air strikes.

I fear that these are coming at some point, that they will increase the chaos, with serious casualties among UN humanitarian forces, and be followed by full-scale military intervention. After that will come the long quagmire, with eventual withdrawal, leaving behind far greater destruction than if the civil war had been left to burn itself out, horrible though that is.

(Photograph omitted)