Word: serbians
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...effectively rejected the Vance-Owen plan. No matter that the bosses from Belgrade coaxed, wheedled, pleaded and finally threatened; the deputies rudely turned their backs on compromise. Their bellicose stance was a rebuke not only to the meddling international community but also to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who dared urge them to accept the plan...
Like the fighters in the field, the self-styled parliamentarians saw acceptance of the U.N.-mediated accord as an act of capitulation to a worldwide coalition set on annihilating the Serbian nation. "If we accept," said Radoslav Brdjanin, an ultra-nationalist leader of Banja Luka, "it means ) we fought for nothing and sacrificed the lives of our young needlessly. It is better to have an occupation by the Americans than be forced to live in a Muslim state...
Zelikow instead advocates lifting the U.N. arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslims and providing them with the military capacity to defeat their Serbian neighbors...
...requirements for military action that seemed to rule it out. He and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake eventually concurred on lifting the arms embargo and launching limited air strikes if required to protect the Bosnians in the meantime. They do not expect to roll back all Serbian gains, and they think the U.S. should endorse any solution adopted by all the Bosnian factions -- as long as it inflicts some penalty for ethnic cleansing. In practice, that means accepting the current Vance-Owen plan, even if it gives the Serbs nearly everything they want...
...Europeans. Britain and France, with 6,500 lightly armed troops employed in humanitarian assistance in Bosnia, are reluctant to take any steps that might invite Serbian retaliation or close down their relief effort. They believe that sending more arms to the Muslims will only fuel a deadlier and possibly wider war. Lifting the embargo, said Britain's Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, "would salve consciences without saving lives." France is highly skeptical about the ability of air strikes to force the Serbs into concessions, Britain only slightly less so. While both want to stay in step with Washington, they remain adamantly...