Word: serbians
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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After a sobering tour of Bosnia's battlefields, Senator Joe Biden came back to Washington last month and declared, "The U.S. must lead the West in a decisive response to Serbian aggression, beginning with air attacks on Serbian artillery." Senators Bob Dole and George Mitchell agreed, as did 47 Congressmen and 12 State Department officials who took the unusual step of petitioning Secretary of State Warren Christopher to back the use of military force against the Serbs. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright sent a memorandum directly to the President in which she advocated air strikes...
Clinton feels the strength of the moral argument for action echoing around Washington but is unwilling to start something without knowing how he will end it. He would like to halt the Serbian aggressors in their tracks, but he wants to take steps that provide clear, achievable objectives and that will encourage rather than cut off a political process leading eventually to a negotiated solution to the tribal wars. If he chooses to bomb the Serbs, he wants to be convinced that bombs will in due course push them into some mutually acceptable agreement...
Will anything work? The first Administration initiative -- a package of modest diplomatic measures announced on Feb. 10 -- is universally seen as a bust. Not only have negotiations on Bosnia failed but Serbian aggression has become even more brutal and more successful...
Aside from a handful of diplomatic gestures, such as opening an embassy in Sarajevo, the two new initiatives being urged on Clinton most strongly by official and unofficial advisers are to lift the embargo on arms shipments to Bosnia and to use air power against Serbian guns and supply routes. British diplomats say one of the others is a proposal from London for a military land, sea and air blockade that would completely seal off Serbia from contact with the rest of the world. Still another is the possibility of establishing and protecting "safe havens" for Muslims in the remnants...
...Council finally met in emergency sessions on Friday and Saturday, it stopped short of anything resembling Bosnia's request. What emerged was an agreement to declare Srebrenica a safe haven, a warning to Serbs to advance no farther, and a tightening of sanctions on Belgrade including the freezing of Serbian assets abroad...