its attendant
cantonization of Bosnia (into 10 autonomous regions) was
arguably flawed from the beginning.  Indeed large numbers of
people in the West had always questioned its rationale.  From
the beginning consider the comments of the former United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees:

"The negotiators accepted the Serbs' wish for an ethnically
divided Bosnia: The Serbs would get to keep territory seized
in some of the ugliest warfare of our age ....

The humanitarian needs of the besieged civilians were politically
neglected to keep the Serbs talking.  The Muslim majority,
deprived of self-defence by a UN embargo, saw its concerns pushed
aside.  Conquest and ethnic cleansing were rewarded in spades.
This charade was worth the price if, when the agreement was
within reach, the international community was willing to turn on
the Serbs and do whatever it took to enforce a settlement.  Only
then could the means be forgiven as a way to the end.  Now ends
stretch off into vague distance...

With the Serbs isolation reinforced by the
time-honoured policy of inaction.  Later in July, for the second
time in three months, President Clinton attempted to take the
lead in NATO with respect to policy in Bosnia, specifically
regarding the Serb siege of Sarajevo.

41. According to informed reports (5) over the week-end of 24-25
July US National Security Advisor Anthony Lake made a secret
visit to London to see if the British government would sign on to
the Clinton initiative to threaten the use of NATO aircraft
to break the siege of Sarajevo.  The response was that the
British government was prepared to discuss the idea among the
allies.  Over the next week Secretary Christopher, in a series of
letters and phone calls to his European counterparts, let it be
known that not only was Sarajevo at stake but so was the future
of NATO.  This line of argument was pursued by the United
States at an extraordinary North Atlantic Council meeting on 2
August  at which, after 13 hours of almost unprecedented
intensity, the representativefamilies and their dignities.  They coincide with our own
interests - no countenancing genocide and ethnic cleansing; no
systematic violations of the Paris charter and the CSCE
principles; no tolerating a return to wild Greater Serbian and
Greater Croatian fantasies; and no potential intensification of
Balkan regional conflict.

56. We have abjectly failed in every single respect with our
policies and we need to acknowledge this and to learn from
it.  This is not to suggest that our policy options were, and
are, easy.  Far from it.  But the opportunity costs of inaction
must be squarely faced.  As the Rapporteur wrote in his Spring
Report:

"What Yugoslavia shows is the desperate need for a new grammar of
international relations.  The key to this is a willingness to
intervene, and a language capable of explaining, defining and
justifying such a new rule of international conduct.  The UN has
begun to rewrite these texts, but over Serbia, Bosnia and
Croatia, despite the great efforts of David Owen and others, its
uncertainty a year ago has made it the accomplice, however
humane, of ethnic cleansing now.  The world needs to find a
collective will for uncomfortable action.  The question is: how?"

57. The "how" must emerge from a debate honestly conducted in
which it is accepted as given that the unspeakable atrocities in
Bosnia Herzogovina which we have witnessed can have no place in
the Europe of 1993, for in a democratic world, human rights are
the basic elements of society formation, not the state structures
as such.  If these basic human rights are jeopardized in any
struggle we have to be on the side of the victims.  If military
action there is to be - by the West under a UN mandate - then the
means and objectives must be well thought out and the opportunity
(costs) of inaction explained to the Western publics.  If our
words and values are to match our deeds then it is a dereliction
of political responsibility to abjure action on grounds that the
publics do not have the stomach for it.  This is in any case an
unproven assumption.  In certain important instances - and this
may indeed be one - it is the responsibility of leaders to lead,
or, as one writer aptly put it, the people will never have the
chance to follow.

58. In conclusion the Rapporteur would like to share with members
of the Committee the following quote:

"In the heavily bombarded lobby of the Bosnian Presidency in
Sarajevo, I once saw a remarkable poster.  It consisted of a
black and yellow logo, intertwining the Star of David, the
Islamic crescent, the Eastern Orthodox cross and the
Catholic crucifix.  The only thing missing was the symbol of
secularism and intermarriage by which most Sarajevans actually
live, and which has no logo.  But that absent point was made by
the Latin slogan underneath: Gens Una Sumus.  We are One
People."(7)

59. As the author of this quote wrote, if this idea is not worth
defending then what is?  This is what we in the democracies, in
NATO are supposed to be all about.  We had the means to do so and
we did not do it.  We