a host of other important issues which have been the discussion and debate over these 29 months,” Mr Vance said.Because of the dispute with Greece, Macedonia was admitted to the UN in April 1993 under the temporary name of “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.” It is referred to in shorthand by the acronym “FYROM”.Asked whether he expected the name issue to be settled by the time the new General Assembly session opened on 19 September, Mr Vance replied: “I would not.”He noted that conflict was continuing in other parts of the former Yugoslavia. Mr Vance has been working for two-and-a-half years under UN auspices with a US negotiator, Matthew Nimetz, to resolve Greek objections that Macedonia’s choice of a name and flag, and its constitutional provisions, imply claims against Greece’s province of the same name.He said the Greek Foreign Minister, Karolos Papoulias, and his Macedonian counterpart, Stevo Crevenkovski, would meet at the United Nations next Monday or Tuesday to complete the accord.Asked whether an economic embargo Greece imposed on its northern neighbour in February 1994 would be lifted immediately after the agreement was concluded, he replied: “Yes.”The accord covered “a broad range of things,” Mr Vance said, adding: “The name will be a subject for discussions which will continue past the signing of the agreement.” He said he was “quite confident” the issue would not derail the agreement, which he hoped would “form the basis of future friendly relations between the parties.”The accord “covers such things as the question of the constitution, the question of borders, the question of the flag … ANTHONY GOODMAN

Reuter
New York – All elements of an agreement ending a long-running dispute between Greece and Macedonia have been settled except for the name of the former Yugoslav republic, the mediator, Cyrus Vance, said yesterday.”It is an agreement with crossed t’s and dotted i’s,” the former US Secretary of State said. Now that Nato has been sucked into fighting on its behalf, the government has less need to accept peace terms that it regards as unjust.Clearly, though, such tactics risk hardening the Serb negotiating position, producing deadlock at Geneva and prompting the US Congress to override President Bill Clinton’s veto on lifting the arms embargo on the Bosnian government.If that happened, the Clinton administration’s policy would be in ruins – a failed peace initiative, and a war on its hands that it never wanted to fight.TONY BARBEREurope Editor. He also ruled out allowing the Bosnian Serbs more land around the so-called Brcko corridor, the strip of land joining Serb conquests in northern and eastern Bosnia.The problem facing the US initiative is that the Muslim-led government appears to view Nato’s military campaign as an opportunity to exploit Bosnian Serb weakness and reject political and territorial compromises. The Bosnian Prime Minister, Haris Silajdzic, said he would never again negotiate at gunpoint – meaning no more talks unless Nato breaks the siege of Sarajevo.Mr Izetbegovic went further on Monday and said his government would not give up Srebrenica or Zepa, even though the Bosnian Serbs overran the two eastern enclaves in July. But the fact that the US peace initiative coincides with Nato’s most forceful attacks of the war against the Bosnian Serbs is giving the Muslim-led government an unusual degree of political leverage over the West.No sooner had Nato called a halt to the bombing last week than the Bosnian government threatened not to attend the Geneva talks unless the attacks resumed.

This is the fact that, whenever word has arisen of a possible concession to the Bosnian Serbs, the Muslim-led government has fulminated at the idea and Mr Holbrooke and company have felt obliged to beat a hasty retreat.No Western government, least of all the Clinton administration, wants to be seen as bullying the Muslims, widely seen as the war’s biggest victims. Ideally, the Serbs, Muslims and Croats would sort out the territorial details themselves, and the US would need to exert no pressure beyond reminding each party that the core principle remains a 51-49 per cent division between the Muslim-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serbs.There is, however, another reason for the confusion surrounding the US proposals. He complained in Ankara on Monday that the US initiative contained too many grey areas, particularly as regards the borders to be allocated to the Bosnian Serbs.Clearly, US strategists are calculating that their plan will stand a greater chance of success than previous Western efforts if it remains as flexible as possible on maps. In all our talks with the Americans and with all players in the negotiations, no one has seen them.”Mr Izetbegovic, too, seems unclear what the Americans are proposing. In a strict sense, they are right, for an intriguing feature of the initiative is that, until late last week, US negotiators seem deliberately to have avoided presenting the Serbs, Croats and Muslims with maps of various possible territorial arrangements in Bosnia.Croatia’s Foreign Minister, Mate Granic, asked last Wednesday about the US initiative, replied: “No one has yet seen the maps.

Yet on Monday evening, after talks in Ankara with Bosnia’s Muslim President, Alija Izetbegovic, Mr Holbrooke said: “The United States is not supporting a confederation.”Another proposal that has gone into reverse, or maybe never existed in the first place, concerns the fate of Gorazde, the only remaining Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia. In the early days of the US initiative, it seemed the Bosnian Serbs would be offered Gorazde in return for more land for the Muslim-led government around Sarajevo.Now Mr Holbrooke is adamant that the US never asked the Bosnian government to trade off Gorazde. A confederation is a constitutional relationship short of full union.When details of the initiative filtered out three weeks ago, Western diplomats were convinced a confederation was one of the main incentives designed to entice Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs into a settlement. The initiative appears a protean creature, changing shape from one day to the next.
The latest example concerns US willingness to let the Bosnian Serbs form a confederation with Serbia, just as the Muslims and Croats have already done with Croatia. What exactly is the new US peace initiative for Bosnia? Is it a formal plan, and how does it fit in with Nato’s military attacks on the Bosnian Serbs?

With only two days before Serbs, Croats and Muslims attend US-sponsored talks in Geneva, uncertainty hangs over the proposals being hawked around the Balkans by Richard Holbrooke, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European affairs. Other demands were opening up Sarajevo’s airport and land routes into the city, and an end to attacks on “safe areas”, including Sarajevo.”We hope this doesn’t have to be a long bombing, that the Bosnian Serbs will truly understand what is happening to them and come around,” said Captain Jim Mitchell, a Nato spokesman in Naples..