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Milosevic says his plan requires a partnership between the U.S. and Yugoslavia as overseers to bring the settlement about, a process he describes as "Americanizing the peace," which, given America's reluctance to engage in the region, seems equally unlikely. He first produced the draft of his proposal last March during secret (but White House-sanctioned) meetings with Democratic Congressman Bill Richardson at Karadjordjevo, a presidential hunting lodge in northern Serbia. Richardson had been invited by Milosevic to pass on to Washington an offer of cooperation, but the Congressman was tasked by the Administration to take the occasion to urge Milosevic to use his muscle to prevent the Croatian Serbs from pressing for the expulsion of U.N. peacekeepers from Croatia. Milosevic obliged. But what he cared most about was his plan, which Richardson took back to Washington. In it, Milosevic said Yugoslavia would recognize, among other things, "that Bosnia-Herzegovina should be a union of the Bosnian Croat federation and the Republika Srpska," both equal and both with the right to confederate with Croatia and Serbia, respectively. The Bosnian Muslims, without an adjacent motherland to support them, would be left in the lurch.
The proposal fell on deaf ears in Washington, in part because it seemed to be nothing new, in part because its requirement for lifting sanctions up front seemed to require blind faith. "We need an insurance policy in case Milosevic cannot control the Bosnian Serbs," says a senior Administration official. "Milosevic, for his part, is scared to death of what he considers the feckless American political process. He says, 'What happens some day when [what he calls] the German-Muslim lobby on Capitol Hill says let's reimpose sanctions?' Milosevic is dug in on reimposition, and so are we." Milosevic wants reimposition to be in the hands of the Security Council, where the U.S. is sure a Russian veto would scuttle a renewal of the embargo should that become necessary. The Clinton Administration wants to preserve as much unilateral control over the reimposition process as possible and envisages suspension of the embargo in stages, one of which would be Bosnian Serb acceptance of the Contact Group peace plan. The Administration also needs a deal that is viable in domestic political terms. The ability to reimpose sanctions by fiat if the accord came apart would make it so.
Given the nature of the war in the Balkans and his own history, Milosevic is clearly a dicey partner. A communist apparatchik under Tito whose parents both committed suicide, he rose to significance in the party as head of the gas monopoly and the largest state bank. He made his political mark in 1987 with a fiery speech to the Serb minority in the province of Kosovo. Many consider that speech the beginning of his rise to power, as well as of the Serbs' nationalist passion and the wars that were inspired by it.