MISSOURI COMMENTARY: NEAR MIDNIGHT, MINUTE HAND MOVING

Bosnia is a tragedy of the real and surreal, a blend of reality and fiction. The reality is that the Bosnian Serbs are tightening their grip on the territory they hold (70 percent of Bosnia) and are expelling the Bosnian Moslems who lived in the safe havens located in Serb-held territory.

That's the reality. Now some pieces of the fiction.

-- Fiction No. 1: The U.N. forces in Bosnia are positioned as neutrals in the civil war between the Serbs and Moslems. These U.N. peacekeepers supposedly have no stake int he outcome of the war. They are in Bosnia purely for humanitarian purposes to feed the hungry and tend to the sick. U.N. personnel are only equipped to fulfill this limited mission. They are, in essence, a lightly armed Red Cross disaster team.

The whole world, however, knows that the Bosnian Serbs are the flagrant aggressors. The countries supplying troops to the U.N. force have, time and again, tried to prevail on the Serbs to stop the war. U.N. soldiers are taken hostage and held captive for periods of time by the Serb army.

Yet the fiction prevails that the U.N. peacekeeping force performs under the cloak of strict neutrality.

-- Fiction No. 2: Admittedly all of the options in Bosnia are dreadful. But it is a fiction to assert that the most recent U.S. policy has been anything other than merely acquiescing in the failed U.N. approach.

Defense Secretary William Perry says the U.N. has "demonstrated that in the present configuration, the present rules of engagement, they are not capable of performing their mission ... If we don't fix it, it's going to have to be pulled out." How to fix it? No one is sure. No one is close to sure. No one even has a decent guess.

-- Fiction No. 3: Maybe the United Nations could gets its act together if the French and British could get their act together.

French President Jacques Chirac, new to the Bosnian nightmare, suggests aggressive use of military force. First, he wanted to recapture Srebenica. That wasn't a sensible military objective. Then, he cast his sight on protecting Gorazde where 320 British peacekeepers are stationed, surrounded by 12,000 Serbs. Chirac figured that would entice Britain into utilizing greater force in Bosnia.

The British said "no thanks" to the French proposal, causing the American State Department to claim that the problem in Bosnia is that Paris and London can't get their act together. This is diplomatic fantasy or hypocrisy at its highest level. For months and months, the French and British, with thousands of their own troops at risk on the ground, have been arguing with the United States about what to do in Bosnia.

-- Fiction No. 4: It is alleged that the U.N. operation in Bosnia, with all of its blemishes, is about as good as can be expected under the difficult circumstances.

Wrong! Consider, for example, the "duel key" arrangement on air strikes. Both the United Nations and NATO have to approve the specifics of bombing missions. They argue endlessly back and forth about the timing and nature of the sorties.

Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke calls the "dual key" system "insane." Now, so extraordinarily late in the game, the administration proposes eliminating "dual key" and intensifying the bombing.

-- Fiction No. 5: Whatever may transpire in the future in Bosnia, the United States can somehow continue to avoid American casualties.

Whether it is the use of American helicopters to move French and British troops to reinforce any "safe haven" or whether it is the use of American military personnel to extract the U.N. force, the risk of American casualties would be real. Wading deeper into the Bosnia quagmire ups the stakes.

The utterly chaotic nature of the war can be seen by the Bosnia Muslim troops taking hostage Orthodox Ukrainian peacekeepers in Zepa, replicating the Orthodox Serbs earlier taking hostage of Dutch peacekeepers.

Sen. James Exon (D-Neb.) puts it this way: "Our moral outrage has led to an overwhelming desire to do something, anything, to halt Serb aggression. But there is an important restriction on any action we take: no Americans can be put at risk. In the messiest, most intractable crisis the world has known this decade, we want a neat, antiseptic solution. Well, it's time for a little realism: it isn't going to happen."

The United States, United Nations, French and British may well be beyond the zero hour in Bosnia. At the most optimistic, it's five minutes to midnight, and the minute hand is moving.

~Tom Eagleton is a former U.S. senator from Missouri and a columnist for the Pulitzer Publishing Co.