1 Secretary of State Warren Christopher today called on Bosnia's Muslims and Croats to give 'substantive content' to their planned confederation and said the United States intended to help make it work.
2 'We should work on that together,' Christopher said in asking Britain, France, Germany and Russia to join in the effort.
3 Christopher is sending Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke to Germany to try to bolster the confederation plan. Diplomats from the four other countries are expected to join the talks with Muslim and Croat leaders in Munich this weekend.
4 'We're very anxious that that process move forward,' Christopher said at a news conference. 'It is significant, it can be very valuable. . We want to make sure the federation moves beyond a concept to having the largest amount of substantive content.'
5 Together, the Muslims and Croats would control 51 percent of Bosnia under a peace proposal by the five Western countries to end the 34-month war in the former Yugoslav republic.
6 Bosnia Serbs have rejected the plan, which would allot them control of the remaining 49 percent, about one-third less than they have captured. They say that would leave them with economically and politically ineffective fragments of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
7 The Serbs' repeated refusal to negotiate, despite assurances they could seek a better deal at the table, has stalled U.S. peace efforts while sporadic fighting threatens a shaky cease-fire.
8 An effect of Holbrooke's talks with Muslim and Croat leaders could be to isolate the Serbs diplomatically. 'We're trying to send them a political signal,' said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
9 The Muslim-led government and Bosnian Croats agreed last March to confederate, but they have not followed up to form a joint army or to make other joint arrangements.
10 French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has proposed, meanwhile, an international conference to deal with the impasse, but Clinton administration officials said they were cool to the idea.
11 A confederation of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia could reach across the border and establish ties with Croatia. Serbs have an opposite goal -- creation of a Greater Serbia in one form or another.
12 Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic, in Washington for talks with Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and congressional leaders, dismissed the French proposal.
13 'This only buys time for our enemies,' he said at a news conference. 'We don't need any more public relations conferences.'
14 State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly said the administration 'would want to know' how the proposed summit would relate to the peace plan devised by the United States and its partners in the so-called Contact Group.
15 Silajdzic, concluding his three-day visit, appeared exasperated that the administration declines to lift the U.N. Security Council arms embargo in Bosnia. He said a majority in Congress supported providing arms to government forces.
16 The administration's position is that the embargo should be lifted only by agreement with other members of the Security Council but that Britain and France would not go along.
17 'The international community owes us because they let other people kill us and tied our hands,' Silajdzic said. 'The arms embargo has been there long enough to prove that it only helps kill innocent people.'
18 He goes next to Moscow where he will press for imposition of a May 1 deadline for the Serbs to accept the proposed peace plan. After that, he said, the embargo should be lifted so the Bosnians can arm themselves.

Together , the Muslims and Croats would control 51 percent of Bosnia under a peace proposal by the five Western countries to end the 34 - month war in the former Yugoslav republic .
percent
Who control the other 49 percent of Bosnia?