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Today, Milosevic is indicted for war crimes, Tudjman is close to death in a coma in Zagreb and Izetbegovic's political associates have been accused of skimming millions of dollars from Western reconstruction assistance. Of the leading U.S. presidential candidates, only one, Vice President Al Gore, has voiced commitment to sustaining the U.S. investment in maintaining peace in Bosnia. Despite the presence of thousands of NATO troops and billions of dollars in reconstruction assistance, domestic stability has failed to take hold.

The prospect that Bosnia may not have a NATO peacekeeping force much longer and millions of dollars in reconstruction assistance may soon disappear has sent a shiver of panic through Bosnia, where a four-year-long war killed more than 200,000 people in the worst atrocities in Europe since the Holocaust. Since the peace agreement was signed in December 1995, the Bosnian peace process has floundered on key issues -- despite the infusion of $5 billion in reconstruction assistance, the presence of 30,000 NATO-led peacekeeping troops and a legion of international experts working to breathe life into democratic governing institutions. More than 1 million Bosnians have still not been able to return to their homes in areas that are controlled by other ethnic groups, dozens of the worst war crimes suspects have not been arrested and Bosnia's Western-designed governing institutions are dysfunctional.

Adding to the concern by Balkan watchers about the prospects for lasting peace in Bosnia is the fact that Texas Gov. George W. Bush and former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley have laid out foreign-policy platforms that criticize U.S. military interventions in the Balkans. Both candidates say the missions are exhausting military resources for conflicts that lie outside the nation's vital national-security interests.

"I don't think the United States can be a policeman to the world. We don't have the resources or the wisdom," Bradley told an audience at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. In a recent foreign policy address at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Governor Bush said his foreign policy would focus on trade, Russia and China, and would frown on unclear peacekeeping missions in the Balkans.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, who initially voiced criticism of NATO air strikes in Kosovo, has since said the Clinton administration was wrong to have not considered using ground troops in Kosovo. McCain has repeatedly called for Europe to take the lead in the Bosnia peace efforts, and is scheduled to outline his major foreign-policy initiatives in an address Tuesday.

"Suddenly, we're saying, we're out of here," says James Lyons, the Sarajevo director of the International Crisis Group, a Western think tank and advocacy group that has recently issued a report on the Bosnia situation. Bosnian "'ownership' of the peace process has become the big buzzword. In the end, the international community wants to disengage."

This week, SFOR began withdrawals that will take the force down from 30,000 troops to a projected 19,000 by April. Several factors are driving the new sense of urgency to scale back troop deployments in Bosnia. Increasingly, the Pentagon is complaining that its force readiness is being jeopardized by extended heavy troop commitments in the Balkans. In addition to its troops in Bosnia, the United States has recently committed 6,000 troops to a 42,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping mission in nearby Kosovo.

In addition, Western officials have grown exasperated with Bosnian officials who have consistently obstructed key aspects of the peace process, such as minority refugee return. This week, the top international official in Bosnia, Austrian diplomat Wolfgang Petritsch, fired 22 Bosnian Serbian, Croatian and Muslim mayors and local office holders for obstructing the peace, and banned them from political life forever.

"There is a certain urgency, because support for the peace process in Bosnia Herzegovina is decreasing," said Alexandra Stieglmayer, a spokesperson for Petritsch, about the firings. The NATO-led stabilization force for Bosnia, SFOR, "is now reducing the number of troops in the country by a third. And it's getting increasingly difficult to get donor support for Bosnia."

Next page | "Bosnia can go to hell in a handbag" -- after the elections