French march to EU tune as Bosnia deadline nears

FRENCH assertiveness in the international effort to end the siege of Sarajevo has put the country firmly behind the European Union's foreign and security policy as the deadline for the ultimatum nears.

In Germany, meanwhile, politicians and commentators are agonising over the country's military impotence because of the constitutional safeguards that prevent the country participating directly in any Nato action in Bosnia.

Bonn's ambassador to Nato told the liberal daily Suddeutsche Zeitung that 'we are in the process of losing influence' in Nato, while the newspaper complained that 'instead of being the third partner alongside France and the United States at the origin of a Nato ultimatum against the Bosnian Serbs, Germany has had to stay out of the picture because of limitations imposed by its constitution.'

Since the unification of Germany, France has been concerned that its influence would wane and that eventually it would be overshadowed by its much more powerful neighbour.

Like Britain, France has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, an independent nuclear force and a determination to mould EU policy to its own liking. To maintain its international clout, France has had a policy of playing a prominent role in areas where Germany is inhibited from taking action.

'France wants to continue to wear the trousers in its relations with Germany,' said one diplomatic source. 'A high profile over Bosnia should ensure that it continues to do so for the foreseeable future.' It has 6,000 troops in or about Bosnia, by far the largest peace-keeping contingent and, despite its official hands-off policy to Nato, has been to the fore in seeking allied military action against the Serbs.

French public opinion is also enthusiastically behind the government and supporting Nato's threat of air strikes against Serbian gunners around Sarajevo, even if little thought has been given to the aftermath of a decision to go to war.

For months the French public has been been bitterly disillusioned with the failure to bring the conflict to an end and has considered the EU largely to blame for that failure.

There have been 18 French military casualties in Bosnia so far, but that has not dampened public support for France's high-profile role. On the contrary, recent opinion polls showed that 76 per cent supported the threatened air strikes, compared with 48 per cent of Americans.

A Gallup poll taken in Britain before the mortar shell crashed into the market in Sarajevo showed that 40 per cent of those interviewed would be willing to accept heavy casualties among British troops if that helped to bring a settlement.

France's call for trenchant action against the Serbs, should they defy the international community, has come from a genuine sense of outrage over the bombing of the market in Sarajevo, but also from a growing concern that its troops in Bosnia were stuck in a quagmire from which there was no escape.

President Francois Mitterrand, who visited Sarajevo in 1992, described the situation as an impasse a few weeks ago: one in which it was impossible, for humanitarian reasons, to leave, and impossible, militarily, to stay and be constantly humiliated.