Alija Izetbegovic

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic said Thursday he is satisfied with President Clinton's measured offer of military aid to enforce a peace agreement in Bosnia-Herzegovina, adding that he will return next week to negotiations with Serbs and Croats. But the Bosnian leader also made it clear that he is bitterly disappointed in all the Western powers, which promised to help his country but failed to prevent its partition.

After weeks of international wrangling to force them to sit together, the three members of this nation's new joint presidency met here Monday for the first time since their recent election--and for the first time since war made them bitter enemies. The presidency is one of the crucial, overarching institutions aimed at loosely joining the war-torn country's two halves, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serb Republic.

U.S. mediators plan to hold Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic under the diplomatic equivalent of house arrest until they reach agreement on a plan for ending Bosnia's bloody ethnic war, officials said Thursday. U.S. peace envoy Richard Holbrooke said Milosevic and Izetbegovic, scheduled to attend the talks in the United States starting Oct.

Even as NATO officials continue to lay plans for possible air strikes against Serbian forces besieging the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, U.S. officials have made clear to Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic that "the cavalry is not coming to take his country back for him" and have warned him that if he does not rejoin stalled peace talks in Geneva, the Atlantic Alliance could abandon its plans, a senior Clinton Administration official said Thursday.

A U.S.-European effort to break the cycle of violence racking Bosnia-Herzegovina was rejected Sunday by the embattled Muslims it aimed to protect and heartened the Serbian rebels who were supposed to be chastened by the latest moves to restrain them. Bosnia's Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, denounced the initiative announced in Washington on Saturday as an attempt to force his people onto "reservations" and warned Bosnians that the defense of their country is now in their own hands.

Three Balkan power brokers who hold the key to peace in their beleaguered region came together here Saturday facing direct and intense international pressure to recommit themselves to the Bosnia peace agreement they signed two months ago. Presidents Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia-Herzegovina were in effect summoned to the hastily scheduled summit by U.S.

After seizing broad swaths of Croatian territory and then agreeing to a cease-fire, Serbia has appealed to other Yugoslav republics for a complete redrawing of the Balkans map along ethnic lines. But the controversial proposal that would create at least four states out of what is now considered Yugoslavia met with immediate skepticism Friday among Muslim leaders in this capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina who fear the plan is a thinly disguised plot to form a "Greater Serbia."

In the latest American attempt to salvage the Bosnian peace accords, trouble-shooter Richard Holbrooke on Wednesday secured new promises from two Balkan presidents to live up to their end of the bargain. Holbrooke, the architect of the plan that ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Robert Gelbard, President Clinton's special Bosnia coordinator, extracted the promises in more than eight hours of negotiations at a seaside villa in this Adriatic port.

The federal army released the president of Bosnia-Herzegovina on Sunday after holding him hostage for 24 hours to secure free passage for an armored column trapped in the center of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. The freeing of Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic and the movement of the tanks and armored vehicles from the city center momentarily eased the razor-sharp tensions that have gripped Sarajevo amid its worst violence since World War II.

The three leaders of Bosnia's warring parties Monday reached an "agreement in principle" to place Sarajevo under U.N. control and demilitarize the Bosnian capital as part of a settlement to end 16 months of war. John Mills, spokesman for the Geneva peace talks on Bosnia-Herzegovina, said the rival leaders agreed to set up a committee of Muslim, Serbian and Croatian representatives to make recommendations to international mediators on the future status of embattled Sarajevo.