Mr. Clinton Pulls Up a Chair

FIRST WITH HAITI, NOW BOSNIA, BILL CLINTON IS DIScovering that governing is harder than campaigning. His new policy toward the Balkans, announced by Secretary of State Warren Christopher, lacks several ideas Clinton regularly promoted before November: lifting the arms embargo that has given the well- supplied Serbs an advantage over Bosnian irregulars, and using force to guarantee relief deliveries and access to concentration camps. For now, Clinton has chosen to pull up a chair and negotiate.

Clinton and Christopher had said that the peace plan marketed by Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen was too favorable to the Serb aggressors and militarily unenforceable. Yet they named an envoy -- veteran diplomat Reginald Bartholomew -- to establish an American presence at the ongoing Vance-Owen talks. Clinton also promised to use American troops to enforce whatever Bosnian settlement emerges from the negotiations, hoping this pledge will strengthen the hand of the Muslim-led Bosnian government. But one skeptical U.S. official called the plan "smoke and mirrors," doubting that the Serbs will take nonmilitary threats seriously or that Washington will ever let its forces get bogged down in a Balkan quagmire. (See related story on page 44.)