PALE : Bosnia’s Serbs Vote

The self-styled parliament of rebel Serbs meets in this Bosnian city today to vote on a controversial peace plan for the republic they have laid to ruin in a 10-month-old drive for their own, ethnically pure state.

Already in control of 70% of Bosnian land by virtue of their practice of “ethnic cleansing,” the Serbs risk little if they accept the proposed settlement of the United Nations and the European Community. A halt to the fighting now would likely secure their hold on the spoils.

But Muslim leaders in Sarajevo say they doubt that such a Western-mediated peace would be lasting, given that Bosnia’s Slavic Muslims constituted 44% of the republic’s population before the war.