WASHINGTON -- As in his previous high-profile personal diplomatic initiatives, Jimmy Carter has stepped into the Bosnia conflict at a time when all the players are weak, including his president.
At 4 p.m. Wednesday, while the White House was scrambling to prepare and devise a way to pay for tax cuts, the former president called Bill Clinton to say that he intended to launch a peace initiative in Bosnia, provided that the Serbs kept a series of commitments they had made to him earlier in the day.
Worst of all for the Clinton administration, the Republicans were coming. The incoming Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, with support from the new House speaker, Newt Gingrich, announced plans to press for lifting the arms embargo on the Muslims.
Mr. Clinton wants to keep that from happening. Not only could thousands of U.S. troops then have the tough job of trying to rescue U.N. peacekeepers, perhaps under hostile fire, but the U.S. action would also increasingly make the war an American responsibility, administration officials fear.
If the Bosnian Serbs also don't fear this prospect, they at least want to stall it.
On each of two previous occasions, in North Korea and Haiti, Mr. Carter had eased an escalating crisis that could have put U.S. lives on the line in a conflict. When the former president first told Mr. Clinton Dec. 7 of a Serbian request for his mediation, administration officials had strong misgivings, fearing Mr. Carter might get in the way of new diplomatic developments. And when nothing came of it at first, they dismissed the initiative as what one called "vapor trails."
It turned out to be more than that, and a big potential headache for the administration.
For one thing, the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs may exceed, in duplicity if not in brutality, the dictators Mr. Carter has cut deals with in the past.
"We remain skeptical about the intentions of the Bosnian Serbs only because we have seen so many promises and so many initiatives fail in the past because of Bosnian Serb refusal to make good on the promises they've made to the international community," State Department spokesman Michael McCurry said.
And the statesman from Plains, Ga., doesn't undertake his missions quietly. Little more than an hour after Mr. Carter informed the president, first the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, and then Mr. Carter, were on CNN to describe their initiative, even before the White House and Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher had hammered out a statement.
A bigger problem for the administration may come if Mr. Carter succeeds, or appears to. If he holds to past practice, he will push for a solution that inevitably forces a shift in administration policy.
Already, while the United States insists that Serbs are the aggressors and Muslims are the victims, Mr. Karadzic is hailing the high-profile mediator as even-handed.
The Clinton administration and Europeans insist that any progress toward peace can only come with Serb acceptance of the peace plan already sponsored by five nations.
The Carter visit will inevitably elevate the prestige of Mr. Karadzic, who is widely viewed as a war criminal, and boost him in a power struggle with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
As a result, Bosnians and their supporters outside the Clinton administration reacted bitterly to the Carter initiative yesterday.
Even a senior State Department official, reminded of Mr. Carter's earlier invitation to the Haitian strongman, Raoul Cedras, to teach a Sunday school class, quipped to reporters: "Karadzic is going to team-teach with him on Christmas Eve."