By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 21, 1994; Page A01

SARAJEVO, BOSNIA, DEC. 20 -- After two days of marathon negotiations, former president Jimmy Carter won backing today from the Bosnian Muslims and their enemies, the Serbs, for the first nationwide cease-fire in Bosnia since the summer.

Serb and Muslim forces would stop fighting at noon Friday and immediately begin their first negotiations since July with the objective of signing a four-month "total cessation of hostilities" on New Year's Day, according to an agreement worked out by Carter. After that, the warring factions, in what would be the most difficult step, are supposed to resume talks on a political settlement of their 32-month-old war, the former president said.

Despite the appearance that Bosnia's fratricidal combatants are lumbering toward a cease-fire, today's developments failed to guarantee that either side has abandoned its territorial goals. Bosnia's harsh winters make warfare difficult, so both sides may have decided to suspend fighting to buy time to prepare for more killing in the spring.

Summing up the widespread skepticism here was Bosnia's Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic. "I don't see a chance for peace," he told reporters after Carter announced the deal, "but I do see a chance for a cease-fire."

Still, if the warring factions actually resume talks, the mission of the 70-year-old former U.S. president would have provided two important players in Bosnia's conflict -- the Bosnian Serbs and the United States -- with a face-saving method to modify their positions and continue a search for an end to this war.

For the Bosnian Serbs, the diplomatic mileage gained from a visit by a former American president, along with his soothing words and the length of time he spent listening to their version of history and complaints about being misunderstood, gave them enough comfort to drop their demand that any cease-fire must last at least one year and that the peace plan brokered by the international "contact group" must be dismantled before talks can resume.

Carter's visit was also a great boon to Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, in his personal power struggle with his former patron, President Slobodan Milosevic of neighboring Serbia. To that end, diplomats said, Carter might have helped to temper Karadzic's radical nationalism and bring him back to the negotiating table.

For the United States, Carter's mission put the final touches on a policy shift that has seen the Clinton administration move from strongly supporting Bosnia's Muslims, considered the primary victims of the war, to something closer to the European position which favors a peace deal more than loyalty to any side.

Whereas several months ago, U.S. officials demanded that the Serbs accept all of the the peace plan's map, today a senior U.S. official stated: "It was always true that territorial adjustments had to be made." The official intimated strongly that two concepts once considered sacrosanct by U.S. officials had essentially been abandoned: the idea that any division of Bosnia must grant a federation of Muslims and Croats more territory than the Serbs; and the position that the Bosnian Serbs should not be allowed ultimately to form some type of confederation with Serbia, widely considered the instigator of the conflicts in the Yugoslav area.

Those changes were set out on Dec. 5 when Charles Thomas, the U.S. peace negotiator for the Balkans, traveled to Belgrade, Serbia's capital, to discuss what the U.S. senior official called "a substantial misunderstanding of the plan." But the official stressed that the United States would not force the Muslims to agree to changes just to get a deal.

According to a statement read by Carter at a hurriedly called news conference at dusk tonight, the Muslims and the Serbs agreed to seven points of an eight-point plan designed to resume peace talks. They included the cease-fire, the ending of Serb restrictions on humanitarian convoys, the reopening of the Sarajevo airport to aid flights, the protection of human rights, the opening of Bosnian Serb territory to U.N. human rights investigators and the exchange of all detainees and prisoners of war.

Carter said that troops from the U.N. Protection Force would supervise the cease-fire and interpose themselves between the warring parties at strategically sensitive points along the 770-mile front lines. That would most probably mean that more U.N. peacekeepers would have to be sent to Bosnia to bolster the 23,000-man force, although it remains to be seen where the extra soldiers will come from.

"I assume that this resolved all questions that presently could be addressed," Carter said before leaving for Belgrade to meet with Milosevic.

The one sticking point concerned the two sides' commitment to the international peace plan, which was hammered out by the United States, Russia, Germany, Britain and France.

The Muslims said they want both sides to accept the contact-group plan as a starting point for further discussions. The Serbs, however, said they want both sides to take the contact-group proposal as a basis for negotiation of all points.

This "semantic" distinction, as Carter put it, is actually quite significant because it reflects a profound difference of opinion about the plan: The Serbs hate it, the Muslims somewhat dubiously support it.

The plan divides Bosnia roughly in half: 51 percent controlled by a federation of Muslims and Croats, while the remainder would be run by the Serbs. The Serbs, who now control 72 percent of Bosnia, would have to surrender one-third of the spoils of war to the Croats and the Muslims.

Under the plan, the Croats and the Muslims would get the lion's share of Bosnia's industry, most of its main cities, two of the three major airports and most of the centers of higher learning. The Serbs, who have traditionally lived in the mountains and on the farmland of Bosnia, claimed this was not fair.

In addition, the Serbs oppose the continued existence of three Muslim enclaves in Serb-controlled eastern Bosnia as an unacceptable security risk. The Muslims counter that moving more than 180,000 Muslims into central Bosnia would upset the already shaky ethnic balance in the nine-month-old Muslim-Croat federation.

"Our major concern was to start with the {contact-group} peace plan and build on it," said Ejup Ganic, vice president of the Sarajevo government. "Karadzic wants to start with the plan and destroy it."