1 Driving to break a diplomatic deadlock, the Clinton administration is sending a top official to Munich, Germany, this weekend to help set up a confederation between Muslims and Croats in Bosnia.
2 Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke will be joined in his meetings with Muslim and Croat leaders by diplomats from Britain, France, Germany and Russia, U.S. officials disclosed Wednesday.
3 Together, the two ethnic groups would control 51 percent of Bosnia under a map proposed by the five outside countries as part of a plan to end the 34-month war in the former Yugoslav republic.
4 Bosnian Serbs have rejected the plan as leaving them with economically and politically ineffective fragments of the country. Their repeated refusal to negotiate with the Muslim-led government has derailed U.S. peace efforts while sporadic fighting threatens a shaky ceasefire.
5 The effect of Holbrooke's talks with Muslim and Croat leaders could isolate the Serbs diplomatically. 'We're trying to send them a political signal,' said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
6 France, meanwhile, has proposed an international conference to deal with the impasse, but Clinton administration officials said they were cool to the idea.
7 'It would be a good idea if something could be worked out in advance,' the official told The Associated Press.
8 A confederation of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia could reach across the border and establish ties with Croatia. Serbs in that country, in Bosnia and in Serbia, itself, have an opposite goal -- creation of a Greater Serbia in one form or another.
9 Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic, here for talks with Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and congressional leaders, dismissed the French proposal.
10 'This only buys time for our enemies,' he said at a news conference. 'We don't need any more public relations conferences.'
11 State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly said the administration 'would want to know' how the proposed summit would relate to the peace plan devised by the United States and its partners in the so-called Contact Group.
12 The group has dispersed, with the negotiators returning to their capitals. Their next move has not been decided by the five governments.
13 Silajdzic, concluding his three-day visit, appeared exasperated that the administration declines to lift the U.N. Security Council arms embargo in Bosnia. He said a majority in Congress supported providing arms to government forces.
14 The administration's position is that the embargo should be lifted only in an agreement with other members of the Security Council, but that Britain and France would not go along.
15 'The international community owes us because they let other people kill us and tied our hands,' Sialjdzic said. 'The arms embargo has been there long enough to prove that it only helps kill innocent people.'
16 He goes next to Moscow where he will press for imposition of a May 1 deadline for the Serbs to accept the proposed peace plan. After that, he said, the embargo should be lifted so the Bosnians can arm themselves.

Bosnian Serbs have rejected the plan as leaving them with economically and politically ineffective fragments of the country . Their repeated refusal to negotiate with the Muslim - led government has derailed U . S . peace efforts while sporadic fighting threatens a shaky ceasefire .
economically and politically ineffective
why are these fragments economically and politically ineffective?