Bitterness in Bosnia Over Peace Plan : Balkans: U.S. proposal angers many who fought the Serbs, and leaves troublesome questions. Among issues is how much autonomy rebels’ future republic will have.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — The callers to Radio 99’s phone-in program were angry and bewildered Saturday. A 16-year-old girl wept for a sister killed in a war that suddenly seemed lost. Soldiers asked, “What were we fighting for?” An amputee demanded that the government he felt had betrayed him and other victims resign.

Friday’s agreement by the warring parties of the former Yugoslav federation to split Bosnia-Herzegovina in two and recognize one of the segments as a Bosnian Serb republic provoked emotions here that ranged from fatalistic acceptance to outrage.

Resistance from Bosnian citizens is only one of many obstacles faced by those trying to implement the Geneva agreement, which aims to set peace talks in motion and restructure Bosnia. Perhaps chief among those hurdles are the widely divergent visions held by the mostly Muslim government and the Serbs about how the new Bosnia will work. Confusion reigns.

While hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough by U.S. officials who drafted it, the agreement announced in Geneva remains intentionally vague and leaves many of the most vexing issues--such as who gets what land and whether this capital will be divided--to be resolved.

One thing appears clear: The agreement makes major concessions to the Bosnian Serbs by recognizing their self-styled state, the “Republika Srpska,” in name and essence. The Serbs’ war conquests for the most part have been legitimized by the diplomats’ decision that a complete reversal of gains made through Serbian “ethnic cleansing” is no longer a goal.

At his headquarters in nearby Pale, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was jubilant Saturday, declaring it “one of the happiest days in the last couple of centuries” for the Bosnian Serbs.

The Bosnian government, for its part, has been forced to accept its position as loser in the war and to speak of “realities on the ground” that, however unjust, must be faced.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic told state television Saturday that he had to go along with recognition of the Republika Srpska to avoid angering U.S. mediators. If they were miffed, he said, they might call off North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs.

For Bosnian officials, the deal appears to be a trade-off: lost territory in exchange for an end to fighting and a beginning of money, in the form of promised economic aid.

“Nothing better could have been reached at this moment,” Edhem Bicakcic, a member of the Bosnian presidency, said Saturday. “Bosnia needs peace. Bosnia has been exhausted. Bosnia has been burnt. Its people have been decimated.

“This is only the beginning of the negotiations and the peace process,” he added in comments to the Oslobodjenje newspaper. “Nothing is over until it’s over, until the whole peace package is accepted.”

The Bosnian government has been told that now is the best time to face reality, because the NATO air strikes have put pressure on the Serbs and because Washington is focused on the Balkans. The consensus keeping NATO warplanes overhead could crumble at any time, they have been told, and U.S. presidential politics will soon distract the Clinton Administration from any attention it has paid to foreign policy.

In an important nod to the Bosnian government, the statement of principles agreed to in Geneva recognizes Bosnia’s current international borders, allowing the state to continue to exist. It gives 51% of the country to a Muslim-Croat federation and 49% to the Republika Srpska--less than the 70% the Bosnian Serbs have now and less than they had demanded in previous negotiations.

Among the many undecided elements, each of which could spoil a deal:

* Will there be a central government that presides over the two segments of Bosnia, and what will its authority be? Which are the policy areas that would naturally fall to the central authority? U.S. officials and the Bosnian government assume this would include foreign policy. Do the Serbs have another idea?

* What degree of autonomy will be allowed the Republika Srpska? As it stands, each part of Bosnia will have its own police force, its own army, its own president and elections, its own power to tax. How can a single state function with two armies?

* Probably the most difficult issue is the drawing of the map that will divide Bosnia. The Serbs will get roughly the eastern half of Bosnia, including the Drina River valley, once dotted with Muslim-majority villages that have since been razed, their inhabitants killed or expelled.

The Muslim-Croat federation will get roughly the western half of Bosnia, including the swath that abuts the portion of Croatia that was home to more than 150,000 Serbs until they were expelled by Croatia last month.

But the status of Sarajevo remains a major problem. Karadzic reiterated on Bosnian Serb television Friday night that he will not give up the Serb-held suburbs of Sarajevo. The Serbs also want to widen the supply corridor that runs from Belgrade to their likely new capital, the north-central town of Banja Luka.

* The Geneva agreement also allows the two parts of Bosnia to have “special parallel relationships” with neighboring countries. The Bosnian government understands these to be limited to cultural, trade and economic links. But the Bosnian Serbs see them as including diplomatic ties and thus the possibility to confederate with Serbia--in effect, the Greater Serbia national project that started the war.

Emerging from the Geneva negotiations, Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey declared that the notion of Greater Serbia was dead.

Questions remain about how committed both sides will be to the agreement as negotiations proceed in the coming weeks. Both sides were pushed, for different reasons, to the negotiating table by the NATO air strikes. If those stop--a possibility at any time--either party could quit, the government out of anger, the Serbs out of relief.

Success also relies on the continued ability of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to deliver the Bosnian Serbs. Milosevic recently was named the Serbs’ representative, but they do not always listen to him, as evidenced in the past few days by continued Bosnian Serb defiance of U.N. and NATO demands that they withdraw heavy guns from a 12 1/2-mile “exclusion zone” around Sarajevo.

NATO’s role must also be debated in enforcing both whatever cease-fire is eventually reached and the withdrawal of the opposing armies.

Other pitfalls for future talks include the failure thus far of the U.S. negotiating team, led by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, to achieve mutual diplomatic recognition between Croatia and Serbia, whose own war in 1991 sent the former Yugoslav federation spiraling into bloodshed. They still have an outstanding and potentially explosive territorial dispute.

In Sarajevo on Saturday, news reports and public statements by officials emphasized the agreement’s affirmation of Bosnia’s current borders and its international recognition. But in the Yugoslav and Serbian capital of Belgrade, news reports, which are for the most part controlled by the Serb-led state, omitted that part of the story and trumpeted Serbian gains.

Said a headline in Belgrade’s Politika daily: “Republika Srpska Is Internationally Recognized.”

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang in Washington contributed to this report.