The U.S. diplomatic success in brokering the Bosnia peace accord has caused remorse and embarrassment within the European Union, shattering its superpower illusions and underscoring its failure to achieve a cohesive security policy that can resolve conflicts in its own back yard.

In absorbing the bitter lesson that Europe fell woefully short in coping with its first major conflict of the post-Cold War era, diplomats and commentators in various allied capitals said their governments must now assume greater security burdens or else recognize their precarious reliance on the United States to maintain stability on their continent.Four years after a uniting Europe asked the United States to step aside as it tried to prevent war from erupting in Yugoslavia, the sight of leaders from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia initialing a peace accord an ocean away in Dayton, Ohio, was perceived almost as a rebuke for Europe's inability to match pious words with forceful deeds in halting its bloodiest conflict in 50 years.

"Europe's biggest difficulty was disagreement among France, Germany and Britain over whether and how to intervene and stop the war," a senior European diplomat said. "There never really was a common policy, and even if they came close it never could have succeeded unless they got American support to provide military power to back it up."

European newspapers bemoaned the lack of political conviction among EU countries to take charge of their own destiny. "Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Old Continent remains cuddled up under the American umbrella," wrote Charles Lambroschini in an editorial for the French daily Le Figaro. "Unfortunately, as long as the 15 EU states do not have the will to form their common security, Washington alone will decide."

The sensitivity over the American stamp on the peace deal and Europe's second-fiddle status was reflected in defensive comments from France and Germany. Both governments claimed credit for keeping peace hopes alive during Yugoslavia's violent disintegration as they sought to minimize the last-ditch U.S. rescue effort.

German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said the United States only "stepped in at a time when the chance of a solution was beginning to emerge." He denied that Europe was "squeezed out" by the exercise of American power. "We were able to make decisive contributions to many aspects of this peace deal," Kinkel said.

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French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette chastised the United States for impeding earlier efforts to reach a diplomatic solution. "The fact is that the Americans looked at this affair in ex-Yugoslavia from a great distance for nearly four years and basically blocked the progression of things," he said.

He added that it was only when President Jacques Chirac took a more forceful line against Bosnian Serb aggression and dispatched a new Rapid Reaction Force to bolster U.N. peacekeepers that the chain of events was set in motion toward the peace settlement that was signed Tuesday.

Prime Minister Alain Juppe, meanwhile, contended that the Dayton peace accord, concluded in three weeks of intensive negotiations, "looks like the twin of a European plan which was presented 18 months ago." French government spokesman Alain Lamoussoure also quoted Juppe as saying that the peace plan was "the fruit, in particular, of French determination."

French and other European officials argue that the United States should not be allowed to reap all of the glory for the peace deal. The Americans, they say, must bear some responsibility for standing aside while tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, were killed in more than three years of fighting.

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