THE NATO CAMPAIGN OF AIR STRIKES against the Bosnian Serbs that began in late August and the subsequent American-brokered deal to lift the siege of Sarajevo have laid bare the internal contradictions of the Yeltsin administration's policy toward the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Since 1992, President Boris Yeltsin and his foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, have tried to walk the line between their nationalist opponents in the Russian legislature and the major Western powers. Yeltsin and Kozyrev tried to respond to their nationalist critics by pursuing a policy that was distinct from the West's, but not different enough to provoke confrontation.