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SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Serb and Croat nationalists are warning Washington that Bosnia's Muslims will let Al Qaeda infest the soft underbelly of Europe, unless they are called in to guarantee security should the U.S. military quit the Balkans.

Western diplomats in the region discount the threat. They believe the nationalists' real goal, as ever, is to isolate the Muslims and split Bosnia on ethnic lines, while winning kudos as America's staunch ally in some "clash of civilizations."

But they worry that scare-mongering may sway Congress.

An October article in the Washington Times says Bosnia "now serves as a base" for Al Qaeda. Croats are the best U.S. ally on the "front-lines in the war against Islamic terrorism in the Balkans" and can be its "eyes and ears," the Times says.

A new paper by U.S. think tank Strategic Forecasting also calls the Balkans a "frontier conflict...in the U.S. war against the Islamist world," but proposes that Serbs handle security.

This is news to Westerners who live in the Balkans, where ethnic rather than religious friction is the real concern. A senior diplomat notes that the September 11 hijackers planted cells in the cities of Western Europe and the United States.

MORE BARS THAN MOSQUES

Since the September 2001 attacks, Washington has mostly ignored the Balkans. The influential, neo-conservative Project for the American Century and the American Enterprise Institute have both said little about it on their Web Sites since 2000.

The idea of extracting 4,000 U.S. troops from NATO peace missions in Bosnia and Kosovo was raised in September by visiting General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as a means of partially relieving U.S. overstretch in Iraq.

If this puts a Balkan pullout on the 2004 election agenda, the Al Qaeda scare could blacken the image of Bosnian Muslims and benefit those vying to be what the Times, in an echo of the 13th century Crusades, called the "rampart of Christendom."

There are seven million Muslims in the Balkans. But this is not Afghanistan, Chechnya or the Middle East.

It is customary to remove shoes on entering a home, but veiled faces and long beards are rare. There are more bars than mosques, serving women in jeans. Life does not come to a halt five times a day for prayer, and Sharia law is not an option.

There is no growing fundamentalist fervor and no deep resentment of or hostility to America -- rather the reverse.

There is no "war" or terrorist emergency. The main priority of secular governments in Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia is to complete reforms so they can join the European Union.

The Washington Times, however, states that a "resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia...seeks to either wipe out or convert all Christians in the region."

Strategic Forecasting says Islamists in Albania and Bosnia are able "to hit U.S. troops in both areas." A Balkan Al Qaeda, it warns, "could explode in Washington's face at any time."

Both analyzes cite sparse and questionable anecdotal evidence as the basis for their alarming conclusions.

"INSULTING AND INACCURATE"

The fundamentalist bogeyman serves as an "I-told-you-so" justification for vicious treatment of Muslims by their Serb and Croat neighbors in the wars of 1992-95. Potentially, it can help wreck the Dayton pact that has bound Bosnia since 1996.

The idea of consigning Balkan security to the Serbs, whose two wartime leaders are on the run from charges of genocide, meets with incredulity.

Bosnia's International High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, rejected the Times' "insulting and inaccurate prejudices from afar" insisting it "is not a terrorist base nor will become one."

"Those of us who live in the Balkans have yet to see any evidence of Islamic terrorism," he told the newspaper.

The Turkish Ottoman empire occupied the Balkans for 400 years from the 15th century, introducing a tolerant Islam. But communist secularization greatly eroded its influence.

Balkans Islamic scholars told Reuters the "white Al Qaeda" scare relies on ignorance of the faith and of Muslim gratitude for America's role in stopping Serb aggression.

Today, about 10 percent of Bosnian Muslims attend Friday prayers, said Ahmet Alibasic of Sarajevo's Faculty of Islamic Studies. But the number of those praying five times a day -- the key measure of devoutness -- is maybe just a few percent.

Stalinist Albania banned religion in 1967, declaring an atheist state and turning mosques and churches into warehouses. Religion has not revived strongly since communism fell in 1991.

"Islam in Albania has a peripheral dimension because it has been away for too long," said Islamic poet Ervin Hatibi.

Next door in Kosovo, where Muslim Albanians number two million or 90 percent of the population, a similar picture emerges: the percentage of fervent believers is quite small.

The soil for extremism, as Ashdown said, is no more fertile here than in U.S. or Western Europe cities where the September 11 hijackers planted their cells. Even if it were, tolerating extremism would be the fastest way to kill U.S. support for united Bosnia and Kosovo's hopes of independence from Serbia.

>>>>Western diplomats in the region discount the threat.

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