After five months of negotiations the proposed map of ten provinces in Bosnia- Herzegovina still rejected the Bosnian Serb claim for contiguous territory and therefore guaranteed no partition. Fierce fighting was continuing around the “Brcko Corridor” Brčko which was held open by the Bosnian Serb Army ensuring supplies could reach Bihać. The Bosnian Serbs were rejecting in the negotiations the suggested province 3 (Posavina) between province 2 (Banja Luka) and province 4 (Bijeljina. But they were quietly counting on at a later date a bilateral deal with the Croats swapping Posavina for other territory. Their main objection was over the Bosnian government demand to link province 5 (Tuzla) to the town of Brčko through a small corridor to gain access to the river Sava and thence to the Danube. (This corridor demand in the revised VOPP map of 8 February 1993 was conceded by Vance and Owen because of the fear of a Serb/Croat deal over Posavina).The Bosnian Serbs also resented the splitting of province 6 into two separate geographical areas, but less strongly than other disputed territory. This was probably because their few pragmatists believed that de facto areas would merge, the distance between being only a few kilometres.

In coming to New York in February 1993, the Co-Chairmen decided, after consulting with their respective governing bodies, the UN and the EC, that only in a direct dialogue with the Security Council, particularly four of its Permanent Five, the US, France, Russia and the UK, could the necessary pressures be brought to bear on the three parties to sign up to the VOPP. The incoming Clinton Administration was upset by this decision, but it was already apparent that they had an interest in keeping the war in Bosnia out of the American newspapers and the ICFY as a remote and insignificant negotiation far away in Geneva. Distancing themselves geographically from the negotiating process and continuing to refuse deploying US military on the ground as part of the UN's humanitarian mission, served their interests. Tension, meanwhile, was developing with the EC countries, who had been ready to shoulder all the frustrations of the limited UN intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina but who wanted the fighting ended, not just contained, yet were not ready to enforce a settlement without the US in the lead in NATO.