
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 30, 1993                   TAG: 9304300198
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: From The Washington Post and Hearst Newspapers
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON MOVING ON SERBS

The Clinton administration plans to go ahead with a campaign to enlist foreign support for tougher action in Bosnia-Herzegovina despite the decision to reopen peace talks among the civil war combatants, senior officials said Thursday.

The officials said they expect President Clinton to make a decision by Saturday on new steps to stop the fighting in Bosnia. The favored option, the officials said, is a combination of moves that would involve exempting the Muslim-led Bosnian government from a United Nations arms embargo and using allied air strikes against the Serbs.

Clinton has ruled out a Pentagon option to dispatch U.S. Army troops to Bosnia to bolster French, British and Canadian forces protecting civilian safe havens, Gen. Colin Powell said Thursday.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff had issued a precautionary, top secret "alert" order for supply depots across the United States and Europe to prepare ammunition, spare parts and war materiel for possible shipment to Bosnia to sustain American ground forces, officials said.

Powell later indicated Clinton had ruled out the use of ground troops, telling reporters the White House meeting had involved "a full discussion of a wide range of military options as well as consideration of the current diplomatic situation. We haven't ruled anything off the table" other than the use of ground forces, he said.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher plans to leave over the weekend for several European capitals to sell the U.S. initiative, State Department officials said Thursday.

In remarks to reporters Thursday, Clinton expressed intense skepticism about the announced resumption of peace talks in Athens and a decision by the Bosnian Serbs to reconsider their rejection of a U.N.-backed accord. "They've said these things before and not meant it," Clinton said of the Serbs. "If they mean it now, so much the better. Let's see. We will know them by their deeds."

"We're on the track here. We're not detered by that announcement," Christopher said. "We're interested in it, but we're going to follow through on our decision-making process here. We've indicated that it's important for the United states to fix its decision and then talk to our allies about it."

by CNB