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

DATE: TUESDAY, August 24, 1993                   TAG: 9308240086
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: From The Associated Press and The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA                                LENGTH: Medium

CROATS AGREE TO ALLOW AID INTO MOSTAR

And in Washington, highlighting a level of internal foreign-policy dissent rarely seen since the Vietnam era, a fourth State Department official resigned Monday to protest the lack of American action to protect Bosnia.

Speaking from Mostar, Bosnian Croat spokesman Veso Vegar said a U.N. convoy would be allowed into the city's eastern enclave on Wednesday.

Ron Redmond, a U.N. spokesman in Geneva, said there were 11 trucks "sitting across the border from Mostar, ready to go in at a moment's notice."

U.N. envoy Thorvald Stoltenberg in New York late Monday confirmed the Croats had given a go-ahead to deliver the aid.

The Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency, meanwhile, cited reports by Serb commanders on hills around Mostar as saying there was heavy fighting between Muslims and Croats in the city and many buildings were on fire.

About 55,000 Muslims have been under siege in eastern Mostar for weeks. Several thousand more Muslims live on the west bank of Mostar, controlled entirely by Croats until the Muslims established a bridgehead there last month. U.N. peacekeepers who reached the Muslim area Saturday said residents were on the verge of starvation and hospital conditions were desperate.

Some operations were being performed without anesthesia, more than two-thirds of the residents were displaced, and 60 percent of the buildings were uninhabitable, they said.

In Washington, Stephen W. Walker, Croatia desk officer in the department's Balkan Conflict Group, wrote in a resignation letter to Secretary of State Warren Christopher that U.S. policies are "misguided, vacillating and dangerous," threatening not only the Balkan region and its thousands of victims but also "vital U.S. interests."

"A dangerous precedent is being set," the mid-level official wrote. "Genocide is taking place again in Europe, yet we, the European Community and the rest of the international community stand by and watch."

Walker is the third of a group of State Department officials who worked on the former Yugoslavia to quit in the last month. A year ago, desk officer George Kenney became the first to resign over the issue. The group of young mid-level officers was united in decrying the absence of decisive U.S. action to halt Serbian aggression.

State Department spokesman Michael McCurry, acknowledging the internal dissent, said, "This is a frustrating, terrible problem in which answers are not easy to come by."

McCurry also warned that the threat of air strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to ease the siege of Sarajevo could be extended to Mostar as well unless Croatian forces allow relief convoys to reach the city.