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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 7, 1994                   TAG: 9409070137
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA  NOTE: ABOVE                                 LENGTH: Medium

POPE WON'T GO TO BOSNIA

Pope John Paul II on Tuesday canceled his planned visit to Sarajevo, hours after 11 Bosnian Serb artillery rounds slammed into a mountainside less than two miles from where he was scheduled to conduct an open-air Mass on Thursday.

The decision, announced by the Vatican and by Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic's office, ended weeks of speculation and repeated warnings from rebel Serb leaders, whose forces surround the city, that they could not guarantee the pope's safety.

The cancellation represented yet another setback for the city's population - the majority Muslims, and the Roman Catholic Croat and Orthodox Serb minorities - and followed what U.N. military spokesmen termed the most flagrant violation since February of a United Nations-imposed ban on heavy-weapons fire within 12.4 miles of Sarajevo. U.N. military spokesmen said they suspected the Serbs used a mobile 76 mm mountain gun with a five-mile range.

Residents of all religious persuasions had hoped the visit would galvanize flagging international support for their pleas for maintaining Bosnia as a multiethnic society. Instead, the rebel Serbs, who occupy more than 70 percent of Bosnia, once again demonstrated the effectiveness of their stranglehold on the capital.

Serb leaders have opposed the pope's planned 24-hour visit here on grounds that it was a purely political gesture to the predominantly Muslim Bosnian government. ``By evaluating all circumstances,'' the Bosnian government statement said, ``it has been decided that the pope should postpone his visit to Sarajevo.'' Monsignor Francesco Monterisi, the papal nuncio, formally informed Izetbegovic of the Vatican's decision.

The Vatican City statement said the pope, ``inspired by a deep sense of responsibility toward the population,'' has ``decided to put off his visit'' because the Vatican feared it could ``add to the tension.'' The pope, however, still plans to visit Zagreb, capital of largely Catholic Croatia, on Saturday.

by CNB