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

DATE: SUNDAY, April 24, 1994                   TAG: 9404240203
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: SARAJEVO, BOSNIA                                LENGTH: Medium

U.N. THWARTS NATO ON BOMBING

What appeared to be a grudging Serb pullback at the brink of NATO's 2 a.m. deadline followed a day in which the Serb gunners continued to shell the town, prompting NATO to seek U.N. authorization for bombing strikes against them. The United Nations turned down the request.

Gorazde officials reported via radio that at least 21 civilians were killed Saturday.

Shortly after the 2 a.m. deadline passed, Esad Ohranovic, a Bosnian official, said via a radio link to Sarajevo that some Serb artillery pieces and tanks had disappeared from positions they had occupied in recent days. He said a U.N. convoy reached the town shortly after midnight and NATO planes flew overhead. As the deadline passed, only occasional gunfire could be heard, he said.

NATO sources in Brussels said Saturday that NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner was furious with the chief U.N. representative in Bosnia, Yasushi Akashi, after the two disagreed over whether to bomb Serb guns that had continued to shell Gorazde throughout the day.

The dispute highlighted continuing troubles between the United Nations and NATO over which may authorize airstrikes in Bosnia. It came as the Bosnian Serbs' traditional ally, Russia, reversed itself and backed NATO's threat of airstrikes in Gorazde. There, 65,000 people have been trapped during the three-week Serb offensive.

Woerner sought a bombing strike after the Serb forces launched another withering infantry, tank and artillery attack on Gorazde, which is a U.N.-declared "safe area." NATO on Friday had threatened the air strikes if the Serbs did not immediately end their assault and - by 2 a.m. today - pull back to a distance of nearly two miles from the city's center and permit U.N. troops to enter.

By Wednesday, the Serbs are to move their heavy weapons 12 miles away. Woerner sought an immediate air strike Saturday, NATO and U.N. sources said, but Akashi insisted that any strikes be delayed until the passing of this morning's deadline. In Washington, a senior U.S. official said the U.N. response was not a refusal to proceed with airstrikes but was only a "delay."

U.N. sources said the Serbs, claiming provocations from the town's Muslim defenders, shelled a munitions factory on the east bank of the Drina River on Saturday. The Serbs have captured a third of the factory and apparently want to destroy the rest before they withdraw. The Muslim-led Bosnian army still controls the main part of the town on the western side of the Drina and has been able to maintain some positions on the east side as well.

Gorazde is a strategic crossroads whose capture would allow the Serbs to link to neighboring Serbia territories that they captured earlier in the two-year Bosnian war.

The Serbs also renewed their attacks on Gorazde's hospitals, where three patients and a nurse were killed. Sylvana Foa, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, said up to 700 people have died in the three-week offensive and 2,000 have been wounded.