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

DATE: MONDAY, April 25, 1994                   TAG: 9404250053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA                                LENGTH: Medium

BOSNIAN SERBS RETREAT; NATO PLOTS AIRSTRIKES

Under threat of NATO airstrikes, Bosnian Serb forces pulled their tanks and artillery two miles back from the battered Muslim city of Gorazde on Sunday but left a trail of flame and destruction in their wake.

British Lt. Gen. Michael Rose, the U.N. military commander in Bosnia, told reporters in Sarajevo that For updated information, call InfoLine and enter code 2023. Gorazde, 35 miles to the southeast, was calm for the first time since the Serbs launched an all-out offensive against the besieged enclave March 29.

NATO has developed a detailed plan for extensive airstrikes around Gorazde to crush besieging Bosnian Serb military units and force the Serb leadership back to the bargaining table, military sources said Sunday.

The air attacks, which would target at least two dozen ammunition storage sites, fuel dumps, command bunkers and gun emplacements within a 12-mile radius of Gorazde, could be launched immediately if Serb forces resume their shelling of the battered town, the sources said.

"The plan is to bomb the crap out of them," one official said. "The idea would be to make it something the Serbs would never, ever, ever want to experience again [and] to give a very vivid demonstration of what we can do to them."

The Serbs' four-week offensive left at least 700 residents dead, more than 2,000 wounded and much of the city a shapeless ruin.

"The citizens of Gorazde are out walking in the streets for the first time in three weeks," Rose said. But the Serb pullback was grudging in the extreme, U.N. officials said, as militiamen withdrawing toward the NATO-mandated two-mile "exclusion zone" set fire to scores of houses and sought to destroy any facility that could be of use to the city's Slavic Muslim defenders, including the city's sole water treatment plant.

NATO's Friday ultimatum ordered the Serbs to stop shelling Gorazde immediately - a demand the Serbs initially ignored - and to pull back to the city's outskirts by 2 a.m. Sunday, then 12 miles back by Tuesday under threat of airstrikes.

NATO's planned bombing campaign, which could last several days, would mark a dramatic escalation from the tit-for-tat attacks launched on April 10-11 in support of besieged U.N. observers in Gorazde.

NATO officials noted Sunday that simply the threat of such wholesale bombing, which would require approval from senior U.N. officials, may have contributed to the Serbs' apparent pullback from the outskirts of Gorazde.

Nevertheless, NATO planners recognize several potential pitfalls in broadening the air attacks, including the prospect that Serb militiamen could retaliate against the 13,000 U.N. troops in Bosnia and the difficulty of forcing an enemy to negotiate by bombing him into submission.

Keywords:
INFOLINE

by CNB