Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 5, 1994 TAG: 9408050083
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: PALE, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA LENGTH: Medium
Pale, once a scenic town of 15,000, now accommodates 40,000 people, many of them Serb refugees from other parts of war-ravaged Bosnia.
Yugoslavia withdrew support for Bosnia's Serbs on Thursday, backing out of a war it bankrolled for more than two years at the expense of its own economy.
The Yugoslav government sealed the 300-mile border between Yugoslavia and Serb-held Bosnia. Bosnian Serbs have depended on Yugoslavia for weapons, fuel and other supplies throughout the 28-month war against Muslims and Croats.
``History has not seen such a betrayal,'' said Milanka Mitrovic, 36, when she heard the news.
It was Slobodan Milosevic, powerful president of Yugoslavia, who first whipped up the pathos and nationalism that have fed the war in Bosnia.
On Thursday, it was Milosevic who cut off aid and told Bosnian Serb civilians their leaders had betrayed them by rejecting an international peace plan that would give 49 percent of Bosnia to the Serbs, and the remainder to a Muslim-Croat federation.
In Washington, the Clinton administration responded with skepticism to the news.
A State Department spokesman, David Johnson, said ``we've seen promises in the past. We'd like to see how this one carries out before we make an assessment.''
He hinted the United States may act on its own to ensure that more weapons shipments are delivered to the Muslim-led government in Bosnia. A U.N. arms embargo now technically forbids delivery to the feuding factions in the former Yugoslav republic.
A secretary at the Bosnian Serb leadership's headquarters was unable to speak when she learned of the border closure. A bank clerk said she already was sobbing two weeks ago when she found out state coffers were virtually empty.
Milosevic, who has maneuvered in recent weeks to set up his own political party in Bosnia, painted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his cronies as war profiteers with crimes on their consciences.
``The Serb people are put in the position of paying with the lives of their best sons, fighting as heroes, for the mad political ambitions and greed of their leadership,'' he said.
``Those who really make decisions don't have sons on the front.''
``What Karadzic conquered, in blood and crime, he won because he had help from Milosevic,'' Mirko Pejanovic, a Serb member of the ethnically mixed Bosnian presidency, told The Associated Press. ``Now, if he wants to continue the war, he will have to rely only on the lives of his own people, and that is a resource that will run out one day.''
by CNB