THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 27, 1994 TAG: 9408270237
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DeROCHI, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ZAGREB, CROATIA LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
A Navy medical team from Portsmouth has been given a tentative go-ahead to enter Serb-controlled areas of Croatia to treat refugees stranded by fighting among Moslem military leaders.
If the mission gets final approval, this will the first time U.S. forces have been allowed to treat refugees since fighting broke out four years ago in the former Yugoslavia.
The request for U.S. assistance came from a Polish battalion working with the United Nations Protection Force in the Krajna region of Croatia, an area along the Bosnian border that is under Serb control.
The four-member team is part of Fleet Hospital 5, a Portsmouth-based command that arrived in Croatia this week to take over a field hospital serving U.N. forces.
Capt. Michael Doubleday, spokesman for the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said final approval of the plan had not been given Friday night.
But members of the medical team in Zagreb, Croatia, were making plans to leave the hospital at 9 a.m. today (3 a.m. EST) in a convoy of three U.N. vehicles. They were to travel 70 miles south to the town of Batnoga - a trip expected to take three hours because of hazardous driving conditions.
``The mission is a go if it's safe,'' said Capt. Gregg Parker of Portsmouth, commanding officer of Fleet Hospital 5.
The team was to be joined by a three-member security detail and a nurse from San Diego-based Fleet Hospital 6, which the Portsmouth command is replacing. The team will wear flak jackets and the blue helmets that identify them as members of the U.N. force.
``I'm excited for the chance to help out the refugees, especially the children. I try not to think about the rest,'' said Lt. Nancy Marshall, an emergency nurse from Orlando, Fla., assigned to Fleet Hospital 5.
``It's going to be interesting,'' said Lt. James Webb, 30, a family practice doctor from Cherry Point, N.C. ``I don't know what to expect. There's a lot of unknown out there.''
The mission's status has been on again off again for the past two days as U.N. officials negotiated for U.S. help in treating refugees, a move that would increase U.S. involvement in the Bosnian civil war.
The 2-year-old field hospital at Zagreb serves only the 40,000-member U.N. force assigned to protect what gains toward peace have been made in the former Yugoslavia.
As many as 20,000 Muslim refugees have congregated in the countryside of Krajna after fleeing the fighting among Moslem forces in the the Bihac region of northwest Bosnia.
Many of the refugees were followers of Fikret Abdic, a Moslem military leader opposed to the Moslem-dominated government of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Government forces routed Abdic, leaving the refugees nowhere to turn: As allies of the breakaway military leader, they are unwelcome in Bosnia, and as Moslems, they are at war with the Serbs who control Krajna.
The medical team expected to treat injuries from gunfire and mine blasts as well as provide family medical care. Their stay in the area was to be limited to 10 days.
Fleet Hospital 5 is scheduled to serve a six-month deployment at the field hospital near Zagreb. Its 231 members, 60 of them from Portsmouth, are drawn from Navy and Marine commands on the East Coast. ILLUSTRATION: Staff map
Croatia
Bosnia-Herzegovina
For copy of map, see microfilm
KEYWORDS: U.S. NAVY CROATIA
by CNB