THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 31, 1995 TAG: 9508310502
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: ZAGREB, CROATIA LENGTH: Long : 146 lines
After 3 1/2 years of awkward hesitation, NATO on Wednesday stepped squarely into the midst of the Bosnian war, declaring that the bombardment of Bosnian Serb targets would not stop until Sarajevo was secure.
American, French, British and Dutch jets, flying in darkness from air bases in Italy and from the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Adriatic Sea, attacked targets near Sarajevo, the government-held towns of Tuzla, Mostar and Gorazde and the rebel Serb headquarters village of Pale, where a French plane was shot down.
It was the largest air operation in NATO's history and the largest in Europe since World War II.
Early Wednesday, the sky was illuminated by flashes as NATO fighters hit Bosnian Serb positions all around Sarajevo. Residents of the city, who in three years under siege have grown deeply cynical about the intentions of the West, watched in stunned amazement.
``I feel good, oh yes!'' declared 58-year-old Musrata Sabic, a Muslim, leaning from her balcony for a better view. ``I feel good, probably for the first time in this war. It looks like they are skinning them alive!''
The onslaught proceeded throughout the day and into the night. Allied jets had flown more than 200 sorties by Wednesday night.
Although NATO said the bombing had inflicted considerable damage, it was too early to say whether the attacks had really crippled the Bosnian Serbs' ability to wage war and impose terror in and around Sarajevo.
``The aim of today's action is to ensure that what happened on Monday never occurs again,'' said Maj. Myriam Sochaki, a U.N. spokesman, referring to the Bosnian Serb shelling of the Sarajevo market area that killed 37 people and provided the final catalyst for a sweeping Western military reaction that the exhausted people of Sarajevo thought would never come.
But the true objective of the ongoing NATO assault clearly went further than an attempt to silence the Serbian guns that have subjected Sarajevo to random terror for well over three years. It is an attempt to wield a big stick to press weakened Serbian leaders to accept a peace deal.
Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the separatist Serbs, reacted to the onslaught with an initial show of defiance. ``The people's will for a state will now harden,'' he said. ``The West's calculations on the Serbs are wrong.''
But several hours into the air raids, Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic contacted U.N. officials to seek a cease-fire, Western sources said. Mladic offered to withdraw his big guns from around Sarajevo, but U.N. officials laid down more conditions before they would agree to call off their jets, the sources said.
The administration's chief Balkan negotiator, Richard Holbrooke, was in Belgrade on Wednesday, where he held talks on new American peace proposals with Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president. Unconfirmed reports suggested Karadzic might also be in Belgrade.
No details of the talks in Belgrade were revealed. But for the first time, Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs have indicated they want to negotiate as a team.
President Clinton has made it clear that he wants peace talks to move ahead despite the NATO attack.
Moral outrage has long abounded over the loss of more than 10,000 civilian lives to the Serbian shelling of Sarajevo. But never before has the political calculation been made that the Bosnian Serbs were weary enough and isolated enough to be forced to accept of a peace plan.
In effect, the penetrating attack on Wednesday, which NATO said had crippled the Serbs' air-defense systems, amounted to a calculated gamble that the conflict has been contained and that force will now work to bring peace where diplomatic talk - without the backing of any credible threat - has repeatedly failed.
``The Bosnian Serbs, especially after the events of the last 12 hours, ought to have concluded that there is no military victory in sight for them, the tide of the war has turned against them, their dream of a Greater Serbia is no more, and it's time to face the responsibility of peace,'' said Nicholas Burns, a State Department spokesman, in an interview with CNN.
Certainly, the isolation of the Serbs has never been more apparent. A major concern of U.N. commanders and the Atlantic alliance has always been that any concerted attack on the Serbs in Bosnia would draw the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army into the conflict, thus widening and intensifying the war.
But in the past four months, Serb-held land in Croatia has been overrun without the Yugoslav army lifting a finger.
A single conclusion seemed possible to Western military officers and officials: Whatever his exploitation of Serbian nationalism to seize power in the late 1980s, Milosevic is now unwilling to fight for Serbs in Croatia or Bosnia.
``It has become clear that the Bosnian Serbs were more vulnerable than we had thought because Milosevic means it when he says Serbia is not interested in war,'' said one senior Western official in Paris.
Of course, there are dangers in this calculation. Some officers in the Yugoslav army, particularly those with family ties to Serbs in Croatia or Bosnia, have been incensed by Milosevic's policies and may now be moved to resist them.
But patience with the Serbs appears to have run out.
Lt. Gen. Bernard Janvier, the commander of U.N. forces in the former Yugoslavia, sent a letter early on Wednesday to Mladic informing him that the NATO attack would continue until threats to ``safe areas'' were removed, and the Bosnian Serbs had moved out their heavy weapons and accepted a cease-fire. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
ROBERT VOROS/Staff
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Tribune
NATO'S ASSAULT
Warplanes from NATO countries bombed Serb targets in Bosnia
Wednesday in retaliation for Serb shelling of a Sarajevo market that
killed 37 people Monday.
[Color Photos]
ASSOCIATED PRESS
An ammunitions depot in the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale, 10
miles east of Sarajevo, is hit by a NATO bomb Wednesday. NATO
delivered an ultimatum to the Serbs, saying the bombing would
continue until Sarajevo was secure.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
On the Theodore Roosevelt, in the Adriatic, crew members help load
weapons and work on planes.
"Find the pilots!" yelled Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic after
an allied plane went down.
THE ATTACK:
U.S. forces dominated the attack, contributing 50 of the 60
aircraft involved.
Among the U.S. planes participating from the carrier Theodore
Roosevelt in the Adriatic Sea:
Navy and Marine F/A-18 strike fighters, based in Cecil Field,
Fla. and Beaufort, S.C.
Two F-14 Tomcat strike escort jets, based at Oceana Naval Air
Station in Virginia Beach.
More than a dozen Marine fighters as well as 24 Air Force F-16
fighters and EF-111 electronic warfare aircraft and two Navy EA-6B
Prowlers took off from Aviano, Italy, along with other allied
planes.
THE GOAL:
The airstrikes were designed to halt attacks on civilians and
force the Bosnian Serbs into serious peace talks.
THE DAMAGE
THE ALLIED LOSSES
THE AFTERMATH
[For a copy of the complete graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
by CNB