THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 2, 1995 TAG: 9509020411
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines
Hours after NATO suspended three days of blistering air attacks against Bosnian Serb targets around Sarajevo, the United States announced Friday that Serb, Croat and Muslim leaders had agreed to sit down and talk peace next week in Geneva.
The negotiations would be the first direct meeting of all three parties to the Balkan war in two years.
Assistant Secretary of State Richard C. Holbrooke, who has been shuttling among Balkan capitals in an attempt to broker an accord, said the foreign ministers of Bosnia, Croatia and the Yugoslav federation would try to set basic principles for an eventual peace agreement. But he conceded that the peace talks, which have failed several times in the past, face enormous obstacles.
The bombing moratorium, which took effect at 5 a.m. Friday (11 p.m. Thursday, EDT), was scheduled to last at least 24 hours unless Serb gunners shelled Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, NATO sources said.
But NATO and U.N. officials said the airstrikes could resume at any time, depending on how well the Serbs comply with U.N. demands, including a request that Serbs remove all heavy weapons from a 12 1/2-mile zone encircling Sarajevo.
A NATO diplomat in Brussels said the request for a pause came first from Holbrooke and was endorsed by French Lt. Gen. Bernard Janvier, commander of U.N. forces in former Yugoslavia.
The suspension of combat operations after 506 sorties against 25 targets drew a heated protest from the Bosnian government. ``Those behind this will bear a strong responsibility for the pause by undermining the safety of the citizens of Sarajevo and the loss of momentum in the peace process,'' Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey warned.
Although Navy Adm. Leighton Smith, NATO's southern commander, concurred with the pause in air raids, officers in Naples privately voiced reservations about interrupting a military campaign that appeared to have the Serbs reeling.
``The Serbs seem to have a way of playing the margins, and a pause can lead to a longer pause, which can make it harder to restart the bombing if you have to,'' one officer said. ``If you're not conducting strikes, you're starting to lose your leverage.''
But an official in Brussels, Belgium, said Holbrooke believed a moratorium ``would be a kind of useful diplomatic instrument'' indicating the willingness of Western powers to be flexible. Holbrooke is scheduled to brief members of the five-nation ``contact group'' today in Bonn, Germany, followed by further briefings to NATO ambassadors in Brussels.
Janvier agreed to the pause in anticipation of a meeting Friday afternoon with Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military chief, ``in hopes that Mladic has been softened up by a couple days of bombing and is prepared to withdraw his heavy weapons,'' the official added. Janvier reportedly intended to demand concessions, including the reopening of Sarajevo's airport and supply roads into Sarajevo.
Publicly the Bosnian Serbs profess to have been more hardened than softened by the air attacks. Mladic and political leader Radovan Karadzic have issued fiery statements of defiance. A statement issued Friday from the Bosnian Serb headquarters in Pale, for example, accused Janvier of the ``crime of genocide against the Serb people.''
But Karadzic also sounded conciliatory. ``We do support the American initiative, and that means we are going back to the negotiating table,'' he said Friday. The Greek defense minister, who has close ties to the Serbs, said Mladic ``has agreed to abide by United Nations preconditions to withdraw the heavy weapons from around Sarajevo.''
NATO officials said they have not seen firm evidence that an estimated 300 Serb artillery tubes, tanks and other heavy weapons are being pulled out.
``NATO pilots have certainly seen evidence of weapons being moved, but we don't have a complete picture of where they're going,'' the diplomat in Brussels said. ``There's some fear that instead of leaving the exclusion zone entirely, they're just being disguised and hidden or are being moved closer to civilian sites, which would make them harder to bomb.''
The U.N. Rapid Reaction Force twice fired its guns outside Sarajevo Friday. British artillery dumped 90 rounds on an SA-6 surface-to-air missile site at Lukavica, a southern Sarajevo suburb, that allegedly was threatening NATO aircraft overhead. French gunners fired 24 155mm shells at a surface-to-surface rocket site at Vogosca, north of Sarajevo, that U.N. officials said was targeting the Bosnian capital.
Before the 5 a.m. halt in airstrikes, NATO pilots continued to hammer Serb ammunition depots in an effort to whittle down supplies of the munitions that have killed an estimated 10,000 Sarajevo citizens since the siege began.
Although reconnaissance planes continued to crisscross the Bosnian skies through the day, officials acknowledged that NATO is still struggling to piece together a comprehensive picture of the damage inflicted. Relatively few sorties have been flown against individual artillery pieces, one officer said, and gauging the destruction to the contents of storage bunkers is often a matter of guesswork.
Pending a resumption of airstrikes, attention will shift to Holbrooke's efforts.
``The number one priority is Bosnia, and the number one issue is the map,'' Holbrooke said in an interview in Belgrade before leaving for further talks with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and a Serb negotiating team. ``Everyone agrees on the principle of 51-49 but everyone's idea of 51-49 is different.''
``We've started the discussions about the map,'' he said. ``We're into substance now.''
A proposed peace map the contact group drafted last year would allot 51 percent of Bosnia to a Muslim-Croat federation and the balance to the Serbs, who control nearly three-quarters of the country. ILLUSTRATION: Chart
NAVY SHIPS IN AREA
U.S. Navy ships in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean (* denotes a
Norfolk-based ship)
In the Adriatic
* Aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt
* Cruiser Mississippi
* Destroyer Arleigh Burke
* Frigate Kauffman
Cruiser Hue City
Eastern Mediterranean
Frigate Nicholas
Western Mediterranean
Cruiser Ticonderoga
* Amphibious assault ship Kearsarge
* Dock landing ship Pensacola
* Amphibious transport dock ship Nashville
* Frigate Hawes
*Command ship La Salle
by CNB