Serbs Blamed in Deadly Attack on U.N. Convoy

VIENNA —  In provocative acts that may signal a closing in for the kill in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbian rebels Wednesday cinched off Sarajevo’s last tenuous lifeline to the outside world and were implicated in a deadly attack on U.N. peacekeepers traveling in clearly marked vehicles.

A British soldier was killed and another wounded in the assault on the unarmed U.N. convoy--an attack that seemed intended to dare the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to deliver on longstanding threats to launch air strikes.

NATO planes conducted routine low-level flights over the area after the incident, but U.N. commanders appeared reluctant to call a Western air attack at what has become a volatile juncture in the 27-month-old Bosnian conflict, saying the assault was only “presumed” to have been perpetrated by Serbian forces.

“The fog of battle is still around us,” U.N. Protection Force spokesman Paul Risley said of the apparent confusion following the ambush outside Sarajevo. “But the convoy did report a Bosnian Serb position very close by, and we are making the presumption that was who fired on them, since it was small-arms fire.”

The spray of machine-gun fire also exploded at least one fuel tanker that the troops were escorting, Risley said from U.N. mission headquarters in Zagreb, Croatia.

Another U.N. spokesman said French peacekeepers who arrived to recover the stranded British vehicles came under fire and had to abandon their efforts for the night.

By compelling U.N. officials to close the only open road into the capital, Serbian rebel leaders flaunted their knack for getting outsiders to do their dirty work.

Forces backing Bosnian Serb warlord Radovan Karadzic do not control any of the rutted dirt track across Mt. Igman into Sarajevo that has been used to truck food, gasoline and other necessities to the city since March.

But by raising the threat of renewed attacks on civilians and aid workers plying the front-line route, Karadzic effectively blackmailed U.N. commanders into sealing off the road for him.

“As of this morning, because we no longer have the guarantee of safety and security, (U.N. Protection Force) troops are forced to prevent use of the Butmir road across the airport to commercial and civilian traffic until further notice,” Risley said. “This is a tremendous step backward in the process toward peace.”

The Serbs’ move to resume a stranglehold on the Bosnian capital was the latest in a series of belligerent actions punctuating their rejection last week of a peace plan drafted by mediators from the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany.

The peace plan, reluctantly endorsed by the Sarajevo government, would divide Bosnia in roughly equal shares between rebel forces and the larger Muslim-Croat population that remains committed to a multiethnic republic. The Serbs currently hold more than 70% of the country and are loath to retreat from any of the territory they have seized.

Foreign ministers of the five nations that drafted the proposal plan to meet in Geneva on Saturday to ponder a response to the rebels’ rejection.

Little in the way of decisive action is expected, as Russia opposes military measures to punish the Serbs for their intransigence and the four NATO-member countries disagree over the risks and merits of lifting an arms embargo that has tied the hands of Bosnian government defenders.

But the stakes at the Geneva meeting have been substantially raised by recent Serbian actions.

A U.N. airlift of humanitarian aid for Sarajevo was suspended indefinitely last week after gunmen fired on five relief aircraft in or near Serb-held territory, and Serbs have repeatedly attacked civilians in the U.N. “safe area” of Gorazde this week.

By forcing U.N. commanders to reimpose the total blockade Serbian forces themselves maintained until March, Karadzic has presented the five mediating powers with the unsavory choice of military intervention or capitulation to the rebel premise that even NATO is powerless to stop them.

NATO was instrumental in breaking the artillery siege of Sarajevo in February, when it threatened to bomb any tanks, guns or other heavy weaponry left within a 12-mile radius of the capital. Backed by Russia’s warnings that it would not act to prevent air strikes if the Serbs remained defiant, Karadzic ordered most of his artillery out of firing range of the city.

But dozens of artillery pieces have gradually been repositioned around Sarajevo, with U.N. monitors putting up no resistance and senior officials of the peacekeeping force dissuading NATO from making good on its threat of air strikes.

U.N. and NATO reluctance to punish the Serbs for blatant acts of aggression appears to have emboldened the rebels to press their campaign of terror aimed at driving other ethnic groups and U.N. forces from territory they want annexed to a Greater Serbia.

“As usual before a big meeting, the Bosnian Serbs want to show the international community how difficult and complex and unpredictable Bosnia is in order to deter any resolute action,” said Peter Kessler, spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Zagreb.

The agency’s food warehouses in Sarajevo are down to less than a 10-day supply of flour rations for the 380,000 trapped and war-weary residents, he said.

Karadzic characterized the road closure as temporary, indicating it could be reopened if U.N. intermediaries force the Bosnian government to release nearly 200 Serbian prisoners of war and agree to cease armed resistance. He also said the supply route was being closed because it had been used to smuggle weapons to government troops in the capital.

Risley said U.N. peacekeepers encountered no evidence to back the smuggling claim during routine inspection of cargo transported over the route since March.

The road closure “has to be seen in the context of a number of very serious actions the Serbs have taken in the last few days across Bosnia that have us very concerned,” Risley said, referring to the attacks in Gorazde and the targeting of aid flights.

U.N. officials also report increased Serbian shelling around the key northern town of Brcko and cross-border rebel attacks near the Croatian resort of Dubrovnik, which had largely been at peace since the 1991 rebellion by Serbs in Croatia.

Western diplomats and humanitarian relief officials say U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali may have encouraged the recent wave of Serbian belligerence on Monday, when he recommended a pullout of the nearly 40,000-strong U.N. Protection Force no matter what the outcome of the foundering peace process.

Boutros-Ghali suggested that NATO troops would be better suited to handling the increasingly dangerous work of escorting relief convoys and patrolling so-called safe havens.