Bosnian Serbs Ratchet Up Pressure for U.N. Pullout

ZAGREB, Croatia —  Bosnian Serbs stepped up the pressure for a U.N. retreat from the Balkan conflict Friday by rocketing the presidency building in Sarajevo while the U.N. mission chief and the commander for Bosnian-based troops were inside.

Two Sega missiles fired from Serbian-held territory crashed into the stately red-brick building shortly after U.N. Protection Force chief Yasushi Akashi and British Lt. Gen. Michael Rose had entered for talks with Bosnian government leaders, mission spokeswoman Claire Grimes said.

“Akashi and Rose were in the building at the time but well away from the point of impact,” Grimes said of the midday assault.

The incident underscored the eroded authority of the U.N. mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Serbian rebels have detained about 400 peacekeepers as human shields against NATO air strikes as they press attacks on U.N.-designated “safe areas.” And it came amid conflicting reports that the U.N. mission had called off enforcement of the “no-fly” zone over Bosnia as part of an effort to find a way to persuade the Serbs to resume negotiations.

“As far as the missiles hitting the building, it seems they (Serbs) had information. We’re not saying they were directly targeting Akashi and Rose, but the implication is very strong,” said one shaken U.N. official at mission headquarters here.

The official, who requested anonymity, said the U.N. hierarchy is “frustrated as hell,” and that the apparent provocation against two of the top U.N. officials in the Balkans had intensified already widespread talk about withdrawing the Bosnia-based peacekeepers.

In addition to taking peacekeepers captive, gunmen loyal to Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Radovan Karadzic have been blocking the movement of supplies to thousands of other encircled U.N. forces, as well as humanitarian aid bound for nearly 2 million Bosnian civilians.

Akashi, who was spending the night at Serbian rebel headquarters, was quoted by a Reuters journalist in Pale as announcing that he had secured a promise from Karadzic to release all hostage peacekeepers.

However, mission headquarters had not been informed of the reported agreement as of late Friday night, U.N. spokesman Paul Risley said, adding that it would be unlikely any of the captive troops would be released before daybreak.

Both Bosnian and Croatian Serbs kept up their attacks on the Bihac pocket, with small-arms fighting having moved “very, very close” to the city’s hospital, Grimes said.

The U.N. mission has been engaged in a hostile standoff with the heavily armed Serbs since a series of ineffectual NATO air strikes prompted the rebels to grab peacekeepers as “insurance” against further shows of force to deter attacks on Bihac and other havens.

In an apparent attempt to wheedle the defiant Serbs off the battlefields and back to negotiations, a U.N. spokesman in Sarajevo announced that the mission had called off NATO enforcement of the “no-fly” zone imposed over Bosnia.

Timothy Hewlett, the U.N. military spokesman in Sarajevo, told journalists that the flyovers had been stopped for “a cooling-off period,” to create a better atmosphere for peace talks in hopes the Serbs would take part.

NATO officials hotly denied that they had ceased their air patrols, but U.N. spokesmen at the headquarters here and in Sarajevo indicated that the enforcement had at least been reduced.

“If you were in Sarajevo, you couldn’t help but notice that there hasn’t been a single overflight for several days,” one U.N. official here said, drawing a distinction between “our formal position and reality.”

In Washington, a senior military official flatly denied that NATO had cut back its enforcement flights, but he conceded that allied warplanes were now flying “smarter”--that is, using electronic jamming and flying at higher altitudes--to guard against Serbian missiles.

Despite the apparent U.N. attempt to ease NATO pressure on the Serbs and a conciliatory visit by Rose and Akashi to rebel headquarters in Pale, 10 miles east of Sarajevo, Bosnian Serb offensives and harassment of peacekeepers continued.

U.N. officials reported that Karadzic was no longer even replying to their daily requests to move fuel, food and other supplies to any of the 24,000 peacekeepers in Bosnia.

At the United Nations late Friday, Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution aimed at stopping the Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro from sending fuel supplies that reportedly are powering the Serbs’ offensive in northern Bosnia. It was the first council veto in a year and a half, and the first on the Bosnian war.

Russia, a traditional Serbian ally, said it vetoed the resolution because it would unfairly tighten sanctions against Serbia.

Tensions between rebel Serbs and Croats in this country have escalated in recent days, with artillery exchanges and small-arms fire reported along a 100-mile arc of their front line.

The Croatian government and leaders of the Serbian rebel faction occupying one-third of Croatia signed a token agreement to restore some road and utility links, as well as an oil pipeline to the Adriatic Sea.

But even the brokers of the deal on mutually advantageous economic cooperation conceded that prospects for a breakthrough toward resolution of the overall Serb-Croat conflict were grim.

Croatian army units were reported to be firing across a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone near the Adriatic coast, and the signatory for the Serbian rebel side, Borislav Mikulic, immediately declared that the utility restoration should not be seen as rebel acceptance of rule by Croatia.

“The Krajina will never be part of Croatia,” Mikulic, the rebels’ self-styled prime minister, told journalists after signing the economic cooperation pact on behalf of those living in the Croatian territory Serbian occupiers call the independent Republic of Serbian Krajina.

Of greatest concern to the U.N. mission and the international community is the Krajina Serbs’ use of the occupied territory to stage attacks across an international border into the Bihac pocket.

Peter Galbraith, the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, and his mediation partner, Russian Ambassador Leonid V. Kerestidyants, warned Mikulic against continued involvement of Krajina Serbs in the assault on Bihac, one of six U.N.-designated “safe havens” in Bosnia.

“This risks a wider war that could have terrible consequences for them,” Galbraith said.

Asked about the Sarajevo report that NATO pilots had been asked to “stand down” in “no-fly” enforcement over Bosnia, Galbraith insisted that NATO planes were still active, but he conceded that the alliance pilots had to “change some patterns because of the (surface-to-air missile) threat.”

Karadzic gunmen have positioned surface-to-air batteries around Bihac and Sarajevo airport to intimidate NATO fliers, who are prohibited from bombing the missile sites even though the missiles could be used to shoot them down. U.N. officials fear that such action would invite retaliation against the hostage peacekeepers.

The senior military official did not say where the Serbian nationalists had obtained the missiles or why NATO forces--which previously had enjoyed unchallenged air superiority over Bosnia and authority to fire at missile-radar installations--had allowed the rebels to put them in place.

Bosnian Serb rebels on Friday morning released 70 of the nearly 500 U.N. troops they had grabbed as shields against further NATO air strikes. But about 400 remained captives, and thousands of others are deployed to Serb-encircled enclaves, such as Sarajevo, where they could easily be seized by the rebels.

Times staff writer Art Pine contributed to this report from Washington.