Muslims Flee as Serbs Seize Zepa : Balkans: Rebels find town nearly deserted as they push deep into another ‘safe area.’ Bosnia pleads for U.N. help in evacuating thousands hiding in hills.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina —  The Bosnian Serb army pushed ahead Tuesday in its takeover of a second U.N.-designated “safe area,” marching into the town of Zepa but finding its streets and homes almost deserted, U.N. officials said.

Muslim men, women, their children and government soldiers, fearing Bosnian Serb atrocities, fled in advance of the enemy troops and sought refuge in the surrounding caves and forests. The Bosnian Serbs’ capture of Zepa follows by exactly two weeks the fall of Srebrenica, another U.N.-protected enclave where conquering Serbs expelled more than 30,000 Muslims in the single-largest incident of “ethnic cleansing” in the 39-month Bosnian war.

Written off by the United Nations and the West, Zepa had resisted a week of Bosnian Serb shelling and psychological warfare. The isolated enclave of 17,000 people received no assistance, even after Washington and allied nations pledged a more aggressive defense of the safe areas.

The Muslim-led but non-sectarian Bosnian government, insisting that parts of the enclave remained under its control, said its forces outside the town of Zepa would turn over their weapons to the United Nations as the nationalist Serbs are demanding--but only if U.N. officials agreed to evacuate civilians and to airlift soldiers from the enclave.

“Any evacuation without the protection of [U.N. peacekeeping forces] would mean sure death,” said Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic.

The government is also demanding that U.N. troops be authorized to use force to shield the evacuation. But there were reports early today that some evacuations had begun--without U.N. protection.

The government army Tuesday evening acknowledged that its forces had abandoned the town of Zepa but said they were repositioning themselves on high ground near it to better defend the enclave.

Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army commander who Tuesday also was formally indicted ‘by a U.N. tribunal for alleged war crimes, toured the town of Zepa in the morning to survey his latest gains, U.N. officials said. “Bosnian Serb soldiers are moving through Zepa with impunity,” said Lt. Col. Chris Vernon, military spokesman for the United Nations.

Mladic later met through most of the afternoon with Lt. Gen. Rupert Smith, commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia, to negotiate the evacuation of Zepa.

About 150 wounded people--both soldiers and civilians, according to U.N. officials--were ferried from Zepa to Sarajevo. About 1,000 refugees also were reported en route to the government-held city of Tuzla, on Bosnian Serb buses and without international monitors.

The loss of the Zepa enclave would leave only Gorazde from the three eastern “safe areas” created by the United Nations two years ago to give haven to Muslims driven from their homes by ethnic warfare. The inability of the United Nations to preserve the enclaves and protect Bosnians within them has come to represent one of the most abysmal failures of an increasingly impotent peacekeeping mission.

Hoping to avoid the atrocities reported after the fall of Srebrenica, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic appealed to the U.N. Security Council to order its peacekeepers to take full control of the evacuation and to authorize the use of force to protect it.

At Srebrenica, 400 Dutch peacekeepers stood by helplessly as Bosnian Serbs rounded up and hauled away most men and some women. Despite Mladic’s assurances, international observers were not permitted to accompany the convoys that carried deported refugees, nor has access been granted to prisoners. There is mounting evidence of widespread atrocities, including rapes and summary executions. “Thousands of people are missing [following Srebrenica], and most of them are probably dead by now,” Silajdzic said.

While the Bosnian Serbs could easily agree to the evacuation of women and children from the Zepa pocket, the issue of the men is much more complicated. The government wants them airlifted to safety in U.N. helicopters, but the rebel Serbs have been insisting on detaining them as prisoners of war.

“The civilian population has a choice of staying or leaving,” Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said in a statement issued at his headquarters in Pale. “Members of the Muslim army will get a status of war prisoners and will be exchanged in the future.”

Negotiations for a prisoner exchange have continued for days, with representatives of the Bosnian Serbs and the government meeting at the Sarajevo airport. But no agreement has been reached, and the government fears that its men would face death if taken prisoner.

Earlier Tuesday, U.N. officials, quoting Ukrainian peacekeepers in Zepa, had reported that the Bosnian government army had surrendered and agreed to relinquish its weapons. Bosnian government officials denied the report and said it was further proof of what they have long contended is a pro-Serbian bias by the Ukrainians.

U.N. sources said the Ukrainian attitude has, in a few cases, gone beyond bias: Two U.N. officials said Ukrainian peacekeepers were observed this week using their U.N. vehicles to transport Bosnian Serb officers closer to the front line. The government has filed numerous complaints with the United Nations regarding alleged corruption and collaboration by the Ukrainian peacekeepers, thought to favor the Bosnian Serbs because of their shared cultural and ethnic history. The allegations are under investigation.

The Zepa saga has dragged on for days longer than anyone expected the enclave could survive a Serbian onslaught. Mladic first claimed that Zepa had fallen a week ago, and he broadcast the news via megaphone to the people of the village in hopes of eroding their resistance. When that didn’t work, he launched daily barrages of tank and mortar fire.

More than half of Zepa’s population was made up of war refugees, and Mladic exploited differences between newcomers and natives, and between civilian and military authorities.

Mladic had avoided moving into the town of Zepa in part because of its difficult terrain. The village sits at the bottom of a sheer canyon whose steep walls are covered by thick woods. Access is by a single, winding dirt road. Zepa is legendary for its history of resisting invading armies such as the Nazis in World War II. In June, 1992, a column of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav National Army was ambushed as it entered Zepa; villagers blocked the road and then, from hilltops, picked off between 250 and 400 soldiers.