NATO Continues Attacks; Concern for Accord Rises

U.S.-led allied warplanes bombed more Bosnian Serb targets early today as the besieged separatists were joined by their Russian allies in warning that the air strikes endanger a fledgling Bosnian peace process.

The Muslim-led Bosnian government also was worried about the peace plan reached last week in Geneva, which it was forced to defend against a public that feels sold out.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, in a letter to President Clinton and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, said that NATO had “declared war on the Serbs” by launching 13 cruise missiles Sunday night from a U.S. Navy vessel.

“It is clear that the most powerful military alliance on Earth is openly taking the side of our enemies,” Karadzic wrote, threatening to withdraw from the talks. “The entire peace process could be wrecked.”

Bosnian Serb television showed two houses purportedly destroyed by the Tomahawk missiles, but no further evidence was offered backing Serbian claims of numerous civilian casualties.

Spokesmen for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said the Tomahawks did severe damage to Bosnian Serb antiaircraft defense installations in the area of Banja Luka, a Serbian stronghold in north-central Bosnia-Herzegovina, but not enough to put the system out of commission.

Initial bomb-damage assessments showed the expensive, sophisticated missiles hit two major targets--a long-range early-warning radar unit and a radio-relay post--NATO officials said.

“We know we’ve hit a lot of [air-defense system] targets and that we’ve done a lot of damage to them. But there’s redundancy in the system, so we haven’t destroyed it all,” said British Royal Air Force Group Capt. Trevor Murray, speaking at NATO’s Southern Command headquarters in Naples, Italy.

In addition to the Tomahawk, a premier weapon in the U.S. arsenal, Washington soon may send radar-evading F-117 Stealth fighters to Italy for use in future NATO air strikes, U.S. officials said.

Although U.S. and NATO officials denied the use of the Tomahawks was an escalation in the nearly 2-week-old air campaign, it clearly marked an elevation of the weaponry employed and an expansion of the geographic area of operations. Previously, NATO had bombed primarily in eastern Bosnia and around Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

Public buses started running again Monday in Sarajevo for the first time in five months, thanks to a new level of safety created by the air strikes. But Sarajevans were quickly reminded of the continuing danger: Snipers opened fire from a Serb-held suburb on a bus crowded with passengers. Eight people were wounded.

Efforts by Russian officials to pressure the Western alliance to end its bombing campaign gained momentum Monday. At the United Nations, Russia circulated a draft resolution among fellow Security Council members calling for the immediate suspension of NATO air strikes in Bosnia.

In Moscow, the Kremlin intensified warnings that NATO’s use of force against the Bosnian Serbs threatens to spread war beyond the Balkans and could compel Russia to abandon international security accords.

Russia’s ambassador to Belgium, Vitaly I. Churkin, told a meeting of NATO ambassadors in Brussels that continued air strikes could endanger the Bosnian peace process. However, NATO Secretary General Willy Claes told Churkin that the air campaign will continue until the Serbs comply with NATO demands to lift the siege of Sarajevo.

The peace talks, which produced an agreement in Geneva last week to halve Bosnia along roughly ethnic lines, came under a different kind of attack in Sarajevo, where government officials sought to defend the compromise accord before an angry public.

Writing in the daily newspaper Oslobodjenje, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic said the agreement was a necessary, though painful, concession to end the war, adding that otherwise Bosnia will lose whatever international support it now has.

Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic, in a news conference, said his government was compelled to accept as part of the agreement the formalization of the “Republika Srpska,” the Bosnian Serbs’ self-proclaimed republic created largely by the killing or expulsion of tens of thousands of Muslims.

“What else can we do?” he said. “Can we spend another 10,000 lives to be in the same place next year? . . . Anything is better than war. This is a way out that preserves Bosnia-Herzegovina as a single state and recognizes a reality brought about by Serbian fascist aggression that we cannot ignore.”

From cafes to refugee camps, a sense of bitter betrayal is dominating the conversations of pro-government Bosnians who feel that the country they have been fighting to preserve during the past 41 months has been summarily sacrificed.

In defending the still-emerging Geneva plan, Silajdzic said he envisioned a transition period of as many as 15 years before the Serbian half of the new Bosnia would be allowed full participation in a central government that would oversee both halves. It would take that long, he said, for democracy, human rights and legitimate leaders to be established. In the meantime, it would remain a “second-class government,” he said.

“So long as those fascists are there, they will not be part of the central government,” he said. “They cannot possibly represent people they killed and expelled.”

Silajdzic’s comments underscore serious questions about whether the new arrangement can work, because the government’s vision is so radically different from that of the Serbs, who believe they have gained international recognition as a state.

Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, who chaired the Geneva talks and met with President Clinton and other officials in Washington on Monday, is resuming his Balkan shuttle today, officials said. He is expected to meet with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic on Wednesday, go to Geneva on Thursday to meet with other members of the five-nation Contact Group--comprising the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany--and then return to the Balkans.

Meanwhile on Monday, Silajdzic confirmed that the Bosnian army--capitalizing on the Serbs’ compromised position on the battlefield--had pushed ahead with an offensive in north-central Bosnia. The army claimed it captured a strategic town that will link two patches of government territory.

The government had promised it would not take advantage of the NATO air campaign for its own military gains, but Silajdzic said the promise applied only to Sarajevo.

Times staff writers Tyler Marshall in Brussels, Carol J. Williams in Moscow and Art Pine and Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.