Bosnia Pleads for Foreign Help as Troops Pound Capital

Yugoslav army troops launched a punishing ground and air assault on the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina on Monday in retaliation for an ambush by Muslim fighters in which 181 federal soldiers were captured.

Renewed heavy fighting in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, already shattered by two months of warfare, prompted the leadership of Bosnia-Herzegovina to appeal for foreign military intervention to halt what it called “illegal aggression” by the Yugoslav state.

The plea by the republic presidency will be considered at an emergency session Wednesday of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which admitted Bosnia-Herzegovina into its membership last week.

But Western diplomats in Belgrade, capital of Serbia and of a recently proclaimed new Yugoslav federation, said the request for foreign troops would almost certainly be denied, considering the growing frustration among international monitors and relief agencies over a seemingly unstoppable cycle of violence and revenge.

The 12-nation European Community suspended field activities after the weekend death of a Belgian observer. Radio Sarajevo quoted an EC official as accusing the Serbian-led federal army of deliberately killing the monitor.

Recurring mortar and artillery attacks on Muslim and Croatian communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina have driven more than 400,000 from their homes in the poor, mountainous republic. There are now more than 1 million refugees from the Balkan conflict--the largest forced migration in Europe since World War II.

“This is possibly the most complicated and frustrating mission the UNHCR has ever been involved in,” said an official with the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

The European Community’s mission chief in Sarajevo, Irish army officer Colm Doyle, has continued to mediate in the crisis in which pro-independence Muslims and Croats are fighting Serbs and federal army forces opposed to secession.

However, even Doyle’s attempts to intercede seemed shaken by the latest violence.

He and a senior U.N. official, Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, had been assured by Sarajevo politicians that a trapped army convoy would be granted safe passage out of the city center in return for release of Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, who was taken hostage by the army on Saturday.

Once Izetbegovic was safely inside the presidential offices in Sarajevo, Muslim forces attacked the departing convoy and took 181 soldiers prisoner.

“It was a stupid move by the Muslims,” Doyle said in a statement to reporters carried on Sarajevo television. He questioned whether Izetbegovic had control over all republic defense forces.

The army accused Izetbegovic of ordering the attack.

Some of the federal soldiers were reported to have deserted while in the custody of the Muslim forces, but at least 100 were still held captive as Doyle and MacKenzie sought to patch up talks between army officers and the republic leaders.

Bosnia-Herzegovina’s government has insisted on the withdrawal of the estimated 150,000 army troops and Serbian guerrillas now stationed in their newly independent republic. But there have been no moves to pare down the army occupation of the republic. Even the federal officers who negotiated safe passage for the Sunday night convoy out of central Sarajevo had made clear that the troops would relocate only as far as suburbs controlled by Serbs.

When talks aimed at winning the release of the captive soldiers failed to get under way by midafternoon, army troops in the hills surrounding Sarajevo opened fire on the capital, and federal jets bombed strategic buildings, according to EC observers.

Sarajevo Radio quoted an army commander as saying the city’s inhabitants “must learn they cannot get away with such provocations.”