Fighting Continues in Sarajevo on Eve of Truce; U.N. Works to Open Airport

On the eve of a promised truce, Sarajevo’s attackers and defenders battled Sunday for strategic high ground.

Later, a lull in the fighting let residents venture from their shelters to search for scarce food and bury their dead.

U.N. negotiators, meanwhile, worked to organize the withdrawal of Serbian soldiers and arms from around the airport so that it could be reopened and humanitarian flights could begin to the Bosnian capital, starved by a nearly three-month siege by Serb fighters.

In Belgrade, more than 10,000 people, including prominent Serbian intellectuals and opposition figures, gathered to pray for peace and protest the war.

Opposition to the government of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has been growing, especially in the wake of harsh U.N. sanctions imposed two weeks ago over Serbia’s role in the fighting in Bosnia.

More than 15,000 people have been killed since June last year in fighting in Slovenia, which was short-lived, and the civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia. All three republics, along with Macedonia, are now independent states.

The planned truce was to take effect at 6 a.m. today. Radovan Karadzic, the Serb leader in Bosnia, had unilaterally announced plans for the cease-fire last week, and on Sunday, the Bosnian government and Serb forces signed the truce agreement, the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency reported.

More than a dozen previous cease-fires have collapsed.