Serbs Delay U.N. Convoy to Sarajevo : Balkans: French commandos arrive to help secure the airport. First donated rations reach starving residents.

A U.N. convoy attempting to end the blockade of Sarajevo on Wednesday was delayed by armed Serbians en route to the embattled city. But in keeping with the advance-and-retreat nature of the mission to reopen an air corridor for humanitarian relief flights, 120 French commandos arrived to bolster the mere 34 U.N. troops tenuously holding the battered Sarajevo airport.

Also, the first donated French rations made their way through a gantlet of sniper fire to the city center, where local aid organizations were to begin distribution to the most needy of Sarajevo’s 300,000 starving holdouts.

The Bush Administration, responding to a request from the United Nations, made preparations Wednesday to begin flying humanitarian aid into Sarajevo, but President Bush said he was not yet ready to order American combat forces into Yugoslavia.

The Pentagon announcement Tuesday that U.S. Navy ships were patrolling the Adriatic Sea coastline with attack aircraft and 2,200 Marines on board encouraged Sarajevans who have been hoping for foreign military intervention.

After weeks of proclaimed cease-fires that were shot to pieces within hours of their signing, many in the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina have come to regard a Western air strike as the only way to break the Serbian siege that has cut off food, fuel and medicine since early April.

But the White House made clear that it has moved American warships to the Adriatic in a show of force to deter fighting rather than as a prelude to intervention.

In Washington, President Bush said he was appalled at “the human suffering and the killing” in Sarajevo, saying the United States would do its part to restore peace to the area.

But he quickly emphasized that he had “no plans at this juncture” to use U.S. ships and forces now stationed in the region and said he hoped the American naval presence would send “a signal to the people over there that we are serious.”

“I hope it can be done without U.S. force,” he said.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III later told reporters at the White House that Bush most likely was referring to a reluctance to involve U.S. ground forces.

The Administration traditionally has drawn a sharp distinction between the possible use of U.S. air and naval power to clear the way for a humanitarian gesture, such as an airlift, and the entry of ground forces into a foreign country.

Baker also said the United States would support any effort to broaden the present U.N. mandate in the former Yugoslavia and authorize the use of military force, if necessary, to break the siege. But, he added, “we’re not at that point” yet.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney on Tuesday held out the possibility of air cover to protect humanitarian airlifts if the airport at Sarajevo can be reopened by U.N. peacekeepers.

U.N. officials in Belgrade estimate that the facility could be reopened as early as Friday, if fighting in and around Sarajevo continues to subside.

But a massive airlift did not appear near. U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali reported to the Security Council on Wednesday night that with shelling continuing around the Sarajevo airport and the runway littered with mines, the facility was still too dangerous to accommodate more than eight flights a day.

A 1,000-troop Canadian battalion was en route to Sarajevo to secure and operate the airport. But a U.N. source here said the convoy was making slow progress on its 180-mile journey because of encounters with mines and Serbian roadblocks.

Much of the republic of 4.4 million that has declared independence from Yugoslavia is under the control of various armed gangs, some of which are seeking to ethnically “purify” the regions they hold by driving out those of other nationalities.

The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which has already taken at least 7,500 lives since an independence referendum Feb. 29, is being fought between Serbs opposed to separation from the republic of Serbia and an alliance of Slavic Muslims and Croats who favor secession.

About two-thirds of the republic is under the control of Serbs, who account for about 31% of the population. But the Muslim-Croat forces are reported to be making territorial gains, especially from the western side of the republic that remains largely in Croatian hands.

If Sarajevo’s Butmir Airport can be reopened and a reliable lifeline established for supplies, the Serbian guerrillas encircling the city and attempting to drive its inhabitants out will have been handed a major defeat in their efforts to add the Bosnian capital to the territory they control.

But some Western leaders warn that an air corridor into the capital will not be enough.

German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, during a Washington visit this week, called on the international community to force open a land route into the republic’s isolated southern areas from the Croatian port of Split.

According to relief workers, the four planeloads of food flown in Tuesday provided only enough to feed one-tenth of Sarajevo’s population for a single day.

Sarajevans who have held out against the Serbian blockade of their city since early April expressed gratitude for the supplies but said a humanitarian airlift is not the answer to their suffering.

“Our only hope is for military intervention. The West is not going to solve the problem by simply sending in food, because some day they will stop,” Aida Cerkez, an aide at the city’s territorial defense headquarters, reported in a telephone conversation from Sarajevo.

The increasing threat of foreign military intervention is believed to have forced Serbian rebels to back down from a full-scale assault that has already driven out nearly half of the capital’s 600,000 residents.

Belgrade-based media loyal to Serbia’s nationalist strongman, President Slobodan Milosevic, have lashed out at the prospect of foreign intervention.

“It is probable that Washington is just waiting for an occasion for intervention, and there is no doubt they will intervene if they get it,” the Tanjug news agency said. “It is no secret that the Americans want the (Serbian) government to fall, and their presence in the Adriatic can be understood as a message of support” to Milosevic opponents.

Times staff writer Art Pine in Washington contributed to this article.

U.S. Ships Standing By

There were seven American warships in the Adriatic on Wednesday. All are scheduled for July 4 port visits, and some may have left the Adriatic by today:

Iwo Jima: amphibious assault and helicopter carrier

Trenton: amphibious transport dock ship

Tortuga: dock landing ship

Spartanburg County: tank landing ship

Saginaw: tank landing ship

Comte de Grasse: destroyer

Biddle: guided missile cruiser

Source: U.S. Navy