Shells Interrupt Uneasy Calm in Sarajevo

Sarajevo slipped back into its deadly rhythm of fierce nighttime shelling and uneasy calm by day, while tensions mounted in Belgrade on Saturday after a police threat to break up a weeklong demonstration against Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

Artillery fire on the Bosnia-Herzegovina capital was described as the heaviest since U.N. peacekeeping troops took control of the airport five days ago to allow humanitarian relief flights to the shattered city where at least 300,000 people have been holding out against a three-month Serbian siege.

Two soldiers of the 1,000-troop Canadian battalion deployed to secure the airport were slightly wounded by stray bullets fired from surrounding suburbs, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard reported from Sarajevo.

“This has definitely been a setback for the airport operation,” Eckhard said of the upsurge in fighting overnight. “It raises security concerns because the airport agreement starts with a reaffirmation of a cease-fire, and without that essential first step, all that is built on it stands on sand.”

Western aid flights continued to touch down at Sarajevo’s Butmir Airport and unload their cargoes of food and medicine for the city on the brink of starvation. But Eckhard said the commander of U.N. troops in Sarajevo, Maj. Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, was “monitoring the security situation closely and would turn back planes at a minute’s notice if necessary.”

The rain of artillery and mortars that flared shortly after nightfall Friday and continued until dawn made clear that both the Serbian rebels attacking the city from its surrounding hills and Bosnian government forces responding from the besieged valley were using heavy guns they had not moved to U.N. monitoring sites.

MacKenzie met with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and Serbian military commanders at their headquarters in the western suburb of Lukavica to press them to comply with the airport agreement that calls for all heavy artillery to be moved to sites under U.N. supervision.

Belgrade television carried footage showing the night sky illuminated by near constant blasts overnight.

“The lead is still flying at the airport as well,” Eckhard reported from his station a few miles east of that facility. “Snipers are firing at each other over the runway, and yesterday around midday several bullets struck the terminal building where our people were working.”

Despite the persistent shooting, relief flights continued unabated Saturday, with transport planes from Britain, France and Greece bringing in baby food and medicine.

In Belgrade, the Tanjug news agency issued a report suggesting that city officials in the federal and Serbian capital would forcibly clear out an encampment of anti-government protesters if they refused to leave peacefully.

Hundreds of Serbs have pitched tents in Pioneer Park, across from the federal Parliament in the city’s bustling center, and insist they will stay there until Milosevic resigns.

The protest action began with 100,000 opposition demonstrators last Sunday, on Serbia’s most important national holiday commemorating the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. It tapered off to a few hundred by midweek, but swelled to tens of thousands again Thursday and Friday night, raising the prospect of a second wind in the popular movement to oust Milosevic.

No immediate action was taken by police after the warning Saturday, but its accusations that the protesters posed a public health threat and obstructed traffic laid the groundwork for an eventual crackdown.

* GUERRILLA WOES: Serbian guerrillas are hampered by poor discipline. A5