U.S. Urged to Lead Drive Against Serbs at Sarajevo : Balkans: Bush is considering the request from Bosnia’s leader. Baker says nothing is ruled in or out.

The president of war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina asked President Bush on Thursday to spearhead a Western military drive, including the use of fighter aircraft, against Serbian militia forces besieging his capital, Sarajevo.

Bush rejected immediate action, saying only that he would consider the request. But in an escalation of American military operations in the area, two U.S. Navy warships--a cruiser and an amphibious landing ship--were dispatched to the Adriatic Sea off Bosnia-Herzegovina to boost enforcement of the United Nations’ arms and trade embargo imposed on Serbia and Montenegro.

“Military intervention is necessary,” Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic said after his 20-minute conference with Bush.

Izetbegovic said he told Bush that he wants the Western powers to use their air power to destroy Serbian forces’ artillery and armored vehicles in the hills around the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, saying that would remove the Serbians’ main military advantage.

Bush told Izetbegovic that he will “consider” the request, Secretary of State James A. Baker III told reporters later. “He said (that) he hasn’t ruled anything in or anything out,” Baker said of the President, but he added that any such action would require a decision by the U.N. Security Council.

“The President also made it very clear that the focus of United States efforts is on the provisioning of humanitarian relief, not an ultimate solution to the political conflict,” Baker added. “There is a significant difference.”

Bush and his Western allies appear to have adopted a strategy of gradual escalation in Yugoslavia, in hopes of halting the conflict there without having to resort to outright military intervention.

One part of the strategy is the humanitarian relief effort in Bosnia, which is aimed at getting food and medicine to the republic’s people--but which also increases Western pressure on the warring parties there to maintain their cease-fire.

A second part is intensifying the embargo of Serbia by deploying naval forces in the Adriatic--a modern version of turn-of-the-century “gunboat diplomacy.” Officials have said the embargo, focusing on military supplies and fuel, is intended to force Serbia to withdraw its troops and negotiate.

If those measures fail to work, French and German officials have said the allies will consider further actions to enforce their commitments. But Bush and his aides have shied away from any specific warnings.

In a seven-minute address to the 52-member Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Bush said that a “brutal war rages in the Balkans” and that the organization should agree on four immediate goals:

“First, we should see to it that relief supplies get through, no matter what it takes. Second, we should see to it that the U.N. sanctions are respected, no matter what it takes. Third, we should do all we can to prevent this conflict from spreading. And fourth, let us call with one voice for the guns to fall silent through a cease-fire on all fronts.”

The “nightmare in Bosnia,” as Bush called the turmoil that has accompanied the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, has put the President in a difficult position.

In the midst of an election campaign in which he has pointed to the success of U.S. leadership in helping achieve a peaceable end to the Cold War, he has refused to commit U.S. troops to intervene in an increasingly bloody conflict, but he has also been reluctant to wash his hands of responsibility for ending the war.

White House officials said Bush has approved plans to move several warships of the Navy’s 6th Fleet to the Yugoslav coast. The ships include a cruiser and an amphibious landing ship with about 2,000 Marines, according to reports from Washington.

Asked about the purpose of the naval operation, Baker said: “There are a couple of ports there through which supplies are moving.” He said the allies are still discussing ways to block shipments from “the other side,” meaning through Romania.

The movement of the U.S. ships is said to be part of a united effort to step up enforcement of the sanctions but was not being called a blockade, as the Western nations sought to avoid direct contact with the combatants.

Italy, France and Britain were also considering bringing naval forces into the region, U.S. and European officials said.

At the same time that the Bosnian president was making his request to Bush, France announced it was dispatching a squadron of military helicopters to Bosnia for “the protection of Sarajevo,” along with an additional 144 troops. The unit includes four Gazelle helicopters used to attack ground targets with missiles and cannon.

The helicopters will be put at the disposal of the United Nations Protection Force deployed there.

While the members of the Western alliance say there is no dispute among them over the multiple approaches they have taken--and their foreign ministers are meeting today to coordinate their operations--they nevertheless have taken independent courses, with the French deploying troops and aircraft and the United States being more reluctant.

The naval operation, for example, was originally a plan from Italy as a mission for the Western European Union, the security arm of the European Community. But U.S. officials said they wanted American ships--and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization--to be included too, and the Europeans agreed.

“WEU wants to link up with NATO,” Italian Foreign Minister Vincenzo Scotti said.

Scotti also said that the Western European Union is “still discussing” the possibility of organizing overland relief convoys in Bosnia.

Even as U.S. officials reported that 12 to 15 relief flights were flying food and other supplies into Sarajevo each day--an indication that the effort to still the guns was achieving some success--three mortar rounds hit the U.N. compound there.

Croatian units may be moving closer to the capital, an official with the U.N. peacekeeping mission said, suggesting that they may be moving into position to try to break the three-month siege in the civil war between newly independent Bosnia and anti-secessionist ethnic Serbs, while posing an additional risk to the relief operation.

According to Bosnian officials, more than 7,500 people have died in the fighting, which broke out after Muslims, who make up the country’s largest ethnic group, and Croats voted for independence on Feb. 29. The move is opposed by Bosnia’s ethnic Serbs, who have been backed by Serbian-led Yugoslav federal troops.

Izetbegovic, who put his request to Bush in a private meeting late Thursday morning, was asked at a picture-taking session at the start of the meeting whether he wanted NATO peacekeeping forces deployed in Bosnia.

He replied that he would prefer “peacemaking forces” instead, drawing a distinction between peacekeeping troops, which are sent in to maintain cease-fires, and those dispatched into potentially more dangerous situations to separate warring units and then bring about a peace.