New Yugoslav Premier Holds Bosnian Talks

Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic flew to bullet-riddled Sarajevo on Sunday to show support for a shaky cease-fire and to open talks with the Muslim president of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Panic indicated to reporters in Sarajevo after his two-hour meeting with President Alija Izetbegovic that they had accomplished little toward a lasting solution to more than four months of warfare that has killed thousands of civilians.

Panic’s authority to negotiate for Serbian forces attacking Sarajevo and other areas of newly independent Bosnia-Herzegovina came into question after he failed to wrest a single tank from Serbian forces to hand over to U.N. forces in a symbolic gesture he had promised as evidence that he wants peace.

Although a cease-fire was to have taken effect at 6 p.m. Sunday, gunfire was reported late into the night throughout the capital and other republic flash points.

Panic, a Southern California millionaire-businessman who has returned to his native Serbia with the declared hope of ending the bloodshed, told journalists accompanying him to Sarajevo that he expected Izetbegovic to match his own commitment to peace.

But he indicated after his first talks with the Bosnian president that he was unhappy with the Muslim community’s position that it is the victim of aggression.

“I’m a little tired of his not accepting that all three sides are guilty,” Panic said of Izetbegovic and the deadly Bosnian conflict that began in April when Serbs rose up in arms against the republic’s vote for independence.

Since then, Serbs have subjugated at least two-thirds of the republic and driven Muslims and Croats from areas they seek to annex to Serbia in a campaign nationalist leaders have described as “ethnic cleansing.”

There was no majority ethnic group in multinational Bosnia-Herzegovina before the Serbian rebellion began, as Muslims accounted for 44%, Serbs for 31% and Croats for 17%. But since most of the 1.5 million who have fled the republic since the hostilities began are Muslim, Serbs are now likely to be the largest ethnic group.

Although Western mediators seemed optimistic about the cease-fire signed by Serbian, Muslim and Croatian leaders in London on Friday, the chances for genuine peace appeared dim as fighting raged in the eastern Bosnian city of Gorazde and along Bosnia’s northern border with Croatia.

Serbian forces have encircled Gorazde and pounded the city with mortars for the last week. Both Bosnian media and the Serb-run Tanjug news agency have reported fierce clashes and heavy casualties, with the government media accusing Serbs of blatant aggression and Tanjug claiming that Gorazde’s Muslim population is holding a group of Serbs hostage.

Gorazde, where thousands of Muslim women and children have taken refuge after being driven out of other areas of Bosnia, is the last Muslim stronghold along the republic’s eastern border with Serbia.

Croatian Radio reported heavy fighting in the area of Slavonski Brod, where a camp for young men fleeing conscription into the various Bosnian militias was rocketed from Serbian positions last week. At least seven people had been killed over the previous 24 hours, the broadcast said.

Numerous cease-fires have been proclaimed during the past four months of civil war in Bosnia, in which at least 7,500 have been killed. Unofficial reports claim that as many as 40,000 are dead in Bosnia.

Few in the war-ravaged regions of former Yugoslavia put much faith in the latest agreement.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic claimed days ago to have ordered his fighters to stop their shelling of Sarajevo and other areas of the republic they are trying to conquer, but the attacks have continued unabated.

Croatian forces have also been on the offensive against Serbian units in the region of western Herzegovina, where Croats make up a large majority of the population and have been forcing out Serbian civilians in tit-for-tat “ethnic cleansing.”

European Community mediators and British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, who visited the region over the weekend, have expressed optimism over the latest accord, noting that all three parties agreed to surrender their heavy weapons to U.N. monitoring.

However, U.N. officials concede it will take weeks to move in sufficient numbers of peacekeepers to watch over the huge stockpiles of weapons left in the hands of the Serbian gunmen by departing federal soldiers in May and a growing arsenal being amassed by the Croats.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who is widely blamed as the instigator of the Bosnian fighting, has been distancing himself from the assaults on Sarajevo in an effort to get U.N. sanctions lifted from his ostracized republic.

Panic also has denounced the sanctions as unfair and unlikely to succeed.

Bosnian Serb forces are thought to have been sobered by the growing calls for Western military air strikes to take out the heavy guns Serbs have dug into hills surrounding Sarajevo. There is also active consideration of foreign intervention to secure safe passage of food and medical aid to the besieged areas of the republic.

Because of the pressures mounting against the Bosnian Serbs and several territorial setbacks they are reported to have suffered in recent weeks, some observers expect a short-term reduction in the fighting.

“This cease-fire will certainly be used by the Serbs in a diplomatic and political way to postpone outside military intervention, to soften and even lift sanctions and in Bosnia-Herzegovina to regroup,” said Gen. Antun Tus, who spent 40 years with the Yugoslav People’s Army before taking the job of Croatian army chief of staff after the federation’s breakup last year.

Panic left Sarajevo bound for New York, where he will meet with U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to explain further details of how he plans to restore peace to the fractured and belligerent Balkans.