Discouraged Panic, Election Loser, Considers Resigning

Federal Prime Minister Milan Panic, badly defeated by Serbian nationalists in last week’s elections, is considering resigning, an aide said Sunday.

Panic’s departure could cede more power to reelected Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who is widely blamed for fomenting wars in former Yugoslav republics by backing rebel Serbs.

The announcement came as U.S. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft said in Washington that the U.N. Security Council might pass a resolution this week authorizing enforcement of a flight ban over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Scowcroft said differences over details of how to enforce the flight ban are holding up U.N. action but that a resolution is possible within days. He also indicated that a direct role for U.S. warplanes is possible.

Scowcroft, speaking on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” said the United States wants “to take out aircraft on the ground rather than to chase helicopters up and down the valleys.”

Serbs have reportedly violated the U.N. flight ban imposed in October, but the United Nations has not yet passed a resolution that would enforce it. That could bring the United States and its allies a step closer to involvement in the war--something they have wanted to avoid.

Yugoslavia’s top general, congratulating Milosevic on his electoral victory, warned the world that his army is ready to fight for the interests of Serbs beyond Yugoslavia’s borders.

The army is “ready, always and everywhere, to protect . . . Serbian people subjected to unjust and unprincipled pressures,” Gen. Zivota Panic, who is not related to the prime minister, said in a telegram to Milosevic, the state-run news agency Tanjug reported.

Milan Panic, an Orange County millionaire, has said he would work to end the war in Bosnia.

Panic spokesman David Calef said that Panic’s decision on whether to resign will depend on consultations with federal President Dobrica Cosic, a onetime Milosevic ally who now supports Panic.

In Bosnia, Sarajevo Radio reported two Serb-fired Scud missiles landed in Gradacac on the northern Bosnian front line, killing an unspecified number of people.

The report could not be confirmed. It would be the first use in Bosnia of the Soviet-designed missiles, which Iraq deployed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.