World IN BRIEF : CROATIA : President Backs Troop Extension

Croatian President Franjo Tudjman backed a six-week extension of a U.N. mandate in Croatia to give negotiators time to thrash out a plan to return Serb-held areas to Zagreb’s control. Tudjman said that as a goodwill gesture he was prepared to pull back his troops to a line six miles from areas of Croatia captured by Serb rebels in the 1991 independence war and now protected by U.N. peacekeepers. The peacekeepers’ mandate is due to run out next Sunday. Meanwhile, in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, the United Nations canceled aid flights into Sarajevo, where fighting raged all day around the airport and shells battered the city center. A U.N. official said trucks would only deliver relief for two more days.