Vance May Quit Balkan Talks After N.Y. Phase

U.N. mediator Cyrus R. Vance plans to resign as co-chairman of the Balkan peace talks once the New York negotiations on Bosnia-Herzegovina are completed, diplomats said Tuesday.

His spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said the former U.S. secretary of state had always said he did not intend to stay forever but would “not leave the talks at a crucial moment if that could be done in a reasonable time frame.”

Diplomats said Vance had wanted to leave his post at the end of February but probably will stay into March, when the current phase of talks may end.

Vance and his co-chairman, Lord Owen, moved the bulk of the conference on the former Yugoslav republics to New York two weeks ago. But some of the discussions are expected to return to Geneva within a few months.

“He has no intention of going back to Geneva,” a U.N. source said. “But he wants to complete his task here.”

Leaders of Bosnia’s Muslim, Serbian and Croatian factions are to resume peace talks Friday at U.N. headquarters in New York.

In New York on Tuesday, Ibrahim Rugova, president of the semiautonomous province of Kosovo, pressed for U.S. and international action--including immediate deployment of U.N. peacekeepers--to prevent the Balkan war from spreading to his province.

Speaking at a news conference at the start of a U.S. visit, Rugova predicted that a U.N.-mediated peace plan for Bosnia will not stop the Bosnian civil war but will allow Serbia to concentrate more troops in Kosovo.

Since 1991, Serbian authorities have intensified measures against the majority Albanian population in Kosovo.

Meanwhile, in Bosnia, Serb militiamen and tanks battered two areas in western Sarajevo and blocked the main airport road Tuesday in a major escalation of fighting.

On the border with Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serbs also blocked a U.N. aid convoy for a third straight day from getting to an area in eastern Bosnia where Muslim refugees are short of food and under siege. But the Serbs allowed a second convoy to pass through the checkpoint.