Serbs Overrun Muslim Enclave; Airdrop on Hold

Serbian forces overran the embattled Muslim enclave of Cerska in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina on Tuesday in a brutal, defiant act that embarrassed U.N. peace negotiations and the Clinton Administration’s emergency aid airdrop in the region, according to reports reaching U.N. officials.

Although not linking their action to the latest flare-up of fighting, American officials decided to end the airdrop--at least for a while--after Tuesday’s night of high-altitude flights. The airdrop, a major initiative of President Clinton in the haunting Bosnian war, began dramatically three nights ago.

Officials said the deliveries of food and medicine had accomplished the symbolic aim of putting pressure on the Serbs to allow land convoys through to the Bosnians.

But they also acknowledged that many supplies were falling astray. Further, the Air Force was running out of the huge wooden pallets that carry the food and medicine to earth.

The news about the fall of Cerska came from amateur radio operators, broadcasting from an enclave that has been cut off from the outside world since the war erupted almost a year ago.

They reported that more than 500 civilians were killed as Bosnian Serb soldiers took Cerska. They said that 19 hamlets had fallen to the Serbs in the last three days.

A plaintive ham radio account from Cerska, monitored by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said that Bosnian Serbs “are moving freely around the town. They are burning houses, killing a lot of occupants, robbing their possessions. . . . Dead bodies all over, and nowhere to go. People cannot move. People from Cerska are crying for help and begging to be taken out alive.”

Sarajevo Radio said the Serbs were shelling routes used by those trying to flee Cerska, observing, “The roads are crawling with injured and dead.”

Although ham radio reports exaggerate atrocities in the Balkans civil war, Lyndall Sachs, a U.N. aid agency spokeswoman in Belgrade, said, “Even if a small part of it is correct, the situation is desperate.”

The U.N. agency tried to dispatch 10 trucks to the Cerska enclave to evacuate the wounded. But Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander, refused to let them in, Sachs said.

Sachs said Mladic would allow them entry only if Muslim forces there surrendered or if the thousands of Muslims there all agreed to leave. This act, tantamount to an expulsion of the Muslims, would leave the enclave entirely in the hands of Serbs--and would serve as another case of the “ethnic cleansing” that has shocked world public opinion for the last year.

The Serbian offensive amounted to a blatant snub of Clinton, who has heartened Bosnian Muslims with the American military airdrop of food and medical supplies into the Muslim enclaves of Bosnia. Cerska was a key target of the airdrop in its first two days; reports indicated that, perhaps because of the renewed battles in the area, most of the pallets bearing supplies fell into Bosnian Serb hands.

The Cerska offensive upset negotiators at U.N. headquarters in New York who found the excruciating task of trying to nudge the Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats into a peace agreement made far more difficult by the news from home. Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, the chairmen of the peace conference, which resumed only Monday, issued a statement deploring “the fact that, even as peace talks are continuing . . . heavy fighting continues to take place in eastern Bosnia.”

They called “on those responsible to grant immediate access to international humanitarian organizations, in particular so as to render the evacuation of wounded persons possible.”

President Alija Izetbegovic, head of the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government, complained bitterly to Vance and Owen about the Serbian rampage in eastern Bosnia.

But U.N. officials were thankful that Izetbegovic had not tried to boycott the negotiations, and they felt some progress was made in reassuring him that any peace agreement would be implemented and guaranteed by powerful outside military forces.

Negotiators reportedly made more progress toward persuading Izetbegovic to accept their peace plan than they did later in a separate session with Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs.

But the continued offensive made many outsiders question the wisdom of the negotiations.

“How can you possibly talk to Karadzic at a time like this?” said a Western diplomat in Belgrade. “How can you think they are possibly negotiating in good faith?”

In Moscow, the Clinton airdrop drew enthusiastic support. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev told reporters that President Boris N. Yeltsin has ordered plans to be drawn up for Russian airdrops “as the Americans are doing.”

The Russian effort could begin “pretty quickly,” Kozyrev said, as soon as security and technical details are worked out. He said Russia hopes to be allowed to launch its planes from a NATO airfield at Frankfurt’s Rhein-Main base.

Moscow’s support for the American Balkan policy is significant because of the weight Russia normally carries with the Serbs, long-time allies who share Slavic culture and the Russian Orthodox faith.

To the extent the airlift is intended to aid Bosnia’s hard-pressed Muslim community, Russian participation may be unpopular with Yeltsin’s right-wing opposition, which openly supports Serbia and its Bosnian Serb allies.

But the decision could help Yeltsin solidify the Washington-Moscow relationship, something that may play well with the Russian public. It also may be intended to buttress the Administration’s effort to increase American economic aid to Russia.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States welcomes Russia’s participation.

Times staff writer Meisler reported from the United Nations, and Times special correspondent Silber reported from Belgrade. Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Moscow and Norman Kempster and Art Pine in Washington contributed to this report.