Leaders OK Evacuation of 1,600 Muslim Refugees from Bosnia Town

Local Muslim leaders in the besieged Bosnian town of Srebrenica gave the green light Wednesday for 1,600 women and children to be evacuated from the town, U.N. officials said.

They said the decision cleared the way for U.N. relief workers to resume evacuation attempts after two failures in the last few days, provided that Serbian forces blockading the town for the past year also give the go-ahead.

French Gen. Philippe Morillon, the commander of U.N. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was already on his way to Srebrenica in an attempt to deploy peacekeeping troops there to boost humanitarian relief efforts.

About 120 Canadian “blue helmets” are due to follow him into the eastern Bosnian town today.

Cmdr. Barry Frewer, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeepers in Sarajevo, said that news of the local authorities’ apparent about-face was passed on by U.N. military observers in Srebrenica.

“The people to be evacuated . . . will include 100 wounded women and children, plus a second group of women and children totaling about 1,500 who have recently been living in a schoolhouse and in the street,” Frewer said.

Asked if this was a step back from a refusal to allow evacuations, he said, “That would appear to be the case.”

But he said the approval of Serbian forces and representatives of the U.N. high commissioner for refugees is still needed.

The local Muslim authorities have blocked the last two U.N. evacuation attempts because of fears that they would leave the town open to capture by the Serbs, who are seeking to create an “ethnically cleansed” state.