Serbs Burning Homes to Block Muslims’ Return

Bosnian Serb gunmen have embarked on a fresh spree of burning and destruction in this Muslim ghost town as part of a drive to sabotage any hope the West might have of imposing a peace plan that the Serbs have now categorically rejected four times.

Smoke billowing from Muslim houses in this ruined village along the Jadar River underscored the message of nationalist defiance sent by a weekend referendum that what the Serbs have taken will always be theirs.

Ballots have yet to be counted from the referendum testing Serbian views on the proposed peace plan, but an outcome of overwhelming rejection is a foregone conclusion, and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has already declared the issue “dead.”

Serbian rebels loyal to Karadzic have conquered and “ethnically cleansed” 70% of the republic. They would have to withdraw from nearly half of it under the terms of the proposed settlement drafted by U.N. mediator Cyrus R. Vance and his European Community counterpart, Britain’s Lord Owen.

The Vance-Owen plan proposed to carve up this republic into 10 ethnic pieces, deeding three each to Serbs, Muslims and Croats and leaving the capital, Sarajevo, under multiethnic control.

Nova Kasaba, inhabited almost exclusively by Muslims before the war, would be part of a vast and meandering eastern province destined for Muslim rule.

“This will never happen. As long as there is a single Serb here, it will never be Muslim territory,” vowed Ilija Zekanovic, a 63-year-old gunman from nearby Milici.

As he mounted a casual watch from a looted armchair near a precariously patched bridge over the Jadar River, Zekanovic argued that Nova Kasaba had to be “liberated” because Serbs consider the eastern region rightfully theirs.

“There’s not one Muslim here anymore. How could it ever be Muslim-run?” a younger fighter in camouflage asked incredulously. “They had to go away because this is an important Serbian area. It is on the road from Sarajevo to Belgrade, and we cannot risk losing such a vital corridor.”

Deeply held convictions that the Bosnian territory they have conquered is justly theirs have inspired the local fighters to try to ensure that the Vance-Owen formula is never enforceable by removing the last objects that would encourage Muslim refugees to return.

Aside from the Muslim houses torched and smoldering amid blooming apple trees, the town’s silver-domed mosque has been toppled by a powerful internal explosion, and every storefront in the small center has been blasted to pieces.

Even Nova Kasaba’s name has been stripped of its Muslim character. The centuries-old name paired the Serbian-Croatian word for new with the Turkish word for settlement, but the soldiers patrolling the empty ruins have renamed it Srpsko Novo Naselje--Serbian New Settlement.

Territorial divisions proposed by the Vance-Owen plan are also believed to have inspired much of the recent fierce fighting between Croats and Muslims in the west of the republic.

Croatian nationalists Monday continued to press a deadly offensive around the cities of Mostar and Jablanica, aimed at driving out Muslims from the provinces designated by the mediators for Croatian rule. Hundreds have been killed in clashes between the former allies.

The two-pronged offensive against the beleaguered forces of the Sarajevo government has led many diplomats and observers to conclude that Bosnia’s Serbs and Croats are now at work implementing a secret plan to divide the devastated republic between them.

The intensifying Croatian offensives and the apparent “no” vote on the Vance-Owen plan could stir renewed calls for Western military intervention to break the Serbs’ siege of Sarajevo.

Tatjana Ljuic-Mijatovic, a member of Bosnia’s presidential council, said Monday that “there is no longer any excuse” for the West not to intervene in Bosnia.

Only two options remain, now that Bosnian Serbs have effectively rejected the Vance-Owen plan, according to Ljuic-Mijatovic, a Serb in Bosnia’s mainly Muslim central government. “The world can intervene and implement the Vance-Owen plan by force, or the war will continue.”

Karadzic has been lobbying for a whole new round of peace talks, suggesting that a division of Bosnia more acceptable to the Serbs might be crafted by former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev or Henry A. Kissinger, a former U.S. secretary of state who has criticized the Vance-Own approach.

The Bosnian Serb military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, has responded to threats of Western intervention with warnings that foreign troops will enter his territory at their own peril.

“The Western forces would know how to come here, but not how to get out,” he told the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency. “Whoever comes will leave his bones here.”

* CHRISTOPHER HOPEFUL: He sees ‘new opportunities’ for Bosnia diplomacy. A10