U.N. Still Barred at Enclave; Sarajevo Gets Aid

The United Nations resumed its relief airlift to Sarajevo on Sunday, but U.N. military observers were again barred from the Serb-besieged Muslim enclave of Gorazde.

Two civilians were reported killed and seven wounded on the 10th consecutive day of a Serbian assault on Gorazde, one of six Muslim-held districts of Bosnia declared by the United Nations to be safe areas.

Bosnian Serb leaders have promised to let U.N. monitors into the eastern enclave, but the team of observers was again denied access and was still waiting for permission from Serbian army chief Ratko Mladic. He could not be found.

“Whether it’s gamesmanship or whether it’s something else, I don’t know,” said Cmdr. Barry Frewer, spokesman for the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia.

The U.N. Security Council voted Friday to send additional peacekeeping troops to Bosnia with increased military powers to defend the Muslim safe areas.

Frewer said his forces had not yet received new orders, adding: “We at this time are not prepared to shoot our way in. We are using negotiations to get ourselves into the area.”

Bosnia’s Muslim-led government has condemned the safe areas policy as an acceptance of Serbian military gains and fears they will be used to herd the Muslims into squalid ghettos.

Both Muslim and Serbian forces accused each other of launching offensives around Gorazde. The Muslims said the Serbs were trying to carve out a new road corridor linking towns they hold in the area.

The relief airlift to Sarajevo resumed after a four-day halt ordered because a U.S. transport plane came under fire. A convoy of 500 relief trucks organized by Bosnian Muslims was bound for the hard-pressed Muslim pocket of Tuzla in northern Bosnia.

Complicating peace efforts, Serbs in the Serb-held territory of Krajina in Croatia called a referendum on unifying their rebel state with Serb-held lands in Bosnia.

The plan for a referendum on June 19-20 would leave open the possibility of merging eventually with the republic of Serbia, the main component of what remains of Yugoslavia.