As Battles Rage, Muslims Wait for Relief in Besieged Gorazde

Outgunned defenders of the Muslim enclave of Gorazde battled Serbian besiegers Sunday as hungry residents awaited a long-delayed U.N. relief convoy.

The convoy left Belgrade on Sunday afternoon. It is to arrive in Gorazde today after spending the night in Pale, the Bosnian Serb stronghold southeast of Sarajevo. No convoy has reached Gorazde since May 25.

The enclave has been supplied with airdrops, including one overnight Friday. But aid officials say that the area, which includes the city of Gorazde and the surrounding area, is too big to be effectively supplied from the air, so its 60,000 residents and refugees must depend heavily on convoys.

Serbs control the access routes and until Saturday had blocked the use of roads considered safe by U.N. officials.

Fighting around Gorazde, the last Muslim-controlled pocket in southeastern Bosnia, persisted into Sunday, U.N. officials said.

In Belgrade, former Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic returned from Southern California on Sunday to meet Serbian opposition leaders, aides said.

“He will have blitz consultations with leaders of opposition parties in Serbia,” an aide to Panic said.

Panic, a Yugoslav-born Orange County businessman who swore to restore democracy in Serbia, was ousted by extreme nationalists in a no-confidence vote in the federal Parliament in January.