Serbs Block U.N. Relief Convoy for Muslims

Serbian forces blocked a U.N. relief column heading for the besieged Muslim enclave of Gorazde on Monday.

U.N. refugee agency spokeswoman Lyndall Sachs said the Serbs halted the 10-truck relief convoy, which set out Sunday from Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, with 80 tons of food and medicine, at Podromanija, a village about 56 miles from Gorazde.

Sachs said that Serbian forces agreed after hours of negotiations to let the relief trucks through this morning. In the meantime, the convoy was turning back to spend the night in the town of Pale near the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

The convoy was sent after desperate appeals for help from the leaders of Gorazde--cut off since the start of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s civil war among Muslims, Croats and Serbs almost 15 months ago and now the last independent Muslim pocket in eastern Bosnia.

Serbs stopped shelling the U.N.-designated safe area last week after U.N. military observers arrived there, but they are still attacking its front lines.

Gorazde has relied on airdrops of food by the U.S. Air Force since the last aid convoy was allowed to cross Serbian lines May 25.

Meanwhile, fighting flared between Muslim-led government troops and Croats in central Bosnia amid signs of a Croatian offensive in retaliation for recent gains by government forces.

Twelve people died overnight in heavy shelling of Jablanica, about 50 miles west of Sarajevo, said a U.N. spokesman, Maj. Pepe Gallegos. Croatian forces fired the shells, U.N. sources said.

A Bosnia-wide truce was supposed to silence guns on Friday. But the Muslims who dominate the Bosnian government army and their Bosnian Croat rivals are engaged in increasingly fierce fighting for territory as pressure mounts for a three-way division of Bosnia among Croats, Serbs and Muslims.

The Bosnian army, which seized control of the central Bosnian town of Travnik two weeks ago, said that Croatian forces began moving into offensive positions and bringing tanks up to front lines in various central Bosnian areas over the weekend.