Plan for U.N. Control Backed for Sarajevo

The three leaders of Bosnia’s warring parties Monday reached an “agreement in principle” to place Sarajevo under U.N. control and demilitarize the Bosnian capital as part of a settlement to end 16 months of war.

John Mills, spokesman for the Geneva peace talks on Bosnia-Herzegovina, said the rival leaders agreed to set up a committee of Muslim, Serbian and Croatian representatives to make recommendations to international mediators on the future status of embattled Sarajevo.

If carried out, the proposal could reopen the besieged city: The demilitarization would include the surrounding high ground from which Serbian gunners regularly pound Sarajevo.

Serbian rebels have already vacated two key peaks, Mt. Bjelasnica and Mt. Igman, that overlook the city and control access to critical supply routes.

Control of Sarajevo has long been a sticking point at the talks, and Mills cautioned Monday that the accord is preliminary. “We are not talking about a final agreement here,” he said. “The devil is always in the details.”

Mills said the plan will cover nine out of 10 districts of Sarajevo. It excludes Pale, the Serbian mountain stronghold nine miles from the capital.

“The parties accept as a basic principle the exclusion of all armed forces except the United Nations,” he said. The leaders agreed to allow U.N. military observers to go anywhere in the country.

The tripartite committee that will hammer out details of the plan includes Momcilo Krajisnik, Speaker of the self-styled Bosnian Serb assembly, Muhamed Filipovic, a leading Muslim opposition politician, and Miro Lasic, a Croatian member of Bosnia’s collective presidency. The panel is scheduled to make its first report today.

The agreement appeared to give the peace talks a needed boost as Bosnia’s Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, returned to the negotiating table for the first time in two weeks. He insisted that the question of Sarajevo be placed at the top of the agenda when he resumed face-to-face meetings with his Serbian and Croatian adversaries.

The talks had stalled while Serbian political and military leaders played cat and mouse with the international community amid threats of air bombardment by allied Western forces if the rebels did not withdraw from the two strategic mountains. Negotiations resumed Monday only after Serbian troops withdrew from those positions, which they seized after the talks began on July 27.

The announcement of the accord coincided with a declaration by one member of Bosnia’s leadership that U.N. spokesman Cmdr. Barry Frewer was persona non grata in Sarajevo, after Frewer questioned whether the Bosnian capital was still under siege.

Pointedly avoiding the word “siege,” Frewer described the situation in Sarajevo as one of “encirclement” by the Serbs from “tactically advantageous positions.”

Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic dismissed Frewer’s statement as “irresponsible.” He said it had caused “bitterness” among Sarajevo’s 350,000 trapped inhabitants, who endure chronic shortages of food, water and electricity.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mike McCurry acknowledged that the “siege” of Sarajevo may be over in a narrow, military-textbook definition of the word, but he said the Bosnian capital still faces “strangulation” from surrounding Serbian fighters. He said the NATO warning of possible air strikes will remain in effect until Serbian forces allow adequate food, water, medicine, electrical power and other essential supplies into Sarajevo and other Bosnian towns.

“The warning that we have issued to the Serbs certainly remains in effect,” McCurry said. “The Serbs know what is expected of them.

“There has undeniably been a modest amount of improvement in the situation,” he said. “But we stress that we’re looking for a continued improvement over time in the conditions that exist on the ground for those citizens who are, in a sense, trapped in Sarajevo.”

McCurry acknowledged that U.N. commanders in Bosnia are opposed to air strikes and certainly are unlikely to request them. But he said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization could order attacks even without a U.N. request.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher sent a U.S. intelligence assessment of the situation to all other NATO foreign ministers over the weekend, McCurry said. It called for the alliance to continue to make plans for military intervention if conditions in Bosnia do not improve dramatically.

“As the secretary has told his counterpart NATO foreign ministers . . , the withdrawal from the mountaintops was a necessary step but it is certainly not an entirely sufficient step,” McCurry said. “We need to see the strangulation of Sarajevo ceased.”

While Sarajevo dominated the Geneva talks, the future map of a partitioned Bosnia remained in dispute. Under intense pressure, Izetbegovic reluctantly has accepted Bosnia’s division along ethnic lines. But the leaders still have to agree on eastern Bosnia, which borders Serbia and where, before the war, Muslims were the majority.

The Muslims now are confined to six pockets, proclaimed as U.N. safe areas.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his Croatian counterpart Mate Boban stepped up pressure on Izetbegovic on Monday to accept their proposed partition maps, which would leave the mostly Muslim Bosnian republic in remnants.

While the peace envoys consider placing Sarajevo under U.N. administration, Izetbegovic remains up against a threat by Karadzic that if he rejects the Serbian-Croatian offer, “the Muslims will be left with nothing at all.”

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.