Bosnia’s Serbs Start to Comply With Ultimatum

Bosnian Serb forces near Sarajevo held their fire Friday and finally began complying with a Western ultimatum to pull their heavy weapons outside the city’s 12-mile exclusion zone, as U.N. and NATO forces began moving to enforce a cease-fire there.

After a slow start Thursday, punctuated by at least one violation of the truce, Bosnian Serb militia units were reported slowly moving their artillery away from the outskirts of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s besieged capital, while Muslims inside Sarajevo turned their heavy weapons over to U.N. peacekeeping forces.

The developments came as the Clinton Administration, after months of hesitation, began pressing Bosnia’s Muslim-led government to accept a compromise settlement of the war in the former Yugoslav republic, promising that it will meet the Muslims’ “reasonable requirements.”

To help the negotiations succeed, officials warned that they may use military action against the Bosnian Serbs if they do not cooperate and affirmed that the United States is willing to send as many as 15,000 troops to help carry out any new agreement.

U.S. officials denied that their new approach is designed to pressure the Muslims into accepting a three-way partition of Bosnia. In fact, the Muslims had already agreed to such a division during earlier rounds of negotiations.

The pullout by the Bosnian Serb units followed an incident late Thursday in which the first day of the cease-fire was broken by the firing of two artillery shells into the city, accompanied by a barrage of machine-gun fire that witnesses said lasted 10 minutes.

However, U.S. officials said Friday that North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders had decided to treat the incident as an aberration. The shelling on Thursday was brief and was believed to be the result of renegade units on both sides seeking to sabotage the truce.

Meanwhile, the United States and its NATO partners began deploying 24 additional fighter-bombers and other aircraft to bases in Italy to help enforce the NATO ultimatum. The NATO council on Wednesday threatened the Bosnian Serbs with air strikes unless they withdraw their heavy weapons from the hills around Sarajevo or put them under U.N. control by Feb. 21.

The Pentagon said that it was dispatching eight more F-15Es to join the air armada.

Bosnian officials welcomed the U.S. negotiating initiative, even though they acknowledged that any settlement that resulted would mean the division of Bosnia into three religious-ethnic areas, something that they long had sought to avoid.

“I’d say we are relieved to see the United States more involved,” said Muhamed Sacirbey, Bosnia’s U.N. ambassador. “We understand the limitations on our ability to maneuver. . . . At this point, all we are seeking is minimal justice and a viable Bosnian state.”

Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff said that the new diplomatic initiative includes a threat of further action against the Bosnian Serbs if they do not cooperate and a U.S. pledge to provide thousands of peacekeeping troops to help implement the plan.

At the same time, however, officials said that the Administration, obviously worried about the adverse public reaction it has received over the peacekeeping mission in Somalia, has pared back the number of U.S. troops that it is willing to deploy in Bosnia.

Former Defense Secretary Les Aspin had told U.S. NATO partners last year that the United States was willing to provide about half of the 50,000-man force initially estimated. But officials said that President Clinton has now cut that to one-third, calling it “more realistic.”

Besides the longer-range F-15E Strike Eagles, the additional air package includes two U.S. AC-130 gunships and two EC-130 electronic surveillance planes. Officials said that the fighters are equipped with special night-capability radar.

The U.S. aircraft will be joined by four F-16 fighters from the Netherlands, eight F-16s from Turkey and four Jaguar fighters from Britain. Most had been sent to enforce the “no-fly” zone over Bosnia but had returned to their bases weeks ago.

U.S. Navy Adm. Jeremy M. Boorda, commander of the NATO military operation, said Friday that the deployments will bring the total number of allied fighter-bombers available to enforce the ultimatum to 160, up from 136.

As the transfer of weapons to the United Nations began, U.N. commanders deployed their peacekeeping forces throughout the city to serve as buffers between Bosnian Serb troops and Muslim residents. Strategists hope that their presence will deter further Serbian attacks.

Meanwhile, Clinton and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin finally spoke by telephone about Bosnia, after being foiled for two days by what officials said Friday were line problems between Moscow and Yeltsin’s vacation home.

Clinton told reporters after the 30-minute call that “we agreed we had the same long-term objective, which was achieving a just peace agreement, and the same short-term objective, to relieve the shelling of Sarajevo.”

But the two men apparently remained far apart on whether further action by the United Nations is needed before the NATO ultimatum can take effect. The Security Council had been scheduled to meet Friday to discuss a companion Russian plan but did not do so because of poor weather in New York.

In a briefing at the State Department, officials told reporters thatthe United States hopes to press the Bosnians to come up with a negotiating proposal focusing on their bottom-line needs--a process Clinton has called “getting to the bedrock,” one aide said.

Then, they said, the United States and the European Union will endorse the plan and try to persuade the Bosnian Serbs and Croats to agree to it.

Other senior officials said that they expect the Bosnians to come forward soon with a proposal based on the plan already negotiated by European Union mediator Lord Owen and U.N. envoy Thorvald Stoltenberg.

That plan would turn Bosnia into a loose confederation of three areas--predominantly Serbian, Croatian and Muslim--and give the Muslims one-third of the republic’s territory, the Croats 17.5% and the Serbs 49.1%.

The Muslim-led government has already accepted both of those principles. The Bosnian government--and the Clinton Administration--once hoped to avoid the country’s partition, but by last fall both had accepted it as inevitable.

Two territorial issues remain to be negotiated. One is the Bosnian government’s demand for an outlet to the Adriatic Sea at the Croatian port of Neum and access to the Sava River, an important inland shipping route. A senior State Department official said several proposals have been made to meet that request.

A second issue is the fate of three largely Muslim towns surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces in the eastern part of the country, Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde. The Serbs have suggested that the Muslims abandon the towns and trade them for land near Sarajevo.

The Bosnian government, pointing out that Muslims have lived in the towns for centuries, wants to keep them as safe havens and connect them with road corridors to the rest of their territory.

“This has been the hardest issue of all . . . and it may continue to be,” the senior official said.

He said that the Administration expects the Bosnians to come up with a workable proposal soon.

He added that U.S. officials have told the Bosnian government in strong terms that it should not hold out in the belief that it can win more on the battlefield.

“The notion of a spring offensive that would roll up big gains against the Serbs is a chimera,” he said.

If the Bosnian Serbs refuse to accept a reasonable proposal, on the other hand, the United States will go to its allies and propose both military and non-military pressure to bring them around.

Such actions could include air strikes against Serbian supply lines and weapons concentrations, one official said, adding that the Administration has not yet decided to seek such action.

Tarnoff and other officials said the Administration would still require that several conditions be met before deploying any American troops in Bosnia--chief among them that a peace agreement be in place and the first steps already be taken to implement it and that the warring factions agree that they want the peacekeepers to come.

Times staff writers Sonni Efron in Moscow and David Lauter in Washington contributed to this article.