Serbs’ Withdrawal Overstated, U.N. Says : Bosnia: Spokesman tones down enthusiasm over pullback. He says handfuls of artillery, not ‘convoys,’ are being removed from Sarajevo.

The chief spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia on Friday sought to tone down earlier enthusiasm over the first sizable pullback of heavy weapons from Sarajevo by rebel Serbs, saying he was wrong to have suggested entire convoys had been seen leaving the gun batteries ringing the city.

In a sign that the artillery withdrawal remains sporadic in advance of a 1 a.m. Monday deadline that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization set for punitive air strikes if the weapons are not pulled back or neutralized, Col. Bill Aikman amended his previous characterization of the first significant Bosnian Serb relocation of heavy weaponry. He said the pace had picked up from the few handfuls of aged artillery pieces turned over to the United Nations in the first week of the 10-day withdrawal period, “but to describe them as convoys was going too far.”

His declaration late Thursday that U.N. monitors had watched entire convoys of weaponry being withdrawn suggested a mass-scale pullback by the rebels.

In talks with U.N. Protection Force chief of mission Yasushi Akashi on Friday, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic reiterated his promise to comply with the deadline for relocation or surrender of all tanks, mortars and rocket launchers from the high ground around Sarajevo.

Aikman declined to give specifics of how much weaponry has been moved out of the 12-mile radius of Sarajevo that NATO has ordered demilitarized. But his cautious descriptions of the latest withdrawals suggested they included no tanks.

Akashi was given assurances by both Karadzic and the greatly outgunned Bosnian government that they would complete the artillery surrender even 24 hours ahead of the deadline, said his spokesman, Peter MacFarlane.

It has been estimated that the Serbian nationalists, who have besieged Sarajevo since April, 1992, have as many as 500 heavy artillery pieces on the edge of the city.

Unwelcome side effects of the first serious Western push to end the siege became clear as U.N. officials scrambled to aid the Serbs’ partial retreat.

All of the nearly 800 additional troops relocated to Sarajevo within the past few days to back 3,000 already deployed in this shattered capital were borrowed from other peacekeeping or aid delivery projects in the volatile region, Aikman said.

“There’s a crunch on. These people have jobs where they came from, and they’ve got to go back someday,” he said.

A U.N. appeal for 3,000 to 4,000 more troops to enforce a cease-fire here and oversee the capital’s demilitarization was met with resounding silence when it was issued last week. And the U.N. mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina is already short several thousand troops for protection of six “safe areas” proclaimed in the republic nine months ago, because contributing countries have become fearful of sending soldiers to what they see as a dangerous and largely unfocused mission.

The troop shortage has compelled the newly arrived U.N. commander for Bosnian-based forces, British Lt. Gen. Michael Rose, to borrow troops assigned to protect aid convoys in central Bosnia.

Aikman declined to say whether that action was the cause or a consequence of a decision by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees here to evacuate about 40% of its aid workers from Bosnia for security regions.

“It’s a standard security measure. It’s better to have a small staff during a tense security situation,” said one official of the U.N. refugee agency, explaining the quiet move to get aid workers out of the areas most vulnerable to possible retaliation by rebel Serbs.

U.N. officials have sought to cast the Serbian weapons withdrawals as solid evidence that the NATO ultimatum has succeeded, and some have suggested a similar formula of regional demilitarization might be applied throughout Bosnia in stages as a means of gradually ending the war that has killed well over 200,000 and driven 2 million from their homes.

But the persistent dearth of U.N. troops to enforce peace measures threatens to lead to a situation in which the besieging rebels simply move their artillery from one vulnerable region to another, drawing token U.N. deployments that enforce the status quo of fractured enclaves created by “ethnic cleansing.”