Serbian Gunmen Poised to Overrun Besieged Enclave : Bosnia: Muslim government denounces U.N.’s unwillingness to use force against Gorazde’s attackers. Peacekeeping mission in crisis after officer is killed.

Bosnian Serb forces crushed government defense lines around Gorazde in a massive attack Friday that killed a British special forces officer and plunged the U.N. mission into a crisis over whether to abandon the proclaimed safe area on the verge of collapse.

The Bosnian government accused the United Nations of signing Gorazde’s death warrant and betraying the very people whom the peacekeeping mission was sent to protect.

“They are scared to death of the thugs in the mountains. We are not,” Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic angrily pronounced after Yasushi Akashi, the civilian chief of the U.N. Protection Force, made it clear that he was not prepared to use force against the Serbian gunmen poised to overrun Gorazde.

Silajdzic said he had been reliably informed that the U.N. commander for Bosnia, British Lt. Gen. Michael Rose, had appealed for further NATO bombings after two British officers deployed as forward air commanders were wounded by the Serbian onslaught around 5 p.m.

But Akashi was in the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale at the time and chose to pursue Serbian promises of a cease-fire instead, according to both Silajdzic and U.N. spokesman Dacre Holloway.

At one point, Rose ordered the evacuation of all U.N. military and relief workers from the besieged enclave. He then reversed course and told crews of two helicopters dispatched to Gorazde to bring out only one of the two wounded British officers. The evacuated soldier was later pronounced dead.

Holloway said the nine remaining U.N. troops were being left in Gorazde “for the moment” because the city was still in government hands.

The initial pullout order suggested that the U.N. mission was willing to risk a Serbian conquest of Gorazde rather than rile Bosnian Serb gunmen who have taken more than 200 U.N. troops captive in retaliation for air strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Gorazde, a refugee-packed town of 65,000, is one of six U.N.-designated safe zones for the victims of the 2-year-old Serbian nationalist siege.

“The Serbs are on the edge of town. The situation is very serious. It’s possible the Serbs will take the town in the very near future,” Holloway said.

The reports from U.N. and Bosnian officials indicated that an internal conflict has erupted within the peacekeeping mission, which earlier this week called in NATO air strikes against Serbian ground forces for the first time in the conflict.

At a volatile midnight news conference that Rose called off after less than five minutes, Akashi praised the Serbs who had mortally wounded the British soldier for facilitating his evacuation.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic assured Akashi that his gunmen would hold their fire while the United Nations pulled its soldiers and aid workers out, the mission chief reported.

But Lt. Romain Kuntz, the French helicopter pilot who flew the evacuation mission, said his Puma aircraft was fired on as it lifted off from Gorazde. He told reporters at the hospital helipad here that he had seen heavy fighting, mortar and artillery fire across a wide arc near the enclave.

Akashi, who has the final word on the military plans drafted by Rose, denied reports that he had rejected air strikes. He declined to answer when asked if the U.N. mission has become reluctant to resort to force again because the Serbian gunmen ringing Sarajevo might retaliate against U.N. troops taken captive over the last three days.

Since NATO jets destroyed two Serbian tank positions Sunday and Monday, Karadzic and his hard-line military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, have condemned the U.N. mission as an aggressor and announced that they are severing contacts with the peacekeeping force. The detentions and booby traps set up around U.N. facilities have provided the nationalist commanders with a human shield they apparently are counting on to deter further air strikes.

Maj. Rob Annink, chief spokesman for the 13,000-strong U.N. contingent in Bosnia, had acknowledged earlier Friday that the Serbs had likely nabbed U.N. personnel for their own protection. “We feel they want to have some sort of deterrence against another use of air force by NATO,” he said.

Even after a French NATO jet was hit by ground fire while flying a reconnaissance mission over Gorazde and the two British officers were wounded by the Serbs, U.N. officials said the mission commander continued to prefer negotiations over force.

NATO’s Southern European Command headquarters in Naples, Italy, reported that a French reconnaissance aircraft was hit in the tail by antiaircraft fire but returned safely to the aircraft carrier Clemenceau in the Adriatic.

U.N. aid workers in Gorazde reported unrelenting shelling of the town, contradicting U.N. reports from the public affairs office in Sarajevo claiming that hostilities had died down.

Bosnian radio claimed that Serbs were moving heavy artillery back into the 12-mile exclusion zone declared around Sarajevo after a NATO ultimatum in February forced the rebels to pull back the weapons with which they had bombarded the capital for two years.

U.N. spokesmen said they had no corroborating reports of such redeployments but confirmed a marked increase in small-arms and sniper fire.

After four civilians were felled by snipers firing on the city’s recently reactivated central tram line, that transportation service was shut down again in a telling admission of defeat.

Akashi had spent several hours in Pale in an attempt to resurrect peace negotiations that had dragged on for nearly two years and were ruptured by the Serbs in anger at being targeted for air strikes.

Serbian media had been reporting an imminent breakthrough on a cease-fire that the rebels had proposed in hopes of freezing the territorial status quo, which would leave them with more than 70% of Bosnian territory.

But after word of the intensified Gorazde offensive reached Sarajevo, the optimistic tone of mission officials evaporated.

Akashi issued another appeal to the Serbs “to cease hostilities in and around Gorazde,” but another U.N. civilian lamented that a peace settlement “has never seemed so far away.”

Another U.N. source noted that the continued presence of U.N. forces in the battle zone gave the mission a stronger incentive to protect the enclave and that forward air controllers would be vital in the event further air strikes are called for.

The U.N. Security Council issued a non-binding statement Friday night, condemning the violence around Gorazde. But the world body did not mention punitive action or identify the Serbs as attackers.

In Washington, Clinton Administration officials said that NATO stands ready to launch air strikes if the United Nations asks for them.

“We’ve made it clear that we stand by our commitment” to launch air strikes on request, State Department spokesman Mike McCurry said. “We have not had any request from Gen. Rose.”

Meantime, U.S. officials sent strong warnings to the Serbs--through the United Nations and Russia--to call off their offensive or face retaliation. “There has been extensive diplomacy aimed at getting the Serbs to stop,” he said.

McCurry refused to say what the United States might do if the Serbs took Gorazde.

Several officials said no major NATO military action was imminent. Nor did Clinton convene any meetings with top advisers. But a senior official said Clinton’s foreign policy team began to discuss what to do next in a series of conference calls Friday.

Through most of the day, Clinton and other U.S. officials sought to downplay the prospect that Gorazde might fall or that the fighting might escalate.

“The United States has no interest in having NATO become involved in this war and trying to gain advantage for one side over the other,” Clinton said at the White House. “So I’d say our position is to be firm but not provocative, and not trying to change the military balance. We need to get the negotiations back on track.”

Times staff writer Doyle McManus in Washington contributed to this report.