Serbs Using U.N. as a Cover, Says Mission Leader

The commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia condemned Serbian nationalists Monday for using his peacekeeping mission as a cover for waging war and warned that the fall of Gorazde would unleash a humanitarian disaster.

British Lt. Gen. Michael Rose said his 15,000-strong peacekeeping force is helpless to save the overrun city, and he dismissed the likelihood of further NATO air strikes to halt the slaughter by the Serbs.

Rose said that nothing could be gained without ground forces to hold territory that might be recovered if the rebels were driven back with air power. He also made clear that he is opposed to having his troops transformed from impartial peacekeepers to combatants in the lopsided war.

In a further indication that the international community suffers paralyzing confusion over what to do in Bosnia, senior U.N. military officials have concluded that Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader negotiating with Western mediators, exercises little if any control over the Serbian gunmen under the command of Gen. Ratko Mladic.

The fiery nationalist general’s rampage against Gorazde is believed to be occurring on orders from Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital.

“Mladic has taken the upper hand, and Karadzic is extremely shattered. He saw himself as a statesman, and he is now a running dog for a warmonger,” said a senior U.N. source.

Russia’s special envoy for the Balkans, Deputy Foreign Minister Vitaly S. Churkin, also seemed to have concluded that the Bosnian Serb military machine is out of control.

“A group of Bosnian Serb extremists has fallen ill with the madness of war,” Churkin told reporters in Zagreb, Croatia, after more than a week of shuttling among Serbian leaders.

The renegade and seemingly uncontrollable assault on Gorazde, despite promises by Karadzic to call off the onslaught, prompted Rose to accuse the rebels of manipulation and deceit.

“This is a very sad week for the world when United Nations peacekeeping operations have been so blatantly used to cover the prosecution of war aims by the Bosnian Serb authorities,” Rose said.

He said Gorazde was at the mercy of the Serbian forces besieging it and conceded that the U.N. Protection Force could do virtually nothing to prevent its fall. He blamed the mission’s crippling rules of engagement--which allow peacekeeping troops to use force against combatants only when their own lives are threatened--for his inability to spare the 65,000 residents of the U.N.-protected safe area of Gorazde.

Seven U.N. special forces officers who had been deployed to the besieged town escaped back to Sarajevo under cover of night, further handcuffing the mission’s ability to call in North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes to bomb Serbian positions. Five U.N. military observers and eight relief officials are now the only foreigners left in Gorazde.

Sources at the Sarajevo command center say Rose is pressing U.N. superiors for a tougher mandate, one that would create weapons exclusion zones around Gorazde and other vulnerable safe areas. As in the demilitarized zone proclaimed around Sarajevo in February, the threat of NATO air strikes would hang over the Serbs if they refused to remove heavy weapons.

Time appeared to be running out, though, for the anguished people of Gorazde. Relief agency officials described a scene of savagery and panic.

“Shells are now dropping at random into the city center. The hospital has taken direct hits on its roof. The (International Committee of the Red Cross) refugee center is hit,” with many casualties, four stranded workers of the U.N. high commissioner for refugees reported from the raging battle zone.

Agency spokesman Kris Janowski said the Gorazde team counted at least five tank rounds crashing into or near the overcrowded hospital and described the bombardment as fierce, with shells landing every 20 seconds.

“It’s extremely alarming. We are very concerned about the fate of all the people in Gorazde. There are tens of thousands of people massed in the city,” Janowski said, estimating the displaced at 30,000.

But evacuations to ease the overcrowding--caused by those who have fled overrun villages and suburbs during the 20-day assault--are out of the question until the besieging forces agree to halt fire long enough to allow the organization of a rescue operation, Janowski said.

Relief workers in this battered capital, already exhausted by two years of trying to aid innocent victims in the midst of ongoing war, are in a quandary over how to help the displaced of Gorazde when, or if, the attacks die down.

A year ago, Serbian gunmen rolling up territory for a Greater Serbia waged a similar assault on the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, forcing humanitarian aid agencies to evacuate thousands of civilians to government-held territory.

Chaotic stampedes resulted when open trucks arrived to haul out terrified civilians, with at least six women and children crushed to death before the evacuations were called off after the United Nations designated Srebrenica a safe area.

The U.N. mission’s civilian chief, Yasushi Akashi of Japan, returned to his headquarters in Zagreb on Monday after repeated failures to secure genuine commitment by the rebel leaders to a proposed cease-fire.

Viktor Andreyev, the Russian civilian affairs chief, visited rebel headquarters in nearby Pale to discuss another truce proposal and claimed to have won Karadzic’s support for deploying a company of U.N. troops to Gorazde as well as allowing unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid.

Serbian commitments to cease-fires have proven unreliable, however, as Mladic presses on with the land-grab while Karadzic strikes an agreeable pose.

As the world watched the relentless Serbian offensive, few outsiders were as dismayed as the Russians, whose claim of influence over their Slavic brothers was shattered by the guns they could not silence. Moscow appeared to be re-examining its opposition to punishing the Serbs.

Churkin, the Russian envoy, returned abruptly to Moscow on Monday, saying Russia had been manipulated and should break off talks with Serbian leaders. “The time for talks is over now,” he declared. “The Bosnian Serbs must understand that when they deal with Russia, they are dealing with a great world power and not a banana republic.”

His remarks appeared to signal at least a change of attitude, if not of policy, in Moscow. Russia had opposed NATO bombing attacks on Serbian forces and was incensed at not being consulted in advance about the raids last week. And Russia had repeatedly called for a gradual lifting of U.N.-backed economic and military sanctions against Serbia in exchange for steps toward a cease-fire.

Churkin, a special envoy of President Boris N. Yeltsin who had spent the last nine days in Belgrade, said Monday that the Bosnian situation “can hardly be controlled” or “explained in any reasonable or logical terms.” He said the place was “on the brink of catastrophe.”

Arriving in Moscow, he gave this analysis: “Russia’s policy used to come down to a simple formula--when the Serbs would say that the entire world was up in arms against them and they were to be helped, we agreed on the condition that they would follow our instructions. Instead, the Serbs are using Russia’s policy as a screen.”

The Russian envoy indicated he was ready to recommend that Yeltsin support new NATO air strikes on Serbian positions. That would be a risky position for the Russian president, who could face an outcry of ultranationalist and centrist opposition at home in the event of new bombings. Also, the Russians are as reluctant as the West to engage their peacekeeping troops in a ground war in the former Yugoslav federation.

Meantime, in Sarajevo, almost 2,000 people demonstrated against U.N. capitulation to Serbian aggression, accusing Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of abandoning them to a brutal fate. “We have learned our lesson,” Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic told the aggrieved, angry crowd. “The lesson is we have to be strong, because in this world only force is respected.”

More than 200,000 people are dead or missing since Serbian nationalists rebelled against Bosnian independence in March, 1992. They have since conquered 70% of the country.

Times staff writer Richard Boudreaux in Moscow contributed to this report.