Bosnian Serbs Expel 800 Muslims From Town

Hundreds of Muslims were reportedly dragged from their homes or rounded up on the streets of a northeastern Bosnian town as Serbian leaders warned Sunday of an all-out war and recommended that their legislature reject an international peace plan.

About 800 Muslims--men older than 50, women and children--were rounded up this weekend in Bijeljina by a Bosnian Serb paramilitary group, according to eyewitnesses in the town near Bosnia’s border with Serbia.

U.N. officials confirmed the forced expulsions, the biggest since September, from the town of 35,000, where Muslims were in the majority before Serbian forces took it over in April, 1992.

The expulsions are yet another sign of Serbian defiance of the international community’s insistence that Bosnia-Herzegovina remain a unified country composed of two ethnic mini-states.

The clock is ticking toward Tuesday’s deadline for the rival assemblies of the Bosnian Serb and Muslim-Croatian federation to vote on the peace plan.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic put it bluntly, saying the Serbs would say “no if the international community presses us into a corner,” the Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA reported.

The plan gives the Muslim-Croatian federation 51% of Bosnia, forcing the Serbs to pull back from some of the 70% of the country they have conquered during two years of war.

The Bosnian government has indicated that it will recommend that its Parliament adopt the plan when deputies meet in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo today, but only because Serbian rejection is likely. Bosnian Serb Deputy Premier Vitomir Popovic said the plan put forward by the United States, Russia and Western European countries is “absolutely unacceptable for the Serbian people and should be rejected in its entirety.”

By voting against the plan, Bosnian Serb representatives to the self-styled assembly would defy threats of tightened U.N. sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro, which together make up what remains of Yugoslavia, and risk the lifting of the arms embargo against Bosnia’s Muslim-led government. They say the plan would mean surrendering their “state” and 13 important towns and strategic territory. The plan forces them to concede land in the northern corridor, which is key for linking Serbia proper with Serb-held territory in Bosnia and Croatia.

Karadzic warned of a total war if the Serbs vote for an outright rejection, saying, “In this case, all people will have to be mobilized, including women.” Diplomats, however, believe the Serbian assembly will try to couch their “no” as a “yes, but” vote in the hopes of breaking the fragile consensus in the international community.

But U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry said Sunday that NATO and the United States face deeper military involvement in Bosnia whether or not the warring parties decide to accept the peace plan, the Associated Press reported.

If the factions reject the plan, it could lead to rapid expansion of North Atlantic Treaty Organization air protection of “safe areas” and a spread of the civil war to other nations, Perry warned during a visit to Romania.

Even if the plan is accepted, it will mean sending thousands of U.S. and other peacekeeping troops to Bosnia, he said.

Until the weekend’s attempt by Serbs to expel any remaining minorities in what they hope will be a Greater Serbia, about 4,000 Muslims remained in Bijeljina, many losing their jobs, property and homes.

“We fear for our lives,” said a non-Serb woman speaking by telephone from the town on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals. “They barged into the apartment of an old Muslim woman and dragged her away.”