U.N. Expects to Resume Troop Flights : Bosnia: Reopening of Sarajevo's airport would be first in nearly a month. Karadzic's vows credited.

U.N. Expects to Resume Troop Flights : Bosnia: Reopening of Sarajevo’s airport would be first in nearly a month. Karadzic’s vows credited.

By DEAN E. MURPHY

Dec. 17, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

ZAGREB, Croatia —

Banking on goodwill pledges that the Bosnian Serb leader made to former President Jimmy Carter, the U.N. Protection Force said it expects to resume troop-rotation flights to the Sarajevo airport today for the first time in nearly a month.

The likely reopening of the airport is seen as a key test of the sincerity of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who this week professed a new willingness to settle the intractable civil war. The airport in the Bosnian capital has been closed since Nov. 21, when the Bosnian Serbs rescinded safe-passage guarantees in retaliation for North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strikes against the Serbs’ targets.

“Troop rotation is a very normal activity,” U.N. spokeswoman Claire Grimes said. “This would mean a speck of normalization is appearing on the horizon.”

In an effort to draw Carter into the peace process, possibly as early as Sunday, Karadzic put forward six proposals to ease the tense standoff in Bosnia-Herzegovina, including resuming flights at the airport, ensuring free movement of humanitarian relief convoys and instituting a cease-fire in the Sarajevo area.

Skeptical U.N. officials and the Muslim-led Bosnian government have taken a wait-and-see attitude toward the proposals, saying their implementation would only restore the status quo before relations rapidly deteriorated this fall.

But officials acknowledged that any movement would constitute progress, and on Friday the United Nations cautiously indicated that Karadzic appeared to be fulfilling at least some of his pledges.

U.N. officials backed off earlier reports that hinted that Bosnian Serbs were probably responsible for an attack on a U.N. helicopter near Sarajevo on Thursday. An investigation Friday revealed that the helicopter, which was struck in the tail with 12 rounds of small-arms fire, never passed over territory controlled by the Bosnian Serb army, meaning it was probably fired upon by Bosnian government forces.

Although intense fighting continued near the Muslim farm town of Velika Kladusa in northwest Bosnia, the perpetrators there have been Croatian Serbs and rebel Muslims not directly under Karadzic’s command. Further south in Bihac, where Bosnian Serbs had been shelling regularly, it was relatively quiet Friday for the first time in days, a U.N. spokeswoman said.

Relief officials said a convoy with 120 tons of food that had been delayed for 48 hours at Croatian Serb checkpoints was permitted into Bihac, although it was unclear what role Karadzic might have played in getting it through. The convoy was only the second in a month to reach the U.N.-declared “safe area,” where 180,000 people have barely enough food to survive.

“The people of Bihac have had only an ounce of food a day arrive in the last 6 1/2 months,” said Peter Kessler of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “They have been sustaining themselves off stocks and the summer harvest. They will need a lot more than this.”

In another small sign of progress, the Bosnian Serbs also signed off Friday on an additional 13 relief convoys into Sarajevo over the next three weeks, which would mean 3,500 tons of food and supplies for the depleted capital, Kessler said.

Even with a surge in convoys, only about half of Sarajevo’s needs can be met without a resumption of the humanitarian airlift.