Rebel Muslim Is Said to OK Truce in Northern Bosnia : Balkans: Top U.N. commander in republic reportedly obtains pledge. Bihac fighting threatened government participation in further peace talks.

The top U.N. commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina apparently won agreement from a rebel Muslim leader Wednesday to halt clashes in the northern enclave of Bihac that threatened to derail the country’s current cease-fire.

Lt. Gen. Michael Rose flew to Bihac to meet with Muslim rebel leader Fikret Abdic and with the commander of Bosnian government troops in an urgent bid to save the cease-fire brokered by former President Jimmy Carter between the government and Serbian nationalists.

“Abdic verbally agreed to abide by the cease-fire,” U.N. spokesman Alex Ivanko said by telephone from the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

The Bosnian government had threatened to boycott negotiations on a further four-month cessation of hostilities unless the United Nations put a stop to attacks by renegade Muslims and neighboring Croatian Serbs in Bihac, a U.N.-designated “safe area.”

Abdic and his followers are seeking regional autonomy in the Bihac pocket, which borders territory in Croatia held by Croatian Serbs.

Rose tried to meet with the Croatian Serbs at their headquarters in Knin, but bad weather prevented his helicopter from landing, Ivanko said. He is scheduled to try again Friday.

Meanwhile, the U.N. spokesman in Zagreb, Thant Myint-U, said the cease-fire that went into effect on Christmas Eve in Bosnia-Herzegovina was “still essentially holding” and that fighting throughout the country had nearly ended.

“We are cautiously optimistic that the cease-fire will continue, though the past history of cease-fires in Bosnia-Herzegovina should serve to temper that optimism at least to some extent,” Thant said.

He said the broader, four-month cessation of hostilities that the government and Bosnian Serbs are negotiating would include the release of prisoners, the insertion of U.N. forces between the warring factions and the establishment of demilitarized areas.

That agreement would be a steppingstone to negotiations for an end to the war in the former Yugoslav republic.

Although Abdic initially balked at signing a three-paragraph written agreement to respect the cease-fire when he met with Rose early in the day, he later telephoned the U.N. commander and “there was a verbal assurance from Abdic that he will abide by the cease-fire,” Ivanko said.

Earlier this month, Croatian Serb soldiers refused to even allow Rose into the Bihac area to visit 1,200 Bangladeshi peacekeepers who have been cut off from regular supply convoys by Serbian forces.

The Bosnian government army commander in the region, Gen. Atif Dudakovic, referred Rose to his superiors in Sarajevo, where Rose returned Wednesday night.