France Threatens to Pull Balkans Peacekeepers : Bosnia: Shaken by deaths of two soldiers, Paris wants extended cease-fire and loosened rules on the use of force.

The French government, reeling from the recent killings of two of its soldiers, threatened Tuesday to pull its 4,500 peacekeepers out of the Balkans unless warring parties in Bosnia-Herzegovina extend their cease-fire, due to expire April 30, and resume peace talks.

The French also demanded that the U.N. Security Council adopt new measures to loosen rules governing the use of force by U.N. peacekeepers.

“The continuing degradation of conditions (in Bosnia) seriously compromises the security of peacekeepers,” Prime Minister Edouard Balladur said in a statement issued here. Without a show of good faith from the parties involved, he added, France “must decide in favor of the withdrawal of French soldiers in Bosnia.”

Earlier, he had warned, “We can’t stay there eternally if peaceful conditions are not reinforced and if we aren’t wanted there.”

The Security Council began a round of closed-door meetings on the French demands, and Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said he expects a vote by the end of the week. Juppe said that the French want a clearer definition of the mission and the rules of engagement of the U.N. force, as well as better equipment to protect the peacekeepers from attacks.

“We can’t ask soldiers, no matter how brave they are, to fulfill a mission without giving them the means to do it,” he told a news conference at the United Nations.

The French threat came amid growing concern here that the United Nations has lost control of the situation in the former Yugoslav federation. Last week, two French peacekeepers were killed in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, one in an incident that Paris blames on the Bosnian Muslims. That brought the number of French soldiers killed in the former Yugoslav federation to 33--the most fatalities of any peacekeeping contingent there.

Meanwhile, Bosnian Serbs shelled the only land route out of Sarajevo on Tuesday, and explosions and gunfire rattled the capital. Most of the more than 30 mortar rounds fired by Bosnian Serbs came from 120-millimeter weapons, which are subject to a ban on heavy weapons around the capital.

Sarajevo’s airport is under the control of French troops but is surrounded by Bosnian Serb gunners, who, angered by U.N. policies that allow select Bosnians on flights, have refused to assure its security. The airport has been closed to U.N. humanitarian aid flights since April 8.

Even Victor Jackovich, the retiring U.S. ambassador to Bosnia, was forced to take a car over the dangerous land route out of the capital late Monday after Bosnian Serbs refused to guarantee the safety of his flight aboard a U.N. aircraft.

Jackovich and his eight-member American entourage left Bosnia safely, but Secretary of State Warren Christopher on Tuesday denounced the Bosnian Serb threat as “unjustified and outrageous.”

Lt. Col. Gary Coward, chief U.N. military spokesman, acknowledged that the United Nations is considering a demand by Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic to ban Bosnian government passport holders from U.N. flights. “We will negotiate to get the airport open in order to get supplies in and feed the people of (Sarajevo),” Coward said. Bosnian government officials complained that the United Nations is caving in to rebel demands.

Lt. Gen. Rupert Smith, the U.N. commander in Bosnia, is to travel today to Bosnian Serb headquarters in Pale to try to resolve the airport standoff.

France had already made threats to pull its troops out of Bosnia. But it still has the largest contingent of peacekeepers in the former Yugoslav federation; more than half of its troops are stationed in Sarajevo. In all, 44,000 troops from 38 countries are deployed in the region, where an estimated 250,000 people, including 159 peacekeepers, have been killed in nearly four years of fighting.

Among other things, France is asking that the Security Council adopt new rules of engagement for peacekeepers, expanding conditions under which they can act in self-defense and increasing their weaponry.

Juppe met Tuesday in New York with Christopher, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd and German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel.

Christopher said the four nations, partners with Russia in the five-power Contact Group on Bosnia, are “trying to fashion a pattern” to end the bloody ethnic war. But he admitted that the ministers were unable to come up with a magic formula.

In contrast to a U.N. investigation in Sarajevo, which concluded that it was impossible to determine who had fatally shot the French troops, Juppe said it appears that one of the two French soldiers killed last week was the victim of a Bosnian Muslim sniper.

“The situation in Bosnia is unacceptable,” he said, adding that the U.N. force “is not able to fulfill its mission and the blue helmets are assassinated, sometimes by the people they are there to protect.”

Times staff writer Norman Kempster at the United Nations contributed to this report.