NATO Offers to Help Reinforce Peacekeepers

In a major sign of hardening international resolve to confront the Bosnian Serbs, the most powerful Western military powers Tuesday declared they were prepared to help reinforce beleaguered United Nations peacekeepers in the Balkans.

Foreign ministers of the 16-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in a formal declaration on the Bosnia-Herzegovina crisis, also underscored their readiness to renew air strikes at the United Nations’ request.

“We will not be intimidated,” NATO Secretary General Willy Claes told reporters at a news conference after a daylong meeting here. “The U.N. peacekeeping force must stay, with its safety enhanced in a way that allows it to carry out its mission.”

NATO foreign ministers, in a separate development with important implications for Europe’s future, also forged a new relationship with Russia. They won Moscow’s agreement to enter a permanent dialogue with the alliance, its former enemy, as well as Russia’s agreement to cooperate in activities with NATO.

In other Balkans-related developments Tuesday:

* The Bosnian Serbs took more peacekeepers hostage and continued their defiance of the international community.

* British Prime Minister John Major talked tough and dispatched more troops to the Balkans. Even as the first wave of this force began to arrive, however, there were signs that it too already was tangled in the Yugoslav tumult.

* Secretary of State Warren Christopher repeated in the Netherlands that there are no plans for American forces to join U.N. peacekeepers but stressed that the United States is ready to assist in strengthening the world body’s Balkan operation by supplying equipment and airlift capacity if requested to do so by its allies. Clinton Administration aides later said in Washington that U.S. ground troops might help transport or protect U.N. soldiers, though they would not be used in narrowly defined combat roles.

The Front Lines

Bosnian Serbs captured seven more peacekeepers Tuesday--this time Ukrainians seized from their observation post in the U.N.-protected eastern enclave of Gorazde. The Muslim-held town appears to be on the verge of falling into Serbian hands, following the capture there of British peacekeepers earlier this week.

At their headquarters in Pale, spokesmen for Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic labeled the hostages “prisoners of war” and said their “destiny” rests in the hands of their commanders.

“The solution is very simple,” said Aleksa Buha, the self-styled foreign minister of the self-declared Bosnian Serb Republic (RS). “The international community must commit itself publicly not to bomb the RS anymore and all those prisoners would be released in a couple of hours.”

Some peacekeepers remained chained to potential NATO air-strike targets, despite a promise from the commander of the Bosnian Serb army, Gen. Ratko Mladic, to halt the practice, U.N. officials said.

Still, U.N. officials said the Bosnian Serbs were treating the captives reasonably well and had released some Russians, traditional Serbian allies, as well as six French soldiers.

“According to what information we have . . . our people have not been abused, and the conditions of their detention . . . [have] been moderate,” Fred Eckhard, spokesman for the U.N. special envoy, said in Zagreb, Croatia.

Maj. William Taylor, U.N. senior operations officer, said Bosnian Serbs continue to take weapons and heavy military equipment from weapons collection points in the Sarajevo area. On Monday, he said, the Bosnian Serbs took a tank, three antiaircraft guns and five mortars from one site alone.

Taylor said the Bosnian Serbs have also captured 16 French armored vehicles. Two weeks ago, they hijacked a French supply truck, giving them an untold number of French military uniforms as well as other U.N. equipment.

Taylor said the hijackings have added a new dimension to the conflict. “It adds an element of doubt to the [Bosnian] government forces as to whether a vehicle driving through its area is one of ours or one that has been hijacked” by the Bosnian Serb army, he said. “So it effectively starts to make our vehicles targets for action from government forces.”

Meanwhile, the Bosnian government army, pushing an offensive to cut off a strategic rebel Serb stronghold in central Bosnia, gained ground and took several Bosnian Serb-held villages, government sources claimed. The United Nations confirmed fighting around Mt. Ozren, control of which would help Bosnian government forces intercept access to a vital Bosnian Serb supply route in northern Bosnia. Bosnian Serb civilians were reported fleeing the area.

The British

Hours before Claes made his statement on Bosnia, British Prime Minister Major told a news conference in London that the first of 6,200 more British troops his government plans to send to Bosnia had already departed for the Croatian port city of Split.

“I am utterly certain we’re right to dispatch more troops to Bosnia,” Major said. “I do not want to see the United Nations Protection Force leave. Prevention of a full-scale Balkan war is very much in the strategic interests [of] those of us in the West.”

The new forces, which British officials said will be placed under the U.N. commander in Bosnia, British Maj. Gen. Rupert Smith, effectively triple Britain’s troop commitment in the Balkans and place Britain ahead of France as the largest single troop contributor there.

The added troops also will increase the number of U.N. peacekeepers in the region by nearly a quarter and give them a badly needed reserve force for the first time.

British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd indicated that U.N. forces in Bosnia will most probably be redeployed to reduce their vulnerability. “There will not be any more putting out of small numbers of people,” he said.

But even as an advance unit of the heavily armed British army contingent flew into Bosnia on Tuesday, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, Reuters news service reported, demanded that the United Nations clarify the role of British troops arriving in his country. Izetbegovic said he had told his army to block the troops’ progress at a staging area until he gets an answer.

“We were informed, but not in a very satisfactory way,” he said of Britain’s decision to send more troops to Bosnia. “The problem is the character [purpose] of the unit. We ordered Gen. Alagic to let them go to Gornji Vakuf but not permit them to move any farther until the question is solved.”

Gen. Mehmed Alagic commands Bosnian government troops north and east of Gornji Vakuf, the first substantial government-held town British troops would pass through en route from Croatia’s Adriatic coast to central Bosnia. The United Nations has a substantial logistics base at Gornji Vakuf.

Izetbegovic’s comments Tuesday reflect a growing concern in the Bosnian government that its interests are not being considered in the international furor over extricating U.N. hostages being held by Bosnian Serb forces.

The Negotiations

The decision by NATO foreign ministers to back a reinforced U.N. mission in the Balkans came less than a day after the five-nation Contact Group, searching for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, also agreed for the first time on the need to strengthen the U.N. peacekeeping force.

Both NATO and the Contact Group--made up of Russia, Britain, France, Germany and the United States--condemned the Bosnian Serb action of taking more than 300 U.N. peacekeepers hostage in response to two NATO air strikes last week. Those actions led to the latest explosion in a crisis that has simmered for more than three years and claimed more than 200,000 lives.

After Tuesday’s NATO action, the focus now shifts to the U.N. Security Council, which is the only body with the power to alter both the peacekeepers’ role in Bosnia and the rules under which they operate.

Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, on Tuesday wrote U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to warn him that any change in the U.N. mandate must be approved by the Bosnian Serb leadership, which on Monday voted to void all agreements with the United Nations.

Meantime, U.S. officials indicated a much-hoped-for breakthrough in the search for a diplomatic solution to the crisis seemed further than many had thought only 24 hours earlier.

Christopher said U.S. envoy Robert Frasure will return to Belgrade today to reopen negotiations with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic on a Western proposal to relax economic sanctions against Serbia if Milosevic extends diplomatic recognition to Bosnia.

Christopher said the objective of the United States and its allies is to drive a wedge between Milosevic and his onetime protege, Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic.

European officials Monday in Brussels had indicated a deal with Milosevic was “very close,” but Tuesday, a senior U.S. official said Frasure is pessimistic about the chances of wrapping up a deal soon.

In Belgrade, Milosevic’s government met and discussed Bosnian recognition with Russian envoy Alexander Zotov. The Serbs also indicated that they might be willing to intercede on the West’s behalf with their Bosnian brethren.

Although Milosevic has split--at least publicly--with Karadzic, his ties to the Bosnian Serb military remain strong, diplomats in Belgrade say. It is that channel that Milosevic is expected to use in seeking Serbian cooperation, the diplomats said. But it was not clear how Milosevic’s intervention would lead to release of the hostage U.N. peacekeepers.

Sharing the focus of the NATO foreign ministers meeting with the Bosnia crisis was the Atlantic Alliance’s plans for extending its influence to the east.

Although the ministers reaffirmed plans to begin talking to some Central European nations later this year about eventual full membership in the alliance, they concentrated at this session on proposals to forge a formal relationship with Russia with cooperation on various political-military activities.

But even as Russia prepared to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, its diplomats in The Hague sent messages back home emphasizing Russia’s opposition to any use of NATO forces in the Balkans.

Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson in Belgrade, Dean E. Murphy in Zagreb, Croatia, William Tuohy in London and Sonni Efron in Moscow contributed to this report.