U.S. to Help Allies Track Serb Forces : Bosnia: Intelligence operation to assist quick-strike force will be modeled after Gulf War effort. New British unit moves into position.

In what he called a “very important, very significant development,” Defense Secretary William J. Perry said Sunday that the United States will establish a secret intelligence-gathering operation to help the leaders of a planned European strike force monitor the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Perry, speaking as he returned to Washington from a meeting of defense ministers in Paris, said the “intelligence coordination cell” will be patterned after a similar operation created during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and will provide key assistance to the commanders of the quick reaction force.

The United States, he said, will provide unmanned reconnaissance flights to collect intelligence information about Bosnian Serb movements. He added that the United States will also use the Predator unmanned spy plane, which has not yet been used in combat situations.

The intelligence data will be handed over to European military leaders who will be running the quick reaction force whose creation was announced in Paris on Saturday. The special units will be deployed whenever U.N. peacekeeping troops find themselves in harm’s way.

The United States has the world’s most technically sophisticated intelligence-gathering apparatus, he said, and such information will give European field commanders an extra advantage in tracking Bosnian Serb activities. That assistance, officials said, could have helped prevent earlier problems, such as the shooting down of a U.S. F-16 over Bosnia on Friday and the capture of hundreds of U.N. peacekeeping personnel.

“There’s detailed planning already under way for the preparation of an intelligence coordination cell,” Perry said. “That’s a very significant move, and our allies [in Paris] saw that as a very significant move.”

In other Balkans-related developments Sunday:

* A convoy of British soldiers with big guns in tow arrived in the central Bosnian town of Gornji Vakuf, the first of thousands of troops that will form the multinational quick reaction force. The convoy included about 50 British gunners and six 105-millimeter guns.

* Secretary of State Warren Christopher said that the United States is pressing Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to help determine the location and condition of the missing F-16 pilot. Speaking to reporters in Haiti, Christopher said that a U.S. official had spoken to Milosevic about the status of the pilot, adding that Milosevic agreed to help the United States press the Bosnian Serbs to disclose what they know about the pilot.

* In Croatia, breakaway Krajina Serbs threatened to fire rockets into the capital, Zagreb, and several coastal cities if Croatian government soldiers and their Bosnian Croat allies do not halt an advance toward Knin, the self-styled capital of the breakaway Krajina region.

Intelligence Operation

Perry said that once planning for the new intelligence operation is completed, military officials from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Europe will be better prepared to handle contingencies should the U.N. peacekeeping efforts become endangered.

“We’re already doing the internal U.S. planning on what that cell would consist of,” he said. “How would we put it together? Where would it be located? It need not be located in Bosnia.

“I expect at the NATO meeting next week we would begin discussions of how to coordinate our planning with our allies in this regard,” he added. “This is going to be a very important, very significant development.”

The defense secretary said this would not be the first time a special U.S. intelligence-gathering unit has been created in time of war.

“We did it during Desert Storm,” he said. “The first time that was ever done on a large scale in a military operation was in Desert Storm. That was an experiment at that time, and it was a very successful experiment. In fact, that’s the model we will be looking at.”

Other Clinton Administration officials weighed in Sunday, including U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, who insisted that the Administration wants the United Nations to remain in Bosnia, despite calls by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and other GOP critics for the withdrawal of peacekeepers.

“Nobody actually wants the United Nations to withdraw,” she said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Because if it withdraws, what we see is a humanitarian disaster, refugees flowing out of the ‘safe areas,’ hunger and all kinds of horrible things.”

But Dole, speaking on the same program, denounced the new U.S. initiatives and specifically criticized the quick reaction force.

“I don’t see this rapid deployment force is going to make any great difference,” he said.

Troop Movements

The leading edge of that force arrived in Gornji Vakuf, setting up camp in an abandoned tool factory at the end of a dirt road lined with the hulks of bombed-out homes and businesses.

U.N. officials said hundreds of other troops will make the journey from Split, Croatia, over the next few days, but it remained unclear how the force will be deployed and what relationship it will have to the existing U.N. peacekeeping force.

“We are waiting for some high-level political decisions,” said Capt. C. Iglesias, a U.N. spokesman in Gornji Vakuf.

But even as the highly touted detachment made the arduous six-hour journey to its base near the battlefront, U.N. peacekeepers and Bosnian civilians were reminded yet again of the perils of everyday life--and the helplessness of the United Nations.

Five people were killed and 10 wounded when Bosnian Serbs shelled the capital, Sarajevo, in the late morning. One shell struck suburban Butmir near the entrance to a crucial supply tunnel that runs beneath the Sarajevo airport runway. Another hit a western neighborhood, wounding four civilians. A man working in his garden was wounded by sniper fire.

At a U.N. weapons collection point north of the capital, three Canadian peacekeepers were taken hostage in the late afternoon. Last week, Bosnian Serbs restricted the Canadians and nine others to their observation posts, but on Sunday the three Canadians were disarmed and taken to a police station. The Bosnian Serbs now hold 164 hostages, the United Nations said.

In a separate incident near Sarajevo, Bosnian Serb soldiers surrounded two French peacekeepers who then sabotaged their own vehicles and destroyed their radio equipment rather than surrender it to the rebels. In a happy twist, the French then returned to their barracks unharmed, the United Nations said.

“They just refused to leave their posts,” a U.N. spokeswoman said.

U.S. Pilot’s Fate

Christopher said that the United States had “no new information” about the status of the U.N. peacekeepers still being held hostage. But he noted that Robert Frasure, the U.S. representative to the five-nation Contact Group dealing with the Bosnian crisis, is “pressing Milosevic hard on the hostage issue.”

Frasure is also pressuring the Serbian leader on the missing pilot, Christopher said.

“Mr. Milosevic said that he doesn’t know the location of the pilot but has agreed to press the Bosnian Serbs for his release,” Christopher said at a news briefing after a meeting in Haiti with President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Later, Christopher cut short his planned two-day visit to Haiti.

Albright said the fate of the pilot remained uncertain.

“There are conflicting reports as to what has happened to him,” she said. “We have no verification of what has happened. There are search-and-rescue missions going on, but unfortunately, we have no verified information about him.”

Asked if the United States would retaliate against the Serbs for shooting him down, she said, “It’s just inappropriate to discuss what our options are on that.”

But she said that U.S.-manned aircraft, specifically slow, low-flying gunships, will still provide close air support in the region.

Croatia Heats Up

On another front, the United Nations confirmed Croatian media reports that government troops have been shelling villages within territory controlled by the secessionist Croatian Serbs and have taken control of some surrounding hills. The new attacks prompted a general alert in Knin and the threat to retaliate against Croatian civilian targets.

Last month, the Croatian Serbs made good on a similar threat, shelling Zagreb in retaliation for a successful offensive by the Croatian army in western Slavonia, then a Croatian Serb-held enclave but now under government control. Six people died in the attack on the Croatian capital, the first in three years.

Serrano reported from Washington and Murphy from Zagreb. Times staff writer James Risen contributed to this report from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.