Bosnia Muslims Defy Serb Chief’s Call to Surrender

In an effort to consolidate his sweep of a second U.N.-designated “safe area,” Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic on Thursday insisted that thousands of terrified Muslims surrender to his troops for mass deportation.

Mladic lined up 60 buses to do the job and invited U.N. monitors to the Zepa enclave to watch. But by late Thursday, no one had taken the general up on his demand, and a defiant but outgunned Bosnian government army vowed to fight onward to defend Zepa.

Throughout the day, the government and rebel Serbs disputed who was in control of Zepa, the second safe area to fall to the nationalist Serbs in little more than a week. The rebel Serbs had surrounded but not entered the town of Zepa, U.N. officials said, and the government army refused to accept terms of a surrender set forth by Mladic.

“Our troops in Zepa are holding firmly, and the defense lines are more or less the same as a week ago,” Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic said in a statement released by his office.

Mladic, whose troops are accused of rapes, summary executions and other atrocities in the capture last week of the Srebrenica enclave, insisted that all men in Zepa ages 18 to 55 turn themselves in as prisoners of war. The government rejected the condition, said U.N. officials familiar with negotiations over Zepa’s fate.

Women, children and the elderly will be evacuated, according to the Mladic surrender plan, which he faxed to U.N. headquarters in Sarajevo just after midnight. But U.N. officials said they were concerned that the Muslim refugees will once again be subjected to the humiliation and torture allegedly suffered by the people who fled Srebrenica. “These are very vulnerable people, in a very dire and tragic situation,” U.N. spokesman Alexander Ivanko said.

Mladic said he will allow a handful of U.N. monitors to supervise the evacuation of Zepa, which has an estimated 16,000 inhabitants. But U.N. officials said they would not be able to supply an adequate number of eyes and ears to protect the refugees from Serb brutalities.

Even worse, the United Nations is allowing itself to be drawn in as an accomplice to “ethnic cleansing” by the Bosnian Serbs, humanitarian officials warned.

“My fear is that [permitting U.N. monitors] lends legitimacy to the claim that the Serbs will make, which is that the evacuation was conducted in an acceptable manner,” said one U.N. official. “And everyone will ask the monitors and they will have to say it was OK because they didn’t see anything. And what they will have seen is just the tip of the iceberg.”

*

The reports of atrocities from the people of Srebrenica continue to pour out. Kris Janowski, an official with the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said survivors of the exodus told interviewers that Bosnian Serb soldiers donned U.N. uniforms and blue helmets to coax a large group of refugees from the woods where they hid.

The Bosnian Serbs then lined the refugees up and shot them, Janowski said, quoting reports. Officials have not yet verified these or other accounts. The Bosnian Serb leadership has denied committing atrocities.

Thousands of people remain unaccounted for after the nationalist Serbs’ capture of Srebrenica, humanitarian aid officials say.

Mladic was shown on Bosnian Serb television Thursday manning a radio at a U.N. observation post on the edge of the Zepa enclave, broadcasting an appeal to Muslim civilians to turn themselves in for expulsion. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, just as he had at the start of the Srebrenica evacuation.

The stalemate over the surrender of Zepa erupted in an intense firefight Thursday night. When a deadline set by Mladic expired, Bosnian Serbs unleashed an artillery barrage on the town for more than an hour.

Bosnian government forces responded by opening fire on a compound of Ukrainian U.N. peacekeepers. There was extensive damage in the compound but no casualties, a U.N. spokeswoman said.

In something of a metaphor for the entire U.N. mission, the Ukrainians have found themselves increasingly under attack from both sides. The government threatened to use the Ukrainians as human shields against advancing Bosnian Serbs unless NATO warplanes were called in, and the Serbs threatened to shoot the peacekeepers if planes from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization did appear.

Mladic’s strategy in taking Zepa seemed to be to avoid fighting through the enclave’s towns and instead capture the high ground around them.

This allows him to reduce the number of casualties to his army while forcing the government to capitulate and give him prisoners with which he can make deals. “He need not enter the enclave, only empty it,” said a Western military analyst.

The enclaves of Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde have been the most vulnerable--and the last Muslim presence in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. Many analysts have predicted that Gorazde, with 60,000 people the largest of the eastern enclaves, is the Bosnian Serbs’ next stop, and it has become a rallying point for nations desperately seeking solutions for Bosnia.

An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Bosnian Serb troops surround Gorazde, according to Western military analysts. The Bosnian government army is also strong there, with about 10,000 fighters and a weapons factory.

But while the West has focused on Gorazde, there are signs the Bosnian Serbs will, instead, turn their next major offensive on another U.N. safe area, the strategically critical Bihac pocket in northwestern Bosnia.

Croatian Serbs, who are allied with the Bosnian Serbs, launched a concerted attack on Bihac this week, pounding it with fierce artillery fire and missiles and apparently crossing an international border to do so.

Bihac is important to the Serbs because vital railway, road and other communications that link parts of nationalist Serb-held Bosnia to rebel Serb-held Croatia pass through the northwestern pocket.

* U.S. URGES AIR STRIKES: White House seeks backing for bombardment of Serbs. A10