In Sweeping Strikes, U.S., Allies Mete Out Punishment to Serbs : Balkans: Air and artillery attacks on Sarajevo-area targets come in response to deadly market shelling. NATO officials say raid is meant to show West’s resolve.

U.S. and NATO forces carried out a series of air strikes and artillery attacks against Bosnian Serb targets around Sarajevo early today in retaliation for the Serbs’ lethal shelling of the capital on Monday.

The attacks, which were aimed at Bosnian Serb air-defense batteries, radar sites and communication facilities south and east of the city, struck close to Pale, the rebel capital.

Allied officials said the attacks were intended to show the Bosnian Serbs that the West is determined to prevent further shelling of U.N.-designated “safe areas” such as Sarajevo and prod them into signing a peace accord.

The attacks, which began about 2 a.m. Sarajevo time and continued through midmorning, involved more than 60 allied warplanes from NATO bases in Italy and the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt.

French artillery units assigned to the European rapid-reaction force stationed in Bosnia-Herzegovina also shelled Bosnian Serb artillery positions. The units carry radar that can pinpoint enemy artillery.

There was no immediate word on further attacks. Early plans called for up to four days of sorties, but officials said that could change.

In the first sign of possible Serbian retaliation, two explosions rang out shortly after 6 a.m. local time near U.N. installations at Sarajevo’s Zetra base, where French and Dutch peacekeepers are housed, Maj. Miriam Souchaki said in a telephone interview from Sarajevo. U.N. officials were investigating whether the detonations were caused by incoming Serbian fire.

The allied strikes constituted the most massive use of allied military power since the war in Bosnia began more than three years ago--and by far the most sweeping against the Bosnian Serbs.

A few hours after the raids began, President Clinton, vacationing in Jackson Hole, Wyo., confirmed the start of the attacks and termed them “an appropriate response to the shelling of Sarajevo.”

“I think it is something that had to be done,” he told reporters at an impromptu news conference there.

The shelling Monday killed 37 people and wounded more than 80 others, many of them women and children. It came in broad daylight in the center of Sarajevo.

In Brussels, Willy Claes, NATO’s secretary general, issued a statement saying that the allies hope the operation “will demonstrate to the Bosnian Serbs the futility of further military actions.”

The attack was the first to be launched under the new streamlined procedures set up between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations, which are designed to remove the U.N. civilian leadership from the decision-making process.

During previous incidents, U.S. and NATO officials had been frustrated by the refusal of the U.N. civilian envoy to Bosnia, Yasushi Akashi, to approve retaliatory air strikes.

The latest attacks were authorized by French Gen. Bernard Janvier, the U.N. commander in the former Yugoslav federation, and U.S. Adm. Leighton W. Smith, who is in charge of NATO forces in the region.

Ironically, the air strikes came as the Bosnian Serbs launched a last-ditch effort to avert retaliatory attacks, hinting in radio broadcasts and in letters that they finally may be ready to negotiate a peace accord.

In a letter to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said he welcomed a new peace plan that U.S. officials have been touting in recent weeks and is prepared to begin talks on it.

Carter told CNN that, while the prospects for a peace settlement are not certain, he thinks there is “good reason to take” Karadzic’s peace gesture and “put it to the test.”

But the Clinton Administration remained adamant.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns told reporters Tuesday that while the Karadzic letter contained some “potentially positive” elements, it should not deter the allies from retaliating for the shelling of Sarajevo.

“The appearance of the Karadzic letter in no way dissuades us that there should be an appropriate military response,” he said in a statement. “It’s very important that the Bosnian Serbs be held accountable.”

The allied attacks came after a day of hesitation as the United Nations first conducted its own investigation to confirm U.S. assertions that the Bosnian Serbs were behind the shelling Monday and then debated what to do about it.

By Tuesday afternoon, however, U.N. officials had decided that the Bosnian Serbs indeed were to blame, and they were under increasing pressure to act promptly.

“Yesterday the ‘safe area’ of Sarajevo became a killing field,” U.N. spokesman Alexander Ivanko said in condemning Monday’s shelling as “barbaric.”

The scene of the massacre “was simply a place of markets, shops and cafes where people were busy enjoying the treacherous calm,” Ivanko said.

On Tuesday, another mortar killed a 4-year-old girl outside a Sarajevo apartment building and wounded two friends with her, even as bodies shattered in Monday’s attack lay at the city’s morgue to await burial.

Calls for military reprisals against the Bosnian Serbs had come from a wide range of sources and suggested a rare consensus.

The five-nation Contact Group mediating the war in Bosnia also endorsed the military strike against the Serbs.

The latest attack came after U.N. peacekeeping units completed their withdrawal from the safe area of Gorazde in an effort to consolidate U.N. forces in Bosnia so they can be protected more easily and withdrawn in an emergency.

Lt. Col. Chris Vernon, the U.N. military spokesman in Sarajevo, said Tuesday night that preparations were being made to protect U.N. peacekeepers from retaliation by the rebel Serbs. The last time NATO launched bombing runs against the Serbs, they responded by taking peacekeepers hostage.

Despite the massive air strikes, the push for a peace settlement was scheduled to continue today, with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke visiting Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade.

On Tuesday, Holbrooke met with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, who said his government would pull out of the peace talks if NATO failed to retaliate for the shelling of Sarajevo.

“We cannot negotiate with a gun at our head,” Izetbegovic said.

U.S. officials said they were mildly encouraged by the Karadzic letter because it appeared to accept the plan’s formula dividing Bosnia about evenly between a Muslim-Croat coalition and the Serbs.

Pine reported from Washington and Wilkinson from Vienna. Times special correspondent Laura Silber in Belgrade contributed to this report.

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Previous NATO Actions

Some highlights of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military role in the Balkans:

* February, 1994--U.S. fighters, part of the NATO force, shoot down four Serbian attack aircraft that violate a U.N. ban on flights in the area. It is NATO’s first combat action since it was founded in 1949.

* April, 1994--NATO launches two air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces around the “safe area” of Gorazde to protect U.N. personnel, the first allied attacks on ground targets.

* August, 1994--NATO planes hit heavy weapons held by Bosnian Serbs in violation of exclusion zone around Sarajevo.

* Nov. 19, 1994--U.N. Security Council grants NATO new powers to hit Serbian targets in Croatia.

* Nov. 21, 1994--NATO launches major attack on Udbina airfield in Serb-held Croatia.

* Nov. 23, 1994--NATO aircraft attack Serbian surface-to-air missile sites in northwest Bosnia and in the area of Dvor, on the edge of the Bihac pocket, in retaliation for an attack on British jets.

* May 25, 1995--NATO jets destroy ammunition dumps near the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale after the Serbs ignore an ultimatum to surrender heavy guns. Bosnian Serb forces take several hundred peacekeepers hostage; they are freed in June.

* July 11, 1995--United Nations calls in NATO air strikes to defend Dutch peacekeepers under pressure by Bosnian Serb forces attacking the eastern enclave of Srebrenica.

SOURCE: Reuters