NATO Renews Bombing of Defiant Serbs

Bosnian Serb defiance was punished Tuesday with renewed NATO bombings that reportedly damaged television and telephone links, as the West deepened its role in the Bosnian war.

Dozens of fighter planes, led by American F/A-18 Hornets from the carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Adriatic Sea, crisscrossed the skies over Bosnia-Herzegovina and attacked Serbian targets before bad weather slowed the operation.

Still, Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic continued to sound a defiant note. “The more they bombard us, the stronger we are,” Mladic said in the self-styled Bosnian Serb capital, Pale, shortly before Tuesday’s air strikes began. “They can cause destruction and violence, but we are on our land and we will win.”

The current air war, which until last week had been limited to “pinprick” strikes, marks a threshold in the four-year Balkan conflict, changing and expanding the role of the West in enforcing rules of behavior on the warring factions.

The resumption of bombing raids Tuesday ended a four-day lull and came after Mladic refused to comply with North Atlantic Treaty Organization and U.N. demands that he withdraw heavy weapons from within a 12 1/2-mile radius of Sarajevo.

In a bid to stave off the bombings and confuse the Western alliance, the Serbs moved a small number of arms. But that only delayed renewal of the air campaign.

U.N. officials said only about 25 weapons had been moved--mostly artillery pieces and four tanks. That represented less than 10% of the heavy weapons that the Serbs have around Sarajevo. Moreover, none of the materiel was moved outside of the exclusion zone, U.N. officials said.

“I regret that we again must resort to use of military force to obtain compliance of the Bosnian Serbs,” NATO Secretary General Willy Claes said at his headquarters in Brussels. “No one can doubt our resolve to see this matter through.”

Despite the air strikes, first launched last week in retaliation for a deadly Serbian shelling of Sarajevo, the besieged capital was shelled again Tuesday afternoon, and two people were reported wounded.

Army officers from Serbia proper were quoted as saying that NATO rockets damaged a Bosnian Serb-held communications tower and relay station in the Majevica hills in northeastern Bosnia, severing phone and television links between Bosnian Serb headquarters at Pale and the rest of the world.

Television has been a devastating propaganda tool, used to whip up nationalist fury or turn neighbor against neighbor.

Cutting communications has a clear military objective: It makes it more difficult for Bosnia’s Serbs to mount a counteroffensive by inhibiting the commanders’ ability to talk to their troops.

Western military sources said they were also pursuing a psychological goal of isolating Mladic, now a personalized focus of the NATO-led campaign.

“Mladic is clearly in control, saying what is going to be done and what is not going to be done,” said a Western military source. “It’s Mladic personally who is saying, ‘No, we’re not going to withdraw from [our] positions.’ . . . [In its aerial campaign, NATO] is being very careful to increase the pain.”

Bosnian Serb radio reported that NATO warplanes twice hit the town of Lukavica, just south of Sarajevo and the site of military barracks. Mt. Jahorina, site of ski resorts that were venues in the 1984 Winter Olympics, was hit three times and the Pale area twice, the radio said, adding that damage was considerable. Bosnian Serb television reported there were civilian casualties, although there was no independent confirmation.

The latest NATO assault brought no official reaction from Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, now the official representative of all the Serbs. He was meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke as the bombing resumed.

Serbian opposition officials, however, described the renewed bombing as “shameful behavior” and said its timing, just three days before Geneva peace talks, indicated Western officials were not committed to a peaceful settlement of the war.

Russia also warned that the use of force could jeopardize the talks involving the foreign ministers of Bosnia, Croatia and Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.

But in Washington, U.S. officials said they did not expect the talks to be derailed by the resumed NATO bombing, which they described as inevitable after the Bosnian Serb leadership gave NATO and the United Nations “the back of its hand.”

“There are times when diplomacy, to be successful, must be backed up or buttressed by the use of military force,” State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said. “This is clearly one of those times.”

“It could very well be the case that we have peace talks going on in Geneva and we have a continuation of the military action on the ground,” he said. “Anything that it takes to convince the Bosnian Serbs that it’s in their interest to stop the fighting and to start talking about peace.”

Russia reiterated its opposition to the NATO action, widening a rift between Moscow, which has traditionally supported fellow Orthodox Slav Serbs, and the four other countries mediating the war: the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused NATO of intervening on one side in the Bosnian conflict in order to defeat the Serbs. “This goal will not be achieved,” the ministry said.

The Muslim-led but secular government of Bosnia, which had been trying to put pressure on the West by threatening to boycott the talks if air strikes did not resume, on Tuesday praised the new attacks.

“It’s very good news that NATO command has decided to resume the air strikes, because the Serbs have not complied with any of the [U.N.] requests,” Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic said. “This strong stand of NATO will enable us to continue the peace process, and I hope they continue with the air strikes until the Serb terrorists comply with all requests.”

Times staff writers Dean E. Murphy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Tyler Marshall in Brussels, Richard Boudreaux in Moscow, and Norman Kempster and Stanley Meisler in Washington contributed to this report.