Bosnian Serbs Defy NATO by Digging In Heels

NATO bombers soared into action again Wednesday against Bosnian Serb targets, but it was becoming clear that forcing the rebels to ease the siege of this battered capital is going to take a long time.

Soupy skies and low fog curtailed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization air campaign for a second day, giving the Serbs a reprieve they used to further dig in their heels.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said his forces cannot withdraw additional weapons from the Sarajevo area because Serbian civilians would be left defenseless.

“We are under terrible attack by NATO,” Karadzic said in an interview with CNN conducted from his headquarters in nearby Pale. “They are bombarding us so terribly that it hasn’t been seen since the Second World War in Europe, and it can’t be justified by any reasons.”

Karadzic, an indicted war criminal because of his army’s alleged use of murder, rape and intimidation to build an ethnically pure state, has refused to comply with U.N. and NATO demands that the Serbs’ big guns be moved more than 12 1/2 miles outside Sarajevo.

In fact, U.N. monitors detected only one of the Serbs’ estimated 300 heavy weapons being moved Tuesday, and even then, not very far. Most of the guns, which have been used routinely to shell the capital, have been hidden in the forests surrounding Sarajevo, making them tough to locate.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns labeled Karadzic’s CNN interview “a cynical charade.”

“They said they were complying when in fact they weren’t complying,” he said. “It is cynicism and it is a charade, and we were certainly not fooled by it. . . . They moved a few weapons around inside the [12 1/2-mile] zone around Sarajevo. They didn’t move any weapons outside of that zone. And the West--in this case the U.N. and NATO--had every right and indeed an obligation to resume the air campaign.”

He said the Bosnian Serbs “ought to learn the lesson this is not temporary, this is not illusory, it’s not something that can be waited out, because there’s a collective expression of international will here that the time has come to move to the peace table.”

Bosnian Serb television broadcast footage Wednesday of elderly women carrying umbrellas in the morning rain, blocking the path of retreating Bosnian Serb tanks, presumably in the Sarajevo area. Karadzic, in his television interview, said his military is under great pressure from residents--and the soldiers themselves--not to abandon its positions.

Although analysts in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and the rump Yugoslavia, said the tank scene was probably staged, they said it pointed to a real problem for the Bosnian Serb leadership: how to save face in the event of a retreat.

“They are in a pretty bad situation right now,” said Stojan Cerovic, an analyst with the independent Belgrade magazine Vreme. “Just because of the bombing. They might lose everything.”

An even trickier question for the West is what happens if the Serbs continue to defy U.N. and NATO demands and simply wait them out. The Bosnian Serbs have in the past shown a great capacity for biding their time and exploiting differences among the Western allies.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is thought to be the key to Bosnian Serb compliance. As former patron and now official representative of the rebels, he should be able to deliver Karadzic and Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic.

But Mladic, especially, now seems to resist Milosevic’s scheme to end fighting in the Balkan war.

There has been considerable speculation in Belgrade about the apparently strained relations between Mladic and Milosevic, who last week became the sole negotiator for Serbs--including Bosnian Serbs--in international peace talks.

Milosevic has remained publicly quiet on the renewed NATO campaign and Mladic’s refusal to comply with U.N. demands, although he did complain about the attacks in a meeting late Tuesday with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, according to Holbrooke.

A Bosnian Serb source said the rift between Mladic and Milosevic was serious, but analysts and diplomats expressed doubts that it will derail the peace process as long as the NATO attacks do not continue indefinitely.

“Milosevic can live with the Bosnian Serbs being bloodied, but not beaten,” said one Western diplomat familiar with the U.S.-led peace initiative. “Right now, they are not being dealt a blow that will cause them to fall on their knees before the might of their enemies.”

U.S. Adm. Leighton W. Smith, NATO commander in Southern Europe, used a briefing at headquarters in Naples, Italy, to show video footage of strikes against a command and control communications center at Mt. Jahorina, southeast of Sarajevo. The footage also showed strikes on ammunition storage depots at Hadzici, west of the Bosnian capital, at Visegrad to the east, near the border with Serbia, and in the Sarajevo area.

“We will continue these strike operations for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Through late morning Wednesday, NATO aircraft had flown 1,600 sorties since the operation began a week earlier.

Wilkinson reported from Sarajevo and Murphy from Belgrade. Times staff writers Tyler Marshall in Brussels and Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.