NATO Steps Up Raids on Serbs on Eve of Peace Talks

Striking at Bosnian Serb headquarters, American and European warplanes Thursday bombed ammunition dumps and a key military base as NATO officials widened their air campaign against the rebels.

The bombing raids, which continued early today, came as diplomats prepared to negotiate a U.S.-backed peace initiative in Geneva that includes the drafting of a map to divide Bosnia.

Today’s talks in Geneva--the first face-to-face, high-level meeting of Balkan enemies in two years--are crucial to finding a settlement for the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina but may be doomed by continuing Bosnian Serb military defiance and the West’s forceful response.

Massive clouds of white and gray smoke filled the sky above Pale, the mountaintop Bosnian Serb stronghold nine miles southeast of Sarajevo, after rockets slammed into a munitions depot. Allied bombers also attacked the Bosnian Serb army base at Lukavica, a Serb-held suburb of Sarajevo, for the second time and targeted bridges along supply routes.

In Pale, women rushed terrified from their homes, sobbing and rounding up their children, as NATO bombs rained down. Secondary explosions of warehoused ammunition reportedly damaged several civilian homes in the area.

Despite stepped-up raids made possible by clear weather, the Serbs continued to confound NATO and U.N. officials who want them to move their heavy weapons at least 12 1/2 miles from Sarajevo and other U.N.-designated “safe areas.” The Serbs refuse, apparently unwilling to budge on their siege of the capital, a probable negotiating chip.

“It appears they have not yet had sufficient pain inflicted on them,” said U.N. military spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Vernon. “But daily that pain must be growing because . . . gradually, slowly, [the Serbs’] military capability is being eroded.”

On the eve of the Geneva talks, the Bosnian government continued internal debate over a U.S. peace initiative that essentially divides Bosnia along ethnic lines and allows the Serbs to establish an “entity” on most of the territory they have conquered in the war.

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Bosnia-Herzegovina as a single, integrated state would effectively cease to exist, although no one is saying that publicly. Under the plan, 51% of Bosnia would go to a Muslim-Croat federation and the rest would go to the Serbs, who now hold 70% of the country.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, who is leading the negotiations, said he believes that the two sides have agreed to the percentages but disagree on which lands to include in them.

U.S. negotiators want the Serbian “entity” to be allowed to federate with Serbia proper. This frightens the Sarajevo government because the arrangement resembles the “Greater Serbia” whose creation was a major impetus to the war. There is also wide disagreement on how the “entity” would be administered.

“Bosnia’s integrity will not be endangered by the existence of the so-called Serb entity,” Ivo Komsic, a top Bosnian official, said Thursday. “But it would be endangered if the Bosnian Serbs were allowed to create a confederation with Serbia.”

Attending the Geneva meeting, from which no major agreement is expected, are the foreign ministers of Bosnia, Croatia and, to represent the Bosnian Serbs, Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.

U.S. officials have argued that the aerial bombardment does not threaten the negotiations but, rather, puts pressure on the sides to talk. But the Yugoslav government Thursday urged an end to the air strikes, which it called “a direct attack on the current negotiations.”

Since launching attacks Aug. 30 in retaliation for the Bosnian Serbs’ shelling of Sarajevo’s main market, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has flown more than 2,100 sorties, targeting rebel military command centers, radar, communications and weapons and ammunition storage areas. NATO maintains that all the targets are military, but the Bosnian Serbs insist there have been many civilian casualties.

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Biljana Plavsic, a hard-line Bosnian Serb civilian leader, told Bosnian Serb television that NATO and the United Nations are trying to force Serb “capitulation.”

“We, of course, would not accept that,” she said.

That continued defiance has apparently surprised Western alliance officials, who expected the Serbs to more readily obey the demand to withdraw their weapons.

U.N. officials said they are trying to exploit potential dissension among local-level commanders who might be more inclined to comply.

“We’ve double-checked and triple-checked, and we can’t find any trace of compliance,” U.N. spokesman Alexander Ivanko said. “We had hoped they would have complied much earlier. They have not.”