No Yielding Sarajevo, General Vows : Balkans: Military commander Mladic says Serbs will never submit to Bosnian control. His attacks on peace accord bode ill for NATO mission.

In his first public appearance since the Balkans peace accord was reached last month, the Bosnian Serb military leader declared Saturday that Sarajevo Serbs will never submit to Bosnian government control.

Gen. Ratko Mladic repeated calls by the Bosnian Serb leadership for changes in the U.S.-mediated accord initialed in Dayton, Ohio. The agreement is to be signed in Paris on Dec. 14.

“We cannot allow our people to come under the rule of butchers,” Mladic said, referring to the Muslims and Croats his troops fought for 3 1/2 years.

“A just solution, especially for Sarajevo, must be found,” he said in a speech to mark the formation of a new Bosnian Serb army brigade.

U.S. officials have ruled out any changes to the agreement, which gives most of the Serb-held suburbs of the capital, Sarajevo, to a Muslim-Croat federation.

Mladic’s statement bodes ill for the safety of the 60,000 NATO troops--an estimated 20,000 from the United States--being sent to enforce the peace agreement.

His remarks Saturday follow similar contentious if somewhat contradictory statements from Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, who compared the destiny of Sarajevo to Beirut, the war-torn capital of Lebanon. He followed that remark with more conciliatory statements, saying Bosnian Serbs will welcome NATO troops without incident and honor the peace plan.

Karadzic and Mladic were kept out of the peace negotiations by Western powers, which have accused them through the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague of committing genocide. The two leaders allowed Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to negotiate for the Bosnian Serbs at the Dayton talks.

The continued Bosnian Serb opposition remains a significant obstacle to securing a stable peace in a city struggling to retain its identity as an ethnically diverse center.

Yet reassurances to Serbs in Sarajevo, broadcast by Bosnian government officials this week, have fallen short of promising amnesty to all who lived in Serb enclaves.

Mladic was on the verge of tears and defiantly patriotic at the ceremony Saturday in Vlasenica, 50 miles northeast of Sarajevo. His speech rang with the tough bluster he has shown throughout the war in which his troops besieged and bombarded government-held Sarajevo.

Mladic is very popular among Bosnian Serbs.

On Saturday, several thousand gathered in Ilijas, one of the most defiant of Sarajevo’s Serb-held areas. “We won’t go anywhere,” said one demonstrator, Mirko Petrusic. “We will burn it all.”