U.S. Suspends Shipment of Arms to Bosnia

American military aid shipments to Bosnia-Herzegovina are being suspended until its government sacks its deputy defense minister, who is seen here as having close links with Iran, a U.S. official said Thursday.

The decision, disclosed as the single largest shipment of U.S. military hardware arrived at a port in Croatia, effectively denies the Muslim-Croat federation equipment promised by the Clinton administration as part of the Bosnian peace agreement concluded last November in Dayton, Ohio.

The United States has been eager to help the federal government build up its defenses to achieve military parity with the better-armed Bosnian Serbs.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said Thursday’s shipment of $100 million in arms, which arrived in the Croatian port of Ploce aboard the cargo ship American Condor, will eventually be transferred to federation military storage sites in Bosnia.

“But it will only be shipped to those sites when some remaining issues of concern to the United States government are resolved on a satisfactory basis by the Bosnian government,” he said.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said delivery of the arms is being held up until the Bosnian government sacks Deputy Defense Minister Hasan Cengic.

The official did not elaborate, but the Clinton administration reportedly has tried on at least one occasion to pressure Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic to fire Cengic.

Cengic, a Muslim cleric who spent part of the 3 1/2-year war in Tehran arranging arms deliveries to Bosnian government troops, is suspected by U.S. officials of supporting Iran’s fundamentalist revolution.