Balkan Update

Croatia and rebel Serbs holding a third of the country agreed on a cease-fire covering the Christmas and New Year holiday period. The truce in the breakaway Krajina region of Croatia would roughly parallel to a cease-fire approved Thursday by Muslim and Croat forces in neighboring Bosnia.

The Krajina news agency reported Serb voters just failed to elect hardline nationalist Milan Babic as their president in a first round ballot last Sunday. To become president, Babic needed to win 50 percent of the vote. He received 49.09.

With new peace talks scheduled Tuesday in GENEVA, the premier of Bosnia's Muslim-led government, Haris Silajdzic, met in VIENNA, Austria, with international mediators and representatives of the European Community.

Bosnia's U.N. ambassador lashed out at the West for refusing to rescue his country or lift the U.N. arms embargo, saying the former Yugoslav republic would not disappear to ease the world's conscience.