Bihac

Grieve for the people of Bihac. Most are Bosnian Muslim refugees, driven into that urban pocket from the countryside by war and fear of persecution. Elsewhere and earlier in this war, Serb troops have targeted Muslim civilians in areas deemed necessary to Greater Serbia for deliberate and systematic destruction.Possibly the world spotlight on this place this time, the number of U.N. observers, and the uneasy self-consciousness of Serbian Republic authorities in Belgrade, will have a restraining influence on the Serbian forces entering Bihac.

BERLIN -- By setting a vote today to sweep away the arms embargo to the countries of the former Yugoslavia, the U.S. Congress hopes to counter the war-making power of the Bosnian Serbs.Instead, Congress has been upstaged by Bosnia's western neighbor, Croatia, a country at war with its own rebel Serbs. Croatia has mobilized, and with its troops continuing to advance yesterday, it has suddenly emerged as the element that could either broaden the Bosnian war or give it the military balance long needed to drive the Serbs back to the negotiating table -- the kind of balance the Congress wants to achieve by lifting the embargo.

VITEZ, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- As United Nations forces dug in their artillery for a well-publicized show of force near Sarajevo yesterday, Serbian forces took their business elsewhere, attacking the distant Muslim enclave of Bihac with renewed vigor and no U.N. response.That development, plus further delays and uncertainty with the United Nation's Sarajevo operation, illustrated once again the surreal atmosphere enveloping the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.Even after recent reinforcements and a fresh round of warnings to the Serbs, U.N. troops seem unable to cope with circumstances in which well-armed units can be halted by a local sentry or a farmer with a pitchfork, and in which the world body's various orders and ultimatums sometimes seem at cross purposes.

VITEZ, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- As United Nations forces dug in their artillery for a well-publicized show of force near Sarajevo yesterday, Serbian forces took their business elsewhere, attacking the distant Muslim enclave of Bihac with renewed vigor and no U.N. response.That development, plus further delays and uncertainty with the United Nation's Sarajevo operation, illustrated once again the surreal atmosphere enveloping the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.Even after recent reinforcements and a fresh round of warnings to the Serbs, U.N. troops seem unable to cope with circumstances in which well-armed units can be halted by a local sentry or a farmer with a pitchfork, and in which the world body's various orders and ultimatums sometimes seem at cross purposes.

Bill insists that the anti-crime money pay for cops, but Republicans want states and cities to be able to use it for midnight basketball.No sooner did the U.N. tribunal accuse 21 Bosnian Serbs of war crimes than their leaders decided to starve every last Muslim in Bihac.

WASHINGTON -- A Navy task force with 2,000 Marines aboard is being sent toward the Adriatic coast in case they are needed to evacuate peacekeepers from Muslim-held Bihac, the United Nations "safe haven" under assault by Serbian forces, the Pentagon said last night.Maj. Tom LaRock said the goal of the force is to support United Nations, NATO and U.S. military personnel in the area.The move was announced as the Bosnian Serbs detained more than 200 U.N. peacekeeping troops as hostages to ward off allied air attacks.

ZAGREB, Croatia -- Four U.N. peacekeepers from Bangladesh were injured, at least one seriously, when their armored vehicle was struck yesterday by two anti-tank missiles believed to have been fired by Croatian Serbs in northwestern Bosnia, U.N. officials said.The attack was the most serious to date on the besieged and ill-equipped Bangladeshi battalion, which has been a sitting target since it replaced French troops in the U.N.-declared "safe haven" of Bihac in October.Three quarters of the 1,200 Bangladeshi troops have no guns, and the first food and fuel supplies in two months arrived last week.

Serb soldiers for a second day threatened to retake United Nations-guarded weapons near SARAJEVO by force. They placed mines around two French armored personnel carriers blocking one collection site, but later withdrew.Intense artillery and infantry battles raged in central and northeastern Bosnia. Government forces gained some ground near VARES and along a key Serbian supply route in the north called the POSAVINA CORRIDOR.Breakaway Muslims have lost PECIGRAD in the northwest enclave of BIHAC to government troops.

WE HAVE been down this road before. If the events in Bihac demonstrate anything, it is that the Bosnian Serbs understand the Western powers, NATO and the United Nations better than these nations and entities understand themselves.At least at the siege of Srebrenica, U.N. officials could assert that they were moving in uncharted territory. By the time of Gorazde, a year later, that excuse was hardly sustainable. As for Bihac, its transformation from a relatively viable economic and social entity into a Muslim Bantustan literally recapitulates what happened to the main government-controlled enclaves in eastern Bosnia.

BIHAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The thin whine of the incoming round breaks the late afternoon calm, then comes the clattering thunk of the explosion, and finally the wail of the alarm siren.Famed Sarajevo isn't the only place taking the heat from the Serbs."It's starting again," says Ermina Alagic, who is standing in the doorway of her home here. She shudders slightly. "We go to the shelter."The Serbian gunners whose artillery positions are said to surround this city are a little late. They usually begin at 6:30 p.m. This first round has come in at 6:40.

Bill insists that the anti-crime money pay for cops, but Republicans want states and cities to be able to use it for midnight basketball.No sooner did the U.N. tribunal accuse 21 Bosnian Serbs of war crimes than their leaders decided to starve every last Muslim in Bihac.

ZAGREB, Croatia -- Four U.N. peacekeepers from Bangladesh were injured, at least one seriously, when their armored vehicle was struck yesterday by two anti-tank missiles believed to have been fired by Croatian Serbs in northwestern Bosnia, U.N. officials said.The attack was the most serious to date on the besieged and ill-equipped Bangladeshi battalion, which has been a sitting target since it replaced French troops in the U.N.-declared "safe haven" of Bihac in October.Three quarters of the 1,200 Bangladeshi troops have no guns, and the first food and fuel supplies in two months arrived last week.

WE HAVE been down this road before. If the events in Bihac demonstrate anything, it is that the Bosnian Serbs understand the Western powers, NATO and the United Nations better than these nations and entities understand themselves.At least at the siege of Srebrenica, U.N. officials could assert that they were moving in uncharted territory. By the time of Gorazde, a year later, that excuse was hardly sustainable. As for Bihac, its transformation from a relatively viable economic and social entity into a Muslim Bantustan literally recapitulates what happened to the main government-controlled enclaves in eastern Bosnia.

BERLIN -- For the British army, entire books are filled with chronicles of grim, historic retreats. There was the narrow escape from the Nazis at the Arnhem bridgehead 50 years ago, and, still more haunting, the disastrous 18th-century withdrawal through the narrow passes of Afghanistan, just to name two such episodes.Now some military analysts worry that a new chapter could be about to unfold in the hills of Bosnia, where a few thousand British and French soldiers are the backbone of 24,000 United Nations peacekeeping troops from 17 countries.

Grieve for the people of Bihac. Most are Bosnian Muslim refugees, driven into that urban pocket from the countryside by war and fear of persecution. Elsewhere and earlier in this war, Serb troops have targeted Muslim civilians in areas deemed necessary to Greater Serbia for deliberate and systematic destruction.Possibly the world spotlight on this place this time, the number of U.N. observers, and the uneasy self-consciousness of Serbian Republic authorities in Belgrade, will have a restraining influence on the Serbian forces entering Bihac.

WASHINGTON -- The virtual collapse of the Muslim town of Bihac to the Serbs is more than a setback in efforts to end the 2 1/2 -year-old Bosnian war: It shakes the foundation of European security and America's role in maintaining it.The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the mightiest military alliance the world has ever seen, has shown itself to lack the will to fulfill even the modest assignment of deterring Serbian attacks on Bihac and other United Nations-declared...

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- A leading Belgrade journalist known for close ties to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has accused Bosnian Serb leaders of trying to "deliberately provoke" NATO attacks in the Bihac area in an effort to drag Serbia into war.H. D. Antic, editor-in-chief of the daily Politika, writing in the wake of NATO airstrikes on Serbian positions yesterday, asserted that there will be no change in Belgrade's political course."The Serb leaders in Bosnia and Krajina have to understand that they cannot change Belgrade's peace policy by deliberately provoking air strikes -- they can only bring even more harm to their people."

ZAGREB, Croatia -- The see-no-evil neutrality embraced by the United Nations in the midst of savage nationalist bloodletting has transformed the 50,000-strong U.N. Protection Force in the Balkans from a peacekeeping mission into an army of pawns.The international community's determination to limit its involvement in the war-torn region to humanitarian ventures -- instead of military intervention to stop the fighting -- has increasingly put the men and women of a misguided mission in harm's way.Hundreds of U.N. troops are being held hostage by angry Serbian rebels in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a hedge against further use of NATO air power.

WASHINGTON -- A Navy task force with 2,000 Marines aboard is being sent toward the Adriatic coast in case they are needed to evacuate peacekeepers from Muslim-held Bihac, the United Nations "safe haven" under assault by Serbian forces, the Pentagon said last night.Maj. Tom LaRock said the goal of the force is to support United Nations, NATO and U.S. military personnel in the area.The move was announced as the Bosnian Serbs detained more than 200 U.N. peacekeeping troops as hostages to ward off allied air attacks.