Herzegovina

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- From the basement where she hides with four other families, Naza Ganic listens to the nightly sounds of guns and mortars, and knows her city has died."

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- There were grilled hot dogs and hamburgers and "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the words "democracy" and "freedom" floated through the sticky midsummer air.Fireworks were absent, but much of the picnic talk at the Fourth of July opening of the U.S. Embassy focused not on that but on whether the support of the United States, this country's staunch diplomatic backer, would somehow make a difference in silencing the guns of...

WASHINGTON -- Unwilling to use force and unable otherwise to stop the fierce fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the West is playing what may be its last remaining card in the region that once ignited a world war.It will isolate Serbia.European Community nations agreed in Brussels yesterday to recall their ambassadors from Belgrade, the Serbian capital and once capital of the now-disintegrated Yugoslavia. It is a step U.S. officials have seriously considered as well.Meanwhile, the 52-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)

Pittsburgh. -- The latest sickening picture from Bosnia seems proof to many observers that the U.N. mission there has failed, and to give support to Bob Dole's effort in the U.S. Congress to end the arms embargo on the Muslims and force the U.N. out of Bosnia. Understandably, ''Let the Bosnians defend themselves'' is a slogan with enormous emotional appeal.Yet withdrawing the U.N. mission from Bosnia and arming the Muslims is the worst possible course to take. The result of such an action would be far greater war and far more suffering and death.

WASHINGTON -- Less than three years after the end of the Cold War, armed conflicts let loose a wave of inhumanity in many nations last year, producing widespread civilian deaths and refugee flows, tortures, summary executions and rapes, the State Department reported yesterday."

CAJNICE, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Western powers are worrying about becoming entangled in a Lebanon-style civil war in Bosnia. But Serbs in this frontier town about six miles from embattled Gorazde say it'll be their Vietnam.Others have found this land an unconquerable place, they say."I don't expect the Americans to bomb us from the air," said a local commander known as Gypsy, a bearded young man in his late twenties, ignoring bursts of machine-gun fire that punctuated the stifling summer air. "But if they want to do it, let them come."

TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Asim Krilic is 4 years old. His main concern last week was that nobody snatch his scruffy pale blue elephant. He showed little apprehension as his mother hauled him onto yet another battered bus for yet another long and weary journey. As long as his blue elephant was with him, the world was all right.Only in years to come will he understand what his mother, father and sister -- and hundreds of thousands of others -- feel deep in their bones. That is that in the heart of Europe a whole people -- Yugoslavia's Muslims -- is being cast off its land and forced to start a wandering life in other people's countries.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina -- Determined to find something for her four young children to eat, Stanka Voloder set out one day last week and walked 5 miles to the barbed-wire perimeter of the United Nations headquarters here to rummage through the garbage.After a while, she found three rotting potatoes and an onion, walked home to the Bistrik district in the city center and cooked her treasures over a wood fire.As she told her story later, Mrs. Voloder broke down in tears."Oh help me, please help me," she said over and over as she stood in Sarajevo's central market, clutching a bedroll wrapped in plastic and stamped with the blue-and-yellow flag of the European Community.

PAZARIC, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Old soldiers never die -- they simply become "consultants."Hunkered down in a bunker 25 miles west of Sarajevo, Col. Clark Welch -- late of the U.S. Army's Special Forces -- is plotting the downfall of the Bosnian Serb army. "Eight hundred hours tomorrow, we 'move to contact,' " cackles the ebullient Vietnam veteran to a group of staff officers gathered around a pin-riddled wall map. "They'd better be ready, 'cuz we're gonna kick the crap out of them."Fighting talk.

SARAJEVO, Yugoslavia -- The republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is perhaps the most dangerous ethnic flash point in the Balkans, epitomizing the reasons for the region's historical reputation as the "powder keg" of Europe.It was regional struggle for the control of Bosnia, as the republic ,, is known for short, that led to World War I, with the immediate pretext being the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in this lovely city nestled in a valley 1,500 feet above the sea.During World War II, Bosnia was the site of the worst internecine massacres in the war.Now trouble looms again, and if Bosnia explodes, there are those who think that the violence could far exceed what has happened in Croatia.