Sarajevo

ON A FLIGHT TO SARAJEVO -- Santa Claus wore a United States Air Force uniform to fly relief flights into Sarajevo Christmas Day.Only three United Nations humanitarian flights made it into the battered and beleaguered capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina on Christmas. All three were American flights. Capt. Tripp Howard and his six-man crew flew two of them.They didn't bring very glamorous presents. No toys, no Barbie dolls, no computer games, no Christmas trees. They delivered 75,000 pounds of Meals Ready to Eat, military MREs, to the hungry city.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Bosnian Croats backed out of an agreement yesterday to turn Sarajevo over to a Croat-Muslim government, reflecting the mistrust that threatens the fragile Bosnian peace accord.The Croat-Muslim federation was formed under U.S. pressure in March 1994 after the two ethnic groups engaged in a nearly yearlong war. But lingering enmity has kept it weak and hobbled its effectiveness as a counterweight to the Bosnian Serb republic that makes up the other half of Bosnia.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Only two mortar rounds have dropped on the roof of the synagogue, no Jew has been killed during the artillery siege of Sarajevo, and few have been wounded.And no Jews are being rounded up against their will -- which is a far cry from what happened to them here during the last war.Ivan Ceresnjes, the president of the Jewish community in Sarajevo, walks nonchalantly through the devastation around his synagogue in Sarajevo's Old Town, chatting with friends, stopping to promote a little help for the community, ignoring the thunder of shells from the hills.

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 -- Pope John Paul II, completing a promised healing mission delayed by war, challenged the survivors of Sarajevo yesterday to turn their bomb-shattered city into a multiethnic model of tolerance and reconciliation."

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- With Jews and Muslim seated side by side on chartered buses and ducking together to avoid sniper fire, more than 200 people escaped this cold and hungry city yesterday in an evacuation effort by Sarajevo's small Jewish population.For the evacuees, among them many Serbs and Croats, it was a journey of only a few minutes from the last roadblock of the mainly Muslim forces defending the Bosnian capital to the first checkpoint of the besieging Serbs. But it may as well have been a lifetime.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Shaken United Nations peacekeeping troops who escaped from besieged Sarajevo recounted sadly yesterday how the war they came to quell turned its vicious guns on their mission of mercy.The blue-helmeted soldiers from Argentina, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Holland, Kenya, Poland, Russia and Sweden had hoped to keep old Yugoslavia's warring ethnic nations from killing each other.Instead, the bloody conflict that for nearly a year has defied most world appeals for peace exploded in their faces, trapping them in Sarajevo, the savaged capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Naida Zecevic's future is a bit less uncertain today.For a while, it looked as though the high school exchange student from what was once known as Yugoslavia would be heading back to her war-torn country once her visa expired Friday.But private and personal contributions have helped her secure student residency in the United States and have prolonged her stay away from a country where fierce battle is now part of daily life.The recipient of a full-tuition scholarship from Western Maryland College in Westminster, the 18-year-old from Sarajevo has rounded up the extra $6,000 she needs for room and board, books and a school medical insurance policy.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration, in an abrupt policy change, is seriously considering mounting air attacks against Bosnian Serb positions to protect Sarajevo and the delivery of humanitarian relief to residents of the besieged capital, according to senior officials.The new policy, discussed by President Clinton and his top advisers yesterday, would mark a major expansion of the existing U.S. commitment to use U.S. and NATO warplanes only to protect United Nations forces on the ground in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- It was a desperate sound: "Hallo? Hallo?"The rickety radio receiver crackled. For a moment, fear sprang that the atmospherics might prevent contact. Then a voice from Sarajevo: "Hallo. Mama?"Tears began to stream down the face of the elderly woman in Belgrade."My son, my son," she said.It was the first time Nada Obradovic had heard his voice since the Bosnian war broke out a year ago.The family of four had traveled 50 miles to use the makeshift studio of one of a growing number of ham radio operators who keep people in touch with friends and relatives trapped in besieged Sarajevo.