Word: bosnian
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There were also prolonged exchanges of artillery around three other towns north and east of Sarajevo, leading some military analysts to suspect that the Bosnian-government forces were trying to stretch the Serb defenders as thin as possible, probing for a weak point to exploit. They made progress in places, and U.N. observers said they had cut some Serb supply routes...
Whatever its strategy may be, the government plainly does not retain much hope for protection from the U.N. "We cannot live through another winter of siege," Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey told reporters in Vienna. Britain and France, the main contributors to the U.N. military force in Bosnia, reacted with dismay. French President Jacques Chirac, on his first visit to Washington since taking office, cautioned Sarajevo that an offensive "would be a grave error." He joined Bill Clinton in an appeal to the Bosnians for a cease-fire...
There is ample reason for concern about the U.N. troops in Bosnia, but it is not certain that more of them will improve their circumstances. Three weeks after the Bosnian Serbs had taken hundreds of peacekeepers hostage, they were still holding 26 of them prisoner and confining 91 others at their posts. In the process of eliminating the U.N. role around Sarajevo, the Serbs started using several hundred artillery pieces and mortars the U.N. had placed under guard at collection points around Sarajevo. What came as a surprise last week was that Bosnian government forces joined so eagerly...
...Halifax, Canada, for an economics summit, Chirac claimed that the rapid-reaction force would "have a serious and effective military capability" to come to the aid of Blue Helmet contingents in trouble. That sounded like a threat to both the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian government, but it was immediately undermined by the declarations made by peacekeeping officials on the ground in Bosnia. The senior U.N. representative, Yasushi Akashi, announced that the new force will operate under the same rules that have applied in the past and thus will undertake no actions without the consent of the Bosnian Serbs...
...peacekeeping mission can hang on long enough to help produce a negotiated settlement, which some experts believe might finally be possible. The Serbs have held their 1,000-mile-long front lines for three years, and their field army of up to 80,000 is stretched thin. The Bosnian government's forces lack heavy weaponry but have grown to about 150,000 troops. "The Bosnian Serbs are overextended," U.S. General John Galvin, the former NATO commander, said in Washington last week, "and they are outnumbered." Still, they have artillery. Norman Cigar, a military analyst at the Marine Corps School...