Word: bosnian
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Serb forces lined up their heavy guns last week and blasted their way toward Bihac, the last of the lands in the northwest held by the Bosnian government. Then Yugoslav-made jets from a Serb airbase in Croatia joined in the attack. NATO fighter-bombers roared across the Adriatic from Italy to bomb the base, punching a few craters into the concrete runways, but carefully avoiding Serbian planes or soldiers. Two days later, when the Serbs failed to get the message, NATO planes hit two of their antiaircraft installations in Bosnia with missiles...
...their march to Bihac, and the battle went very much according to their plan. They hit Sarajevo with artillery and sniper fire and confined more than 275 blue helmets to their barracks around Sarajevo, turning them into virtual hostages. Determined to crush the Fifth Corps of the Muslim- led Bosnian army based at Bihac, the Serbs bombarded the town for days, driving most of its army defenders and 70,000 civilians into basements and shelters. Ground troops then pressed into the zone the U.N. had declared a "safe area." "It's quite clear that we have failed to deter...
...Rose and his troops want to get the trucks into Bosnian-government areas, they must deal with the triumphant Serbs. Since the blue helmets are not strong enough to fight their way past roadblocks, they end up cajoling the Serbs, obeying their rules and allowing them to search through -- and pilfer from -- the aid shipments. Rose insists, however, that his role is neutral, not to "intervene on one side." If NATO or anyone else chooses to go to war with the Serbs, his lightly armed U.N. troops will leave immediately...
Seen from Washington, the Bosnian war is one of Serb aggressors and Bosnian Muslim victims. Each time the Serbs advance, some in Congress clamor for an aggressive U.S. response. However, to the British and French governments providing the bulk of the U.N. forces, all factions in the country are responsible for the vicious civil war. A senior U.N. observer in Sarajevo says Rose is not exactly pro-Serb but may be anti-Bosnian. "Rose's interest is in keeping everything quiet, in preserving the status quo," he says...
Some European officials believe the recurrent spasms of U.S. sympathy encourage the Bosnian Muslims to keep fighting in hopes America will come to the rescue. They point out that the Serbian drive on Bihac began as a counteroffensive against the Bosnian Fifth Corps, which had attacked the Serbs from Bihac in October and scored major gains. To some Europeans, the Bosnian Muslims are only getting what they deserve for upsetting the status quo. An Administration official in Washington snaps back at the Europeans, "The boat is sinking, but they don't want to rock...