Word: sarajevos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Meanwhile in Sarajevo, in the first war-crimes trial growing out of the bloody civil war, two ethnic Serbs were sentenced by a Bosnian military court to death by firing squad. One of them, Borislav Herak, admitted to murdering 35 Muslims, 12 of them women he raped first. (See related story on page...
...commander of the U.N. peace force in Bosnia, French General Philippe Morillon earned a maverick reputation. He struck observers as unpredictable, impulsive, eccentric; one senior U.N. official called him "a loose cannon" in constant need of being "reined in." He held strange formal dinners while Serbian shells fell on Sarajevo: stories of waiters in tails serving guests in white gloves and full dress uniforms scandalized the city. No one thought he was inclined toward heroics until last week, when he surprised his colleagues, and perhaps himself. He risked his life, his honor and the U.N.'s dwindling credibility to stand...
...consider the safety of the inhabitants at risk." Those were brave words from a soldier who up to then had had few admirers. He had drawn criticism from the U.N. contingent in the Bosnian capital for hobnobbing with Serbian militia chiefs, like Ratko Mladic, dubbed the "Butcher of Sarajevo," and for not forthrightly denouncing Serbian aggression. His orders from the U.N. were not to use force and not to take sides, and he stuck firmly -- perhaps too firmly -- to those instructions...
...standoff continued throughout the week. Serbian troops promised again to allow the convoy to proceed but each time halted it. In a radio message to his Sarajevo headquarters, Morillon termed the situation "unbearable" and said "people are dying right in front of me." On Friday, his frustration boiled over. He drove to the border and demanded an end to the stalling. He accepted Serbian terms that he travel without his escort of two Canadian armored personnel carriers and headed back to Srebrenica in his command car -- followed this time by the trucks of the relief convoy...
...exquisite calibration in cranking up the carnage to just below the point where the West will react. The war is about religious differences as well as territory and politics; it involves Serbian Orthodox, Bosnian Muslims and Croat Catholics. Serb militias now occupy 70% of Bosnia and Herzegovina, leaving only Sarajevo and isolated pockets in the hands of Bosnia's mainly Muslim government. Among the most desperate are the besieged Muslim towns in eastern Bosnia, near the frontier with Serbia. It was their plight that prompted Clinton to order the airdrops over the snow-covered town of Cerska...