Word: serb
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...with the current battleground: Bosnia. The CSCE -- which encompasses the U.S., Russia, Canada and many European nations -- agreed to establish its own peacekeeping force and to police shaky truces in countries once a part of the Soviet Union. But this week even an effort to issue a statement condemning Serb aggression was killed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. "The Russians blocked everything," Mahir Hadziahmetovic, the Bosnian delegate, complained bitterly. "There will be nothing in the final document on the most burning crisis in Europe." Why did Yeltsin -- who till now stayed his hand despite repeated condemnation of his Serbian allies...
None of those frenzied maneuvers did anything to stop the war. The Serbs hardly broke stride on 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...
...were a particularly galling demonstration of the failure by outsiders to resolve the 31-month-old war in the former Yugoslavia. At cross-purposes among themselves, the Western allies have been unable to muster measures capable of making a difference. They remain unwilling to use sufficient force to challenge Serb domination, and the Serbs and the Bosnians still refuse to agree on any settlement negotiated by mediators. The Serb reaction last week to U.N. scolding and NATO's minor bombing was almost contemptuous. In a telephone call to U.N. commander Lieut. General Sir Michael Rose's headquarters, Jovan Zametica...
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...
...meantime, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev charged last week that the Bosnian government launched its October offensive "with the clear intention of involving NATO." Moscow still has a proprietary interest in its Orthodox Serb kinfolk. It has never believed in bombing them into an enforced compromise...