U.S. Envoys Took ‘Risk,’ Bosnian Serb Leader Says Condolence Letter To Clinton Meant To Re-Establish Contacts

The leader of the Bosnian Serbs suggested Sunday that three U.S. diplomats killed in an accident Saturday en route to Sarajevo took an “unnecessary risk” by traveling on a treacherous road controlled by the Bosnian government.

A letter of condolences sent by Dr. Radovan Karadzic to President Clinton was clearly intended as an expression of good will and an attempt to re-establish contacts with a U.S. administration that has snubbed him for the past six months, but it was not without a typical Karadzic twist.

“If I may suggest,” he wrote, “your representatives took an unnecessary risk by choosing the most dangerous road to reach Sarajevo.” He argued that traveling across Serbian-held territory would be much safer for future visits to the encircled Bosnian capital.

After 40 months of siege, the dirt track over Mount Igman, where the U.S. officials died, is still the only road into Sarajevo controlled by the Muslim-led Bosnian government. Littered with burned-out wrecks and often fired on by Bosnian Serb forces, it is the scene of intermittent mayhem and a symbol of the failure of efforts to bring relief to the Bosnian capital.

Threats from the Bosnian Serbs have closed Sarajevo airport in recent months, and obtaining permission to travel on roads the Bosnian Serbs control is generally impossible. Diplomats, journalists and relief agencies now all use the Igman road.

Karadzic, who is in the midst of a damaging rift with his own army that has led to persistent rumors that his end may be near, is eager to renew negotiations with the Clinton administration.

If he remains in power, he will certainly have to be part of any peace deal, but for now the United States is reluctant to talk to a man indicted as a war criminal by the United Nations tribunal in The Hague.

The bodies of Robert Frasure, 53, the special U.S. envoy to the former Yugoslavia, Joseph Kruzel, 50, a deputy assistant defense secretary, and Col. Sam Nelson Drew, 47, of the U.S. Air Force were transported by helicopter from Sarajevo to Split on the Croatian coast Sunday.

In Split, they were placed on an Air Force plane bound for Germany and then the United States.

“It was a tragedy caused by the circumstances of war, a tragedy on what is clearly the most dangerous road in Europe,” Gen. Wesley Clark said Sunday in Split. He and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke were traveling in a second armored personnel carrier just ahead of the one that went off the Igman road and plunged 1,000 feet down the mountain.

Until the accident, the delegation had expected to return to Belgrade on Sunday to continue talks on a new U.S. peace plan that is more pragmatic than any previous one, offering financial and other blandishments to Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia if they will recognize each other and accept that the destruction and ethnic division that has accompanied Yugoslavia’s dissection cannot be set right by further fighting.

Mr. Holbrooke suggested Sunday that a reconstituted U.S. negotiating team might return to the area in about a week.

The State Department said Sunday that Secretary of State Warren Christopher was cutting short his vacation and returning to Washington on Sunday from California to put together a new team to advance the U.S. peace plan.

Four British U.N. soldiers, members of a new Rapid Reaction Force that has so far had little impact, were killed Sunday when their helicopter went down in the Adriatic Sea off the Croatian coast. A fifth soldier survived the crash, which occurred during a training mission. .

In the surviving eastern Bosnian “safe area” of Gorazde, three children were killed Sunday by Bosnian Serb shelling, the United Nations said.

The United Nations has decided to abandon its presence on the ground in Gorazde, where about 65,000 people, almost all of them Muslims, live. The defense of the town, through air strikes, will now be left to NATO. NATO had no response Sunday.

But 90 Ukrainian soldiers attempting to leave Gorazde have been held up for more than a day at a Bosnian Serb checkpoint.