U.S. Troops Seize Arms Cache As Serb Civilians Flee Sarajevo Nato Steps Up Efforts To Disarm Fighters As Peace Hopes Become Frayed

In a tense standoff, American troops in Bosnia won access to a key Serb weapons depot on Saturday after threatening to unleash NATO firepower.

U.S. Col. Andy Batiste warned Bosnian Serb officers that he would order immediate airstrikes if his troops were not granted access to the compound in Han Pijesak, northeast of Sarajevo.

“I have available air support. I have helicopters, I have artillery targeted right here where we stand. I’ll use it if I have to,” said Batiste, in television footage carried on ABC News.

Earlier Saturday, Serbs began fleeing their districts of Sarajevo by the hundreds in an organized exodus that demonstrated how little faith they and their leaders place in Bosnia’s fragile peace.

Saturday’s incident - which occurred as NATO began an effort to seize up to 60 heavy weapons that violate the peace accord - was the first reported case that the NATO-led force has threatened airpower against the Serbs.

Serb authorities had twice earlier refused to allow the NATO-led peace force to visit the site.

ABC showed footage of the weapons the depot contained: rockets, missiles and ammunition. Under the terms of the peace pact, NATO has the right to inspect any weapons facility they wish.

In operations late Friday, troops in northern Bosnia took one anti-aircraft gun from the Bosnian Serbs, said Maj. Peter Bulloch, a NATO force spokesman. The Americans will carry out most of the operations because most weapons violating the accord are in areas they patrol.

In Sarajevo, the exodus of 800 families of Serb soldiers killed in the war, the first organized flight of Sarajevo’s Serbs, reflected how little faith they and their leaders place in Bosnia’s fragile peace.

The Serbs say they fear retaliation from their former enemies after the five city districts transfer to government authority next month.

Women, children and elderly people - many weeping - boarded buses in the Serb suburb of Hadzici Saturday and headed for an uncertain future in a Serb-held town east of Sarajevo.

“Don’t stay … because the international community will not ensure the safety of Serb Sarajevo,” the Serbs’ self-designated foreign minister, Aleksa Buha, told his brethren on Bosnian Serb television.

The mass flight came as international mediators summoned Balkan leaders to Rome to underline the need for all sides to stick to the Bosnian peace accord.

But only one Bosnian Serb leader - the moderate prime minister Rajko Kasagic - was in Rome. Leaders like Buha made plain their real feelings about a peace forced on and negotiated for them by their erstwhile patron, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

But the Hadzici exodus and the wounding of two women by sniper fire that hit two buses traveling into government-held Sarajevo showed the deep mistrust left by 3-1/2 years of war.

Serb-held districts of Sarajevo must transfer to the Muslim-led government by March 19. Under a plan worked out by the international civilian administrator of the peace accord, Carl Bildt, the transfer will begin in some areas within a week.

Thousands of Serbs have left Sarajevo or moved out belongings, fearing government authorities will retaliate for nearly four years of Serb siege and bombardment of government-held areas. But Saturday’s flight was the first organized move.

The peace has hit snags around Sarajevo, between Muslims and Croats in southwestern Mostar, and over war criminals in recent weeks.

The NATO decision to go after renegade weapons reflected determination not to let the military aspects of the peace, which have so far gone relatively smoothly to unravel as well.

All sides complied with a Jan. 19 deadline to withdraw 1.2 miles from either side of the confrontation lines. But they were also supposed to register with NATO any weapons remaining in a zone stretching 6.25 miles from the front lines.