Sarajevo Relief Flights Canceled After Planes Hit U.N. Officials Criticize Dubious Commitment In Carrying Out Truce

Relief flights to Sarajevo were canceled Saturday after two planes were struck by gunfire, and U.N. officials accused the warring sides of “foot-dragging” in carrying out a shaky four-month truce.

It wasn’t clear whether the bullets that hit the planes were a deliberate attack. But the Sarajevo airport, on the front line between government troops and their Serb enemies, was closed for the first time since the truce began a week ago.

Bullet holes were found in two Ilyushin-76 cargo planes after they returned to Zagreb, Croatia, from Sarajevo.

One plane was hit near its front wheel, the other near an engine. There were no injuries.

U.N. spokesman Michael Williams in Zagreb said there would be no U.N. flights today.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it was reviewing the situation.

Williams suggested the incident might be the result of Serb celebratory fire marking the Orthodox Christmas, which was Saturday.

Bosnian Serbs, who surround the city, say they won’t allow access to Sarajevo, as required by the truce, until government forces withdraw from a demilitarized zone on Mount Igman south of the city.

But U.N. sources said Serbs expanded that demand during U.N.-mediated talks Friday, insisting government troops also give up positions gained in an offensive last fall.

Government soldiers gave up two of the three promised areas on Mount Igman, and U.N. soldiers planned to check the third once landmines have been cleared, said Lt. Col. Patrick Declety, a U.N. spokesman.

Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Rose, the U.N. commander, planned to meet Gen. Ratko Mladic on Sunday at Bosnian Serb headquarters in nearby Pale. A U.N. source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Rose would try to talk Mladic out of insisting on additional government withdrawals.

“It seems that we are seeing some footdragging by the Bosnian Serb side concerning the opening of routes … and some footdragging by the Bosnian government side concerning the withdrawal from the DMZ (demilitarized zone),” said Alexander Ivanko, a U.N. spokesman.

He conceded the momentum for achieving peace “might be losing some steam.”

On the battlefield, the truce appeared just as shaky.

Overnight Friday, more than 100 artillery and mortar rounds, along with rifle and machine-gunfire, rattled the Velika Kladusa area of northwestern Bosnia, said Maj. Herve Gourmelon, a U.N. military spokesman.

Heavy fighting was reported Saturday near Serb-held Doboj, in north-central Bosnia, where nearly 200 shells landed, and along the Serbs’ northern supply corridor.

Two French peacekeepers were slightly wounded in Sarajevo. Declety said one may have been hit by celebratory Serb gunfire. The other was wounded by broken glass from his car windshield after something, possibly a bullet, hit the car.

There were unconfirmed reports of renewed fighting Saturday between Bosnian Croat and Serb forces in southwestern Bosnia around the town of Livno.

But the fighting in the northwest Bihac enclave, including around Velika Kladusa, appeared to pose the most serious threat.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic warned in a letter to Yasushi Akashi, the chief U.N. envoy, that fighting there “calls into question the cease-fire we all have made such an effort to achieve.”

The Bosnian war began in April 1992 when Serbs rebelled after Muslims and Croats voted to secede from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.

Since then, more than 200,000 people have died or disappeared.