U.N. Abandons Effort To Save Sarajevo From Bombardment Serbs Free Last Hostages In Return For Releasing Guns

In a tradeoff that secured the release of the last 26 peacekeepers held hostage by the Bosnian Serbs, the United Nations on Sunday abandoned its attempt to protect Sarajevo from bombardment by heavy artillery.

As the peacekeepers were set free, U.N. forces withdrew from the weapons-collection sites where, over the past 16 months, they have attempted to police and control the Serbian guns that were long used to bombard the besieged Bosnian capital.

The release came as a Serbian shell fired by Serbian rebels slammed into the Sarajevo suburb of Dobrinja, killing 7 people and wounding 10 others, mostly elderly people waiting in line for water. It was a similar shelling incident, at the Sarajevo market in February, 1994, that killed 68 people and led to the creation of the U.N. weapons-collection sites abandoned on Sunday. Thus, the wheel has come full circle.

Having successfully used terror to secure virtually all their demands, the Bosnian Serbs on Sunday allowed the last of more than 350 peacekeepers that they had either detained or surrounded over the past three weeks to go free.

In an apparent exchange, the United Nations released four Serbs captured on May 27 after a battle with French peacekeepers in central Sarajevo. Their release was the final condition set by Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, for the freeing of all the U.N. hostages.

At the same time, the U.N. force here was allowed to withdraw 91 peacekeepers from weaponscollection sites around Sarajevo where they had been surrounded by the Serbs since May 26. Their withdrawal back into the city constituted the formal collapse of the combined effort by NATO and the United Nations to police or remove heavy weapons from the Sarajevo area.

“The policy of weapons-collection points has now been abandoned,” said Chris Gunness, a U.N. spokesman in Zagreb, referring to the 10 sites established by a NATO ultimatum in February, 1994, for the collection of tanks, artillery and big guns within 12.5 miles of Sarajevo.

The NATO ultimatum last year, initially successful in stopping the shelling of Sarajevo, amounted to one of the few, fleeting moments in the 38-month Bosnian war when the West was successful in alleviating the suffering of this beleaguered city. Its unraveling under scores the failure of international efforts to halt the devastation of Bosnia.

That devastation, continuously marked by the use of terror as a weapon of war, resumed on Sunday as the Serbian shell slammed into Dobrinja, a suburb that was built to house athletes at the 1984 winter Olympics.

The 26 U.N. hostages released on Sunday by Karadzic included 11 Canadians and 15 military observers of various nationalities. The peacekeepers were put on buses to the Serbian capital of Belgrade.

In theory the departure of peacekeepers from Serb-held territory could open the way for more robust measures because U.N. personnel will no longer be vulnerable to hostage-taking. But even with a rapid reaction force due to arrive in Bosnia next month, such a change of policy appears to be a remote possibility.