Bosnia Herzegovina Revolts

The major Western powers launched a bid Tuesday to strip Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia of its voting rights in the United Nations in retaliation for its prosecution of the war against Bosnia-Herzegovina. Led by Britain, delegates from the 12-nation European Community began sounding out members of the powerful U.N. Security Council on Tuesday about the possibility of pushing through a formal resolution on the question sometime this week.

Bosnian Serb shells allegedly struck a Croatian town Monday in violation of a new cease-fire, and the Bosnian government raised its toll of dead in the civil war by about 25%. The Health Ministry in Sarajevo said that 17,466 people have been killed, 2,839 of them in Sarajevo, since the Bosnian war began nearly eight months ago. The previous count was 14,000. The ministry also said that more than 111,000 people are missing and 134,132 people have been wounded.

Outraged over atrocities in Bosnia's civil war, the Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to set up an investigative commission whose findings could lead to Nuremberg-style war crimes trials. The commission is to look into reports of massacres, "ethnic cleansing" and other crimes in all former Yugoslav republics.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic claimed Monday that 1,000 people are being killed each day in the Serbian siege of his country, and he threatened to pull out of deadlocked peace talks here unless all heavy weapons there are brought under Western control. He said he is frustrated with the Geneva forum that has compelled him to negotiate with Serb militants responsible for the shocking death and destruction afflicting his former Yugoslav republic.

In the face of growing Serbian militancy, the president of Bosnia-Herzegovina gave in Tuesday to pressures to permit the division of his war-torn republic, while federal Yugoslav authorities backed away from a confrontation with police of the Serbian republic.

Western leaders who took part in this week's costly and vaunted conference on Yugoslavia concede that they failed to deter the Balkan killing or censure those accused of inciting it. But some claim that patience and diplomacy still hold out the best chance for peace in the distant future.

Serbian officers blocked a food convoy to Srebrenica on Thursday, but a U.N. spokesman said the relief trucks would reach the besieged eastern city today. Another U.N. relief convoy completed its delivery to the government-held town of Gorazde 30 miles southeast of Sarajevo and was reported on its way back. It was delayed Wednesday when an armored ambulance hit a mine. The convoy to Gorazde was only the third since it was besieged by Serb fighters in the spring.

When Djehva Ramulic and two grandchildren escaped from the horrors of "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia-Herzegovina last month, they officially ceased to exist. Like 3,000 other Muslims now hiding between a highway and a rubbish dump, the family has been grudgingly granted refuge on condition they place no strain on Croatia's stretched resources.

While international relief officials say any effort to feed the starving in Bosnia-Herzegovina is welcome, a U.S. airdrop over the war-ravaged former Yugoslav republic so far appears to have offered more symbolism than solace. Since U.S. military cargo planes began soaring over embattled Bosnian enclaves to parachute aid to hungry and wounded civilians two miles below, Serbian rebels have grabbed more territory and have continued to block ground deliveries of food and medicine for their victims.

Mira Dubljevic can no longer wait for a peaceful solution to the war in her homeland. She died this month of malnutrition and cold. Like thousands of others housed in institutions deprived of food, heat and visits from loved ones, the 43-year-old Bosnian Muslim succumbed to a lethal combination of hardships as politicians debated options for ending a war that daily exacts its cruelest toll on civilians.