Bosnia Herzegovina

With violence threatening to escalate in Yugoslavia after a fourth republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, decided to break out of the crumbling federation, the presidents of Serbia and Croatia agreed here Tuesday to order an immediate cease-fire among their supporters and to begin full peace talks within a month. Brought face-to-face by Soviet President Mikhail S.

Italy said it had urged NATO to investigate claims that six Italian soldiers who died after serving in the Balkans were killed by exposure to depleted uranium from spent ammunition fired by North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces. Prime Minister Giuliano Amato said alarm over the so-called Balkan syndrome was "more than legitimate." All six victims had leukemia. The latest, a 24-year-old from Sicily, died last fall after serving twice in Bosnia-Herzegovina but never in Kosovo.

The U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia announced war crimes charges against a Bosnian Serb captain for his alleged role in the violent deaths of more than 7,000 Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Capt. Milorad Trbic, former deputy chief of security in the Bosnian Serb army, has been charged with one count of murder in the 1995 massacre in the U.N.-protected enclave. Trbic, 47, assisted in the planning and shooting, his indictment says.

Muslim nationalist Adnan Terzic was named Bosnia-Herzegovina's prime minister under an agreement by the joint presidency, composed of a Serb, a Croat and a Muslim from the three nationalist parties. Terzic, a 42-year-old engineer and member of parliament, is to be premier for four years. He will be the first whose post will not end after eight months, after reforms implemented by Paddy Ashdown, the international envoy overseeing Bosnia's reconstruction after its 1992-1995 war.

Bosnia-Herzegovina's government has imposed a ban on all exports of arms and military equipment after its Serbian region was caught violating the U.N. arms embargo on Iraq. The move followed the removal Monday night of the Bosnian Serb defense minister and army chief, which brought to five the number of Bosnian Serb officials punished over the export of parts for Iraqi MIG-21 aircraft by the state-owned Orao factory.

A Bosnian Serb charged with committing atrocities in 1992 against Croats and Muslims at two brutal prison camps surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal. Dusan Knezevic, charged with 46 counts in two indictments, gave himself up in Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina, tribunal spokesman Jim Landale said. Knezevic was not a guard at either camp in northwestern Bosnia but was allowed to enter them to beat and torture Muslims and Croats who had been rounded up, the indictments say.

Bosnia-Herzegovina's top elected official resigned after investigators said he allowed a company to violate the U.N. arms embargo against Iraq. Mirko Sarovic, chairman of Bosnia's three-member multiethnic presidency, resigned after an investigation showed that he knew about and failed to stop the illegal exports of refurbished engines for Iraqi fighter planes. Sarovic was the Bosnian Serb president at the time. The sales by the aviation company Orao violated a U.N.

The former commandant of the Omarska prison camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina pleaded innocent at a U.N. court in The Hague to five counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bosnian Serb Zeljko Mejakic, 38, is accused of murder, torture and inhumane acts at the Omarska camp holding Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the summer of 1992. Omarska was one of three camps in the Prijedor region of northern Bosnia that prosecutors say were part of a plan to "ethnically cleanse" the area of non-Serbs.

Forensic experts started digging for remains at what they say could be one of the biggest mass graves of Muslim victims from the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Amor Masovic, head of the Muslim-led Commission for Missing Persons, said the grave might hold bodies of Muslims killed early in the war in nearby Zvornik by the army of the former Yugoslavia and Serbian irregulars.

Former rebel Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic entered no plea to counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity at his first appearance before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Babic, 47, was charged this month with war crimes and crimes against humanity for killing and persecuting non-Serbs in an "ethnic cleansing" campaign in the early 1990s.