United Nations Serbia

A lone Serbian observer attended a session of Kosovo's U.N.-run interim government Tuesday, ending a four-month boycott prompted by Serbian suspicions that the organization is pro-Albanian. Kosovo's top U.N. official depicted the move as the start of democracy in the restive southern province of Serbia, and the U.S. office in Pristina, the provincial capital, said the move marked renewed Serbian involvement in rebuilding Kosovo.

A lone Serbian observer attended a session of Kosovo's U.N.-run interim government Tuesday, ending a four-month boycott prompted by Serbian suspicions that the organization is pro-Albanian. Kosovo's top U.N. official depicted the move as the start of democracy in the restive southern province of Serbia, and the U.S. office in Pristina, the provincial capital, said the move marked renewed Serbian involvement in rebuilding Kosovo.

The United Nations' military nightmare in Bosnia-Herzegovina comes out of a host of bellicose-sounding resolutions passed by the Security Council in the last three years that were designed not to fight a war but to assuage public opinion in Europe and the United States.

After four years of denial, the Iraqi government, desperate for the lifting of international sanctions against it, has finally admitted that it developed a powerful, offensive biological weapons program in the years leading to the Persian Gulf War, U.N. officials reported Wednesday. But Iraq asserted that it had destroyed all the biological weapons a few months before allied planes began bombing Iraq in January, 1991. U.N. officials said they will soon try to verify this.

Instead of bombing the Bosnian Serbs into submission, the sudden show of force by the United States and its European allies may have the unintended effect of strengthening hard-line Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic among his radical followers. And if that happens, U.S.-backed efforts to isolate Karadzic in the interest of finding a peaceful settlement will suffer.

Hampered by a blockade imposed by their allies in the rump Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serb forces Wednesday turned to the U.N. Protection Force with a demand for fuel to run their sputtering war machine. A letter delivered from Bosnian Serb headquarters in nearby Pale to the U.N. command center here put peacekeepers on notice that they would be barred from traveling through Bosnian Serb-held territory unless they supplied rebels with gasoline at each armed checkpoint, said U.N. spokesman Maj.

An hour after the Security Council clamped sanctions on Serbia on Saturday, it received a report--made public Wednesday--saying Belgrade does not control the main Serbian militia fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The report by U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and his chief peacekeeper, Marrack Goulding, also said Croatians are involved in the fighting in Bosnia. Security Council ambassadors are wondering now whether they were too tough on Serbia.

The major Western powers charged with enforcing a new U.N.-ordered naval blockade of Serbia and Montenegro plan to board and search suspicious vessels--and fire shots if necessary--to prevent them from delivering cargo to the rump Yugoslavia, officials said Tuesday.

Russia tried to weaken and delay a U.N. sanctions resolution against Serbia on Thursday, but the Security Council rejected the move and decided to follow its original plan to approve the sanctions next Monday, diplomatic sources said. The sources said the Russian attempt upset U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, who said she was "astounded and totally surprised" by the long list of amendments presented by Russian Ambassador Yuli M. Vorontsov at a closed session of the council.

Serbian forces shelled Sarajevo on Thursday as a U.N. official sought vainly to open a corridor for humanitarian aid to starving residents of the Bosnian capital. The continuing battles racking Bosnia-Herzegovina suggest that U.N. sanctions imposed nearly a week ago against Serb-controlled Yugoslavia have done little to deter aggression that has taken 5,700 lives in less than two months.

The United Nations' military nightmare in Bosnia-Herzegovina comes out of a host of bellicose-sounding resolutions passed by the Security Council in the last three years that were designed not to fight a war but to assuage public opinion in Europe and the United States.

Instead of bombing the Bosnian Serbs into submission, the sudden show of force by the United States and its European allies may have the unintended effect of strengthening hard-line Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic among his radical followers. And if that happens, U.S.-backed efforts to isolate Karadzic in the interest of finding a peaceful settlement will suffer.

Hampered by a blockade imposed by their allies in the rump Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serb forces Wednesday turned to the U.N. Protection Force with a demand for fuel to run their sputtering war machine. A letter delivered from Bosnian Serb headquarters in nearby Pale to the U.N. command center here put peacekeepers on notice that they would be barred from traveling through Bosnian Serb-held territory unless they supplied rebels with gasoline at each armed checkpoint, said U.N. spokesman Maj.

An explosion in a suburban courtyard Saturday injured a man and two children in Sarajevo, and Bosnian Serb rebels insisted that U.N. sanctions be lifted before they join peace talks, undermining recent diplomatic claims that the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina is all but over. The injured man told doctors and journalists a mortar round had slammed into the yard of his high-rise apartment building as he worked in his garden and children played nearby. But a U.N. spokesman, Maj.

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said Friday that he is considering ordering air strikes against Serbian forces unless they allow the rotation of U.N. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina within days. Boutros-Ghali said he has not gotten a request for air strikes, which would be undertaken by NATO planes, but his remarks appeared to reflect growing impatience with the lack of Serbian cooperation with the U.N. mission in Bosnia.

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz declared Monday that the United Nations' diplomacy has failed in the former Yugoslav federation and called on the Clinton Administration to launch large-scale air strikes against Serbian military targets in both Bosnia and Serbia. "We should be ready to use air and naval power, and we should be ready to use it (against) gun emplacements, at supply lines, at military depots, at military training facilities," Shultz said in an interview.

After four years of denial, the Iraqi government, desperate for the lifting of international sanctions against it, has finally admitted that it developed a powerful, offensive biological weapons program in the years leading to the Persian Gulf War, U.N. officials reported Wednesday. But Iraq asserted that it had destroyed all the biological weapons a few months before allied planes began bombing Iraq in January, 1991. U.N. officials said they will soon try to verify this.

Despite tough new measures to plug leaks in the U.N. sanctions against Serb-run Yugoslavia, neither Serbian political moderates who are struggling to restore the peace nor Western governments monitoring the embargo believe the effort will soon be successful. On the contrary, they warn, the West's drive to starve warmongers into submission could have the reverse effect of strengthening the hand of extremists who are trying to persuade Serbs that they are the targets of a global conspiracy.

Stung by rejection of his peace plan by Bosnia-Herzegovina's rebel Serbs, Western mediator Lord Owen left Belgrade on Monday with a warning that Balkan Serbs are risking a dangerous confrontation with the rest of the world. But from this seat of Serbian nationalist power to the front lines where Serbian forces have dug in, those bent on building an ethnically pure Greater Serbia seem fully aware of--but unmoved by--the stakes.

Bosnian Serb leaders responded with threats and anger Friday to the discovery a day earlier of thousands of bullets in a U.N. shipment of flour to Sarajevo and ordered thorough inspection of all further aid bound for enemy territory. The more stringent controls at rebel roadblocks are likely to further complicate and delay the massive humanitarian relief effort in the former Yugoslav federation on which 3 million war victims now depend for food and shelter.