U.N. Begins Airlift of Wounded From Srebrenica

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — U.N. helicopters flew 133 wounded people out of Srebrenica on Sunday under a cease-fire between Serbian besiegers and Muslim defenders of the eastern Bosnian town.

After U.N. troops entered the town, the head of the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia claimed that Srebrenica was under international guard and safe from Serbian forces.

“We can now guarantee the survival of Srebrenica. The agreement we reached was to demilitarize the town,” Gen. Philippe Morillon told reporters in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

A Serbian attack on the town “would be an attack on the entire world,” the French general said.

But it remained to be seen whether the latest cease-fire would hold. Many have collapsed in a year of civil war between Bosnia’s Muslims, Serbs and Croats.

The latest cease-fire, which began at 2 a.m., allowed French Puma and British Sea King helicopters to swoop into the town and ferry old men, women and children, many of them bandaged and screaming in agony, to safety in Muslim-held Tuzla in northern Bosnia.

Serbian forces also allowed 140 Canadian U.N. peacekeeping troops to drive into the town to start disarming Muslim fighters and monitor the cease-fire.

Under the U.N.-brokered agreement signed early Sunday by Muslim Gen. Sefer Halilovic and Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, the U.N. intends to fly 500 wounded and sick out of Srebrenica.

Muslim fighters are supposed to turn in all weapons and ammunition to U.N. peacekeepers by Wednesday morning. Their safety is to be guaranteed, although the more powerful Serbian forces do not have to hand in their arms.

Meanwhile, the United Nations increased pressure on the Serbs by agreeing to tighten sanctions on Yugoslavia unless they accept a peace plan.

Bosnian Serbs reacted angrily and defiantly to the decision by the U.N. Security Council to toughen sanctions against Yugoslavia for its role in the fighting unless the Serbs accept the peace plan.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic threatened to pull out of international peace talks and said he will not sign the peace plan because of objections to boundaries proposed for redrawing Bosnia into 10 semiautonomous provinces.

British U.N. officials said Sunday that fighting also raged on in central Bosnia, where the battles are between Croats and Muslims.

They said 70 to 100 people have been killed and scores injured in three days of fighting between the nominal allies around Vitez.

A U.N. official in Zagreb said the evacuation of Srebrenica will resume today, subject to confirmation from the Bosnian Serbs, who have trapped 30,000 refugees in the town with a yearlong siege.

The cease-fire agreement was a personal success for Morillon, who appeared to win a reprieve when French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur said his mission in Bosnia had been extended. Only last week France’s defense minister had said Morillon was unlikely to be in his post by May.

U.N. Protection Force spokesman Barry Frewer denied that disarming the Muslim fighters was tantamount to surrendering Srebrenica. But referring to a history of broken cease-fires in Bosnia, he said, “There are potential risks involved.”

The new Security Council sanctions against Yugoslavia, which now comprises only Serbia and Montenegro, would cut off commerce with the outside world on April 26 if the Bosnian Serbs do not accept the U.N.-brokered peace plan for Bosnia.

All countries would be banned from transporting goods across Yugoslavia, ships on the Danube River would have to be monitored, financial assets would be frozen and a maritime exclusion zone would be set up in the Adriatic Sea off the Montenegrin coast.

The Yugoslav government said after an emergency Cabinet session that the United Nations was biased and that Yugoslavia could be forced to reconsider its role in peace efforts.