The Serbian-dominated government of Yugoslavia is violating a United Nations arms embargo by supplying food, fuel and weapons to Serbs waging war in Bosnia, according to UN monitors and eyewitness accounts.
Western correspondents traveling through eastern Bosnia in recent weeks have seen large-bore artillery pieces and infantry vehicles with mounted cannon crossing the Drina River from Ljubovija, Serbia, to join operations at Bratunac, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Bratunac is the front-line position for Bosnian Serbs who have besiegeed Srebrenica in an offensive designed to drive some 40,000 Muslims out of the area.
The Serbian drive has proved immensely successful. The Muslims are so desperate to leave war-battered Srebrenica that six people died Wednesday when hundreds mobbed a UN relief truck transporting refugees to Tuzla, a Muslim-held city 45 miles to the north.
But the Serbian campaign in eastern Bosnia may prove even more successful in frustrating implementation of a UN-brokered peace plan designed to end the war.
The UN plan envisions assigning a strategic wedge of eastern Bosnia-now the scene of some of the war’s most brutal hardships-to the Bosnian Muslim government operating from Sarajevo.
But after the recent Serbian offensive in eastern Bosnia, the map drawn up by mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen as part of their peace plan appears irrelevent.
UN military observers charge that Yugoslav army units have shelled Srebrenica, and that at least three small aircraft operating from fields in Serbia have bombed the enclave in eastern Bosnia.
Efforts to conceal Serbia’s involvement in the offensive resulted in the brief detention of a handful of Western correspondents recently in an off-limits zone of Bosnia behind Serb front lines.
The reporters were escorted to the Drina River crossing, where troops on the Serbian bank refused them entry until their car was rushed off the bridge and allowed back to make way for a column of military vehicles crossing from Serbia into Bosnia.
Accounts of direct Serbian involvement in the Bosnian civil war have entered into the debate on how-and whether-Western powers should respond if peace talks collapse.
Confirmation of Serbia’s violations would strengthen those who argue against the one-sidedness of the arms embargo. Serbia retained most of the weapons of the old Yugoslav National Army. Muslim leaders want the embargo lifted so they can mount a credible self-defense.
The Clinton administration says that Serbia is playing a continuing role in providing arms and supplies to the Bosnian Serbs for their war, despite Belgrade’s past assurances to the contrary.
“There are cross-border movements and activities by the Yugoslav National Army,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
“These are a direct violation of the UN arms embargo. They are directly counter to the efforts to bring peace to Bosnia. They constitute direct intervention by an outside power, and we condemn that.”
But administration officials concede there is little that can be done about it directly because other members of the UN Security Council are opposed to exempting the Muslims from the arms embargo.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday that the administration is undertaking a “full-scale diplomatic offensive” to put pressure on the Bosnian Serbs to sign the peace plan already accepted by the Croatians and Muslims in Bosnia.
“If they do not soon join, we will begin to consult with our allies about the possibility of lifting the arms embargo,” he said.
Britain and France oppose lifting the embargo because they fear such action would prompt Serbs to retaliate against British and French military forces delivering UN humanitarian aid.
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Russia, with its traditional ties to the Serbs, has indicated it also would block any Security Council action exempting the Muslims from the embargo.
In Bosnia, meanwhile, senior UN officials say they are compiling firm evidence of Serbian violations.
On March 27, the UN said the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army had shelled Srebrenica.
Victor Andreyev, UN chief of civil affairs in Bosnia, told reporters: “We have the facts that artillery shells come from Serbia.”
Andreyev said French Gen. Philippe Morillon, commander of UN forces in Bosnia, lodged a formal protest with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. The protest included a request to pressure the Bosnian Serb military command to call off the offensive and end the war.
But Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic said Belgrade cannot influence the Bosnian Serbs that much.
“Please believe me,” Cosic said, “Yugoslavia and Serbia cannot order the Serbs in Bosnia to accept something that is a threat to their survival, nor are the Bosnian Serbs ready to obey orders from Belgrade.”
Military experts say that Belgrade could apply presure to the Bosnian Serbs, though, namely by pulling the plug on its logistical network aiding the war effort.
Andrew Duncan of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said a “top-level, well-placed” source confirmed to his staff that Bosnian Serbs receive crucial supplies, food and fuel from Serbia.
Belgrade’s policy of blocking humanitarian aid convoys on the Serbian side of the Drina River also further weakens besieged Muslim enclaves such as Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde, another assist to the Bosnian Serb campaign.
“We have to face the fact that there is a view among the Bosnian Serbs that the international community will not stand up to them,” said Owen, the international mediator. “They are very much testing the international community’s mettle.”
In response, the Clinton administration began considering whether to support lifting the arms embargo on the Muslims and enforcement of a UN-sponsored “no-fly zone” over Bosnia.
The Security Council on Wednesday authorized NATO warplanes to shoot down aircraft that violate the ban on flights over Bosnia.
As for the arms embargo, President Clinton himself raised the possibility of lifting the measure in a recent CBS-TV interview.
“We’ve been very clear that if the (Muslim) Bosnians will sign off under the (peace) plan and the Croatians sign off on it and the Serbs don’t, that we think that we’re going to have to look at some other actions to try to give the Bosnians a means to at least defend themselves,” Clinton said. “I’m very concerned about this.”
With that public assurance from the highest level, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic signed the peace pact the next day, as U.S. officials predicted he would, leaving the Bosnian Serbs as the lone hold-out.
A senior administration official confirmed that Izetbegovic demanded assurances on the arms-embargo question before signing.
“We told them it would be under review, that we’d keep looking at it to see if it was possible,” said a senior administration official.