From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: CIS and Bosnian news (from Haluk)
Date: 25 Jan 1993 04:20:45 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

 -Cautious NATO reaction to acceptance Bosnian peace plan.
 -CIS presidents consider alliance's future
 -Muslim-Croat fighting persists in central Bosnia

 Subject: Cautious NATO reaction to acceptance Bosnian peace plan.

        BRUSSELS (UPI) -- NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner said Friday
 the Bosnian Serbs will have to prove by deeds their acceptance of the
 peace plan proposed by U.N. and European Community negotiators Cyrus
 Vance and Lord Owen.
        Asked for a reaction to the acceptance of the plan earlier this week
 by the self-appointed Serbian parliament in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a NATO
 spokesman said Woerner ``noted the Bosnian Serbs' agreement.''
        But Woerner cautioned that ``In the light of past experience we will
 have to base our assessment of the plan on the deeds implementing it.''
        ``The secretary general said the aggression and appalling violence in
 Bosnia-Herzegovina must end immediately,'' the spokesman said.
        ``Only full compliance with the Geneva plan of Mr. Vance and Mr. Owen
 will show the seriousness of the Bosnian Serbs to accept a peaceful
 settlement,'' he said.
 =========================================================================
 Subject: CIS presidents consider alliance's future

        MINSK, Belarus (UPI) -- Russian President Boris Yeltsin tried to
 convince other former Soviet republics to solidify their Commonwealth of
 Independent States, but Ukraine objected to a stronger political
 alliance at Friday's summit.
        The Russian-Ukrainian split has become something of a tradition at C.
 I.S. summits, and this ninth meeting of C.I.S. presidents was no
 exception, with the two big Slavic neighbors disagreeing on nuclear
 weapons, a joint bank to facilitate interstate trade and the very
 structure of the alliance.
        Leaders of 10 republics were meeting in Minsk, the Belarus capital
 where the C.I.S. was conceived following the collapse of the Soviet
 Union 13 months ago.
        Eleven republics joined the C.I.S., but Azerbaijan has drifted away
 and sent only an observer to Minsk. Last month, five Central Asian
 republics held their own get-together, fueling speculation that they
 were preparing to break off into a separate organization. And Ukraine
 has made its opposition to a C.I.S. charter well-known.
        ``The three most important questions,'' Yeltsin said, ``are, first,
 to sign the charter since we cannot allow the five Asian republics to
 break away. We shouldn't allow this.''
        Yeltsin said, ``The second issue is nuclear arms. It is necessary to
 agree with Ukraine and Kazakhstan what to do. We have already agreed on
 the issue with Belarus. The third issue is very difficult. It concerns
 the C.I.S. armed forces.''
        Yeltsin said he also planned to push a joint peacekeeping force in
 war-wracked Tadzhikistan to supplement the Russian force already there.
        Even before the presidents retreated from the overcast gloom into the
 elegant hall that used to be a Communist Party headquarters in Minsk,
 Ukraine made it clear that it was cold to plans for a C.I.S. charter
 that would strengthen the political grouping. Turkmenistan said it
 shared Ukrainian apprehensions over a charter, which the majority of
 republics support.
        A prime ministers meeting before the presidential summit recommended
 approval of a charter.
        ``There is an opportunity at present not to destroy but to strengthen
 the Commonwealth,'' Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin said of
 the charter.
        ``The C.I.S. charter is a document that should have been signed long
 ago. I don't see any political ploys in it,'' said Armenian President
 Levon Ter-Petrosyan.
        ``After the U.S.S.R. disintegration, the C.I.S. is a must,'' said
 Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov.
        ``We favor close economic cooperation within the C.I.S,'' said
 Moldova President Mircea Snegur, whose Parliament has not ratified the
 C.I.S. Nor has Azerbaijan, leaving only nine full-fledged members, with
 these two on the sidelines. Georgia, the 12th Soviet republic at the
 time country broke up, never joined.
        Disagreement over a charter prompted suggestions that there be
 different kinds of C.I.S. membership.
        But Yeltsin entered the debate predicting closer relations,
 declaring, ``The integration process in the C.I.S. wil proceed rather
 energetically in 1993.''
        Ukrainian officials expressed more interest in economic cooperation
 than military or political agreements.
        But a plan to create an interstate bank to facilitate trade among the
 formerly linked republics found Ukraine sitting out the debate. Russia
 would get half the seats on the bank board of directors while the other
 republics divided the rest. Any decision would require three-quarters
 approval, essentially giving Russia veto power.
        No new breakthroughs were reported on nuclear issues that were left
 at an impasse Thursday following a meeting of defense ministers of the
 four nuclear republics, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Ukraine
 said it owned the ex-Soviet nuclear arsenal left on its territory, but
 Russia said that since the other three republics had vowed to give up
 their nuclear weapons then Russia must be recognized as the rightful
 owner of the arsenals in the other republics.
        Yeltsin said the republics also needed to agree on the future status
 of C.I.S. joint armed forces.
        The Russian president joined Tadzhik leaders in seeking a
 peacekeeping force for Tadzhikistan, the poor mountainous Asian republic
 torn by civil war, where only Russian troops are now located.
        ``It is necessary that peacekeeping forces from other C.I.S. member
 states be present there,'' Yeltsin said. ``It is necessary to stop the
 bloodshed.''
 =========================================================================
 Subject: Muslim-Croat fighting persists in central Bosnia

        SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Muslim Slav and Croatian forces
 defied U.N. peacemaking efforts Friday and fought fresh clashes around
 the contested town of Gornji Vakuf amid indications that battles had
 spread to a nearby area of central Bosnia-Herzegovina, U.N. officials
 and Sarajevo radio said.
        French Gen. Phillipe Morillon, the U.N. commander in the war-ravaged
 former Yugoslav republic, went to Gornji Vakuf in an attempt to persuade
 commanders of the Muslim Slav-led Bosnian army and the Croatian Defense
 Council militia to implement a cease-fire that was to have begun at 5 p.
 m. Thursday.
        But, Morillon left the town in the late afternoon without obtaining
 concrete commitments to a truce, said Canadian Cmdr. Barry Frewer, a
 spokesman for the U.N. Protection Force, or UNPROFOR.
        The two sides did tell Morillon they would ``try to establish the
 conditions and the time to pull back from confrontation lines,'' Frewer
 said.
        He said Morillon planned to continue the cease-fire talks with
 representatives of the warring factions at his headquarters in the
 Croat-controlled town of Kiseljak, 30 miles northwest of Sarajevo.
        During the talks in Gornji Vakuf, fighting persisted in and around
 the town, with Croatian artillery fire reportedly setting homes ablaze.
        Some 200 British U.N. troops stationed in Gornji Vakuf to protect U.
 N. humanitarian operations were forced to take shelter from the fighting
 by withdrawing to what Frewer called ``defensive positions.''
        Refugees from the villages around Gornji Vakuf, about 45 miles west
 of Sarajevo, were pouring into nearby Bugojno, Sarajevo radio said.
        Gornji Vakuf is held by Muslim Slav-led Bosnian troops under attack
 by the Croatian Defense Council, an ultra-nationalist militia backed by
 rightist President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and known by the initials
 of HVO.
        Spanish Maj. Juan Villalon, another UNPROFOR spokesman, said U.N.
 troops reported indications that the fighting in Gornji Vakuf had
 triggered clashes between Bosnian troops and HVO fighters in the nearby
 town of Busovaca.
        ``Explosions have been heard and the town is closed. Only U.N.
 vehicles are allowed to pass,'' Villalon said.
        The fighting in Gornji Vakuf erupted last week after Bosnian troops
 apparently rejected HVO demands to vacate the town, located inside one
 of the three Croat-dominated provinces that would be created under a new
 plan drafted by international peace mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord David
 Owen.
        Vance and Owen, the co-chairmen of the U.N.-EC-sponsored peace talks
 in Geneva, paid a one-day visit to Sarajevo on Wednesday to broker a
 truce agreement between the Muslim-Slav dominated government of Bosnian
 President Alija Izetbegovic and senior Croatian ministers loyal to
 Tudjman and the HVO.
        The accord failed to take hold, prompting U.N. and EC officials to
 mediate the unobserved 5 p.m. Thursday cease-fire.
        The rift between the two sides has added new complications to the
 Bosnian crisis on the eve of Saturday's resumption of the Geneva peace
 talks.
        It was not clear if Croatian members of the Bosnian government,
 including Prime Minister Mile Akmadzic, would participate in the Bosnian
 Croat delegation or that of the Bosnian goverment delegation, which
 represents the former Yugoslav republic's Muslim Slavs.
        Izetbegovic and his foreign minister, Haris Silajdzic, departed
 Sarajevo for Geneva at midday.
        Fighting between the HVO and Bosnian government troops has torpedoed
 in central Bosnia-Herzegovina an alliance of convenience the Muslim
 Slavs and Croats maintained against the Bosnian Serbs, who ignited the
 civil war in late March by launching an offensive to carve out a self-
 declared state.
        The Muslim Slav-Croat alliance has been the central plank of the
 Bosnian government's military strategy.
        Izetbegovic has accused Tudjman's regime of ``aggression,'' alleging
 that it orchestrated the HVO attacks on Gronji Vakuf in a bid to pre-
 empt a final rendering of the boundaries of the Croat-dominated
 provinces proposed in the Vance-Owen peace plan.
        The plan would divide the republic into 10 largely autonoumous
 provinces linked by a weak central government. The 1.9 million Muslim
 Slavs, 1.4 million Christian Orthodox Serbs and 750,000 Roman Catholic
 Croats would dominate three provinces each, while the 10th around
 Sarajevo would be neutral.
        The plan rules out the self-declared Serbian state that Bosnian Serb
 forces have virtually overrun with the support of the communist regime
 of neighboring Serbia.
        The self-styled Bosnian Serb parliament on Wednesday voted to accept
 the main principles of the plan. But, statements by senior Bosnian Serb
 leaders after the decision indicated they had not abandoned their goal
 of securing an independent state for eventual merger in a ``Greater
 Serbia'' with Serbia, Montenegro and Serb-held areas of Croatia.
        Sarajevo radio said Serb forces had taken advantage of the HVO forces
 attack on Gornji Vakuf to step up attacks on the nearby towns of Bugojno
 and Prusac.
        In other developments, Serbian gunners stepped up shellfire into
 Sarajevo after a relatively quiet morning, hitting the Muslim Slav-
 dominated old town, residential districts in the center of the city and
 in the western suburbs, the radio said.
        News reports spoke of fierce fighting in other areas of the war-
 battered republic.
             _
 |-| /-\ |_ |_| |<
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish