From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: News--Three articles, all about Bosnia
Date: 13 Dec 1992 14:47:17 -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

12/12 Situation In Sarajevo Worsens

   SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- The U.N. commander
in Bosnia warned Saturday of dwindling food supplies, and
the European Community decided to investigate charges that
Serbs systematically raped Muslim women prisoners.
   Bosnian radio reported four people were killed in rocket
fire in Sarajevo, and there was shelling west of the
airport.
   An international group of about 500 peace activists
arrived to show solidarity with Sarajevo's 400,000
residents, under siege by Serb rebels for nearly eight
months.
   At least 17,000 people have died in the fighting between
Muslims, Serbs and Croats in Bosnia, and more than 100,000
are listed as missing. Muslims and Croats voted in February
for independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, provoking a
rebellion by Bosnian Serbs.
   Meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, leaders of the 12 EC
nations said in a draft communique that former British
ambassador to Denmark, Dame Anne Warburton, would head an
investigative team to detention camps in Bosnia.
   Bosnian officials, foreigners, and women and girls in
Serb-run detention camps have accused Serb fighters, who
have seized 70 percent of Bosnia, of systematically raping
their female Muslim prisoners.
   The communique made it clear EC leaders do not believe
Serb denials.
   "Those responsible for these crimes against humanity will
be held personally accountable and brought to justice," it
read.
   In Sarajevo, U.N. officials reiterated that emergency
food stocks are almost gone and the city has been without
electricity and water for days. Repair missions have been
hampered by fighting.
   "It is worse and worse in Sarajevo," said Gen. Phillipe
Morillon, the French commander of U.N. troops in Bosnia.
   Fears have risen that Sarajevo, the seat of Bosnia's
Muslim-led government, is close to falling to the rebel
Serbs. Morillon said that would be a political disaster, but
the city's defenders did not have the power to break the
siege.
   A humanitarian airlift supplying about 40 percent of U.N.
aid was suspended Dec. 1 after a U.S. plane was fired on.
U.N. officials said the airlift would not resume before
Tuesday.
   A U.N. logistics flight did land in the city Saturday
afternoon, said U.N. officials in Zagreb, Croatia, where
flights are coordinated. It was the first U.N. plane to land
in the region since Dec. 3.
   Morillon said he would meet with military representatives
of the three warring factions Sunday.
   The peace activists, from Italy, Britain, the United
States, Canada and other countries, arrived late Friday. The
Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency, citing U.N. sources, said
the group traveled to Sarajevo in 10 buses.

12/12 STATE PREMIER URGES GERMANY TO TAKE 6,000 BOSNIAN ...

STATE PREMIER URGES GERMANY TO TAKE 6,000 BOSNIAN REFUGEES
    BONN, Dec 12, Reuter - German state premier Erwin Teufel
said on Saturday that if Bonn did not agree to take in 6,000
detainees from prison camps in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina,
he would start his own campaign to help them.
    Teufel said his wealthy state of Baden-Wuerttemberg
would launch a single-handed effort with the help of aid
groups to help the refugees, who are unable to leave Bosnia
because other countries have failed to offer them shelter..
    Germany has agreed to take in about 1,000 Bosnian
detainees by Christmas on the condition that other European
Community members agreed to shelter more refugees.
    "Germany should take on 6,000 people from these Serbian
"death camps'," Teufel said.
    "If need be, Baden-Wuerttemberg will give refuge to
2,000 detainees from prison camps in Bosnia," Teufel, a
member of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic
Union (CDU) party said in a statement.
    Teufel said that Baden-Wuerttemberg, a high-tech centre
and one of Germany's richest states, would not follow the
example of some European countries.
    "Europe is failing in the Yugoslav civil war." he said.
    The far-right anti-foreigner Republican Party won 10.9
per cent of the vote in state elections last April in Baden-
Wuerttemberg, which lies in the southwest of Germany.
    Mainstream parties have acknowledged support for the
Republican party surged partly because they had failed to
combat rising unemployment and housing shortages, which are
exacerbated by an influx of asylum-seekers, due to peak at
over 400,000 this year.
    According official figures released by Bonn, Germany has
accepted 235,000 refugees from the former Yugoslavia, the
largest contingent in western Europe.
    Switzerland is sheltering 70,000, Austria 57,000,
Hungary 50,000, Sweden 47,000, Italy 17,000, Turkey 15,000,
Netherlands 6,300, Britain 2,000, Belgium 1,800, Denmark
1,700, and France 1,100, the figures show.
    Other states have taken in about 30,000 refugees.


12/12 U.N. TO PRESS AGAIN FOR CEASEFIRE IN BOSNIA

    By Kurt Schork
    SARAJEVO, Dec 12, Reuter - General Philippe Morillon,
commander of U.N. peace-keeping troops in Bosnia, said on
Saturday he planned a fresh attempt to persuade Moslem,
Croat and Serb forces to stop fighting.
    Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, returning from a
foreign tour to seek support for his country, landed in
Sarajevo aboard the first U.N. flight since the city airport
was closed by shelling on December 4.
    Sarajevo, besieged by Serbs since April, has suffered
some of the worst bloodshed of the war during the last two
weeks despite a ceasefire agreed by military leaders of the
three sides a month ago.
    Some fighting continued in and around frontline Moslem
towns in north and central Bosnia on Saturday as well as in
the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo radio reported.
    Shells thudded near Morillon's headquarters in the city
as he told reporters he would meet the military envoys again
on Sunday to press them for a clear commitment to the
ceasefire and the safe passage of U.N. relief operations.
    "Now it is up to the leaders to pay more than lip
service to the peace process," he said. "We are in a vicious
circle and we have to try to break this circle.
    Displaying an optimism which has survived the breakdown
of all the ceasefires agreed so far, he added: "I'm not a
magician, I'm not a prophet, but I think the conditions are
established for negotiations."
    Morillon described the scale of the fighting in
Sarajevo, which has forced the United Nations to close its
air bridge to the trapped population of some 380,000, as
disappointing but not discouraging, although serious damage
had been needlessly caused to utilities.
    With temperatures down to freezing point, most of
Sarajevo is without electricity, water and heating and
residents are chopping down trees for fuel.
    Morillon said ceasefire violations did not prevent the
United Nations successfully routing aid convoys by road into
Sarajevo and besieged Moslem towns such as Srebrenica,
Gorazde and Tuzla which were previously cut off.
    "I don't hestitate to affirm that we can be proud of
what we have accomplished," he added. "We have absolutely no
pretension to be the saviour of Bosnia-Herzegovina...as far
as providing humanitarian assistance is concerned, we didn't
fail and we have done that without using force."
    Morillon disclosed that the United Nations Protection
Force (UNPROFOR) had prepared contingency plans to protect
its 7,500 troops in Bosnia if the West decided to intervene
militarily against the dominant Serbs, who control 70 per
cent of the former Yugoslav republic.
    He declined to say what the measures were or what
recommendation UNPROFOR commanders had made, although they
are known to fear that intervention would expose their
lightly-alarmed forces to Serb reprisals.
    The Bosnian government crisis centre in Sarajevo
reported that the registered number of dead during the war
was now 17,622 in Moslem and Croat controlled areas and
2,924 in Sarajevo.
    Thousands of Serbs have also died and the real toll is
considerably higher, with many thousands of people listed as
missing.
    Sarajevo radio said fighting in the capital during the
night was light after intensive clashes over the last four
days, during which Moslems said they had captured a
strategic hill overlooking the Serb-held suburb of Ilidza
and satellite town of Vogosca.
    A Bosnian Serb army spokesman denied the hill had been
captured. But the Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA said Moslem
forces launched a fierce artillery and infantry attack on
Saturday morning.
    European Community foreign ministers at a summit in
Scotland completed a draft text holding the leaders of
Serbia and the self-proclaimed Serbian Republic of Bosnia
mainly responsible for the conflict.
    The draft expressed anger at "ethnic cleansing" by Serbs
-- the practice of driving Moslems from their homes -- and
the systematic rape of Moslem women in Bosnia. It demanded
access to detention centres for a team of EC investigators.