From: smithmc@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Lost Boy)
Subject: Re: WAR IN BOSNIA!!!!
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 07:27:04 GMT

From the Chicago Tribune, Thursday December 17, 1992, Section One, p1:

US READIES BOSNIA FORCE

By Terry Atlas, Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON- President Bush is preparing to use American millitary force in 
hopes of preventing powerful Serb nationalists from making further territorial
gains in the former Yugoslavia, administration officials said Wednesday.

After months of hesitation, the President is seeking to step up US millitary
involvement in the bloody Balkans conflict because of the deteriorating
humanitarian situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The CIA warns that nearly
2 million Bosnians are in danger of dying this Winter from starvation and
exposure.

With authorization from the United Nations Security Council, American warplanes
could begin enforcing the Council's "No-Fly Zone" over Bosnia by Christmas,
threatening to shoot down Serbian aircraft and possibly attacking Serbian
airfields and support facilities in Bosnia, officials said.

On Thursday, the Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger is scheduled to meet
with allied foreign ministers in Brussels to discuss enforcing the UN resolution
barring UN flights over Bosnia, which has been routinely violated by Serbian
millitary aircraft since it was imposed October 9th.

US millitary planners believe that enforcement can be handled with relativly
little risk to American pilots. The bigger danger is that the Bosnian Serbs
would retaliate - either against the UN peacekeepers in Bosnia or by blocking
humanitarian aid to besieged Bosnian Muslims - which would leave the US and
its NATO allies with little choice but to escalate their millitary operations
in what Western leaders fear is a Balkan quagmire.

President-Elect Bill Clinton, who already will inherit an American millitary
commitment in Somalia, said last week that he favors enforcing the UN ban
on Serbian flights over Bosnia.

Meanwhile on Wednesday in Geneva, Eagleburger said that Serb Leaders, including
President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, could
face war-crimes trials for failing to prevent atrocities. 

He also listed by name four Serbs and three Croatians - militia leaders or
detention camp commanders - who, he said, should be put before an international
war-crimes tribunal. They include Borislav Herak, a Bosnian Serb who reportedly
has confessed to killing  more than 230 civilians, and Zeljko Raznjatovic, 
leader of the Serb "Tigers" paramilitary force accuded of the mass murders of
up to 3000 civilians as a part of the so-called ethnic cleansing in the 
northeastern Bosnian toen of Brcko.

The US and its allies are trying to turn up the political pressure in advance
of Sunday's presidential elections in Serbia with the hope that it will 
undermine Milosevic and help his main challenger, Milan Panic, a Serb-Born
California millionare who has promised to end the war in Bosnia.

But even that may be a futile hope. US officials are pessimistic that Milosevic
will step down if he loses, and they fear that  he would take an election 
victory as a mandate  to keep up the war  and to expand the conflict into 
Kosovo, an ethnic tinderbox that could ignite a wider regional war.

"The situation there won't necessarily be any better on Monday, and it may
get much worse," said an administration official.

THe Bush administration has been  deeply divided for months on how to respond
to the growing carnage in Bosnia.

CIA Director Robert Gates said Tuesday that close to 2 million people are at
risk of starvation in Bosnia alone and that the massive refugee problem will
get worse this winter throughout the former Yugoslavia.

"Despite the presence of over 20,000 UN troops, the fighting in the Balkans
has the frightening potential to spread... [which] could result in armed
conflicts involving Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey,"
he said in a speech.

The UN Security Council is expected to act next week on a US initiative  that
would authorize  broad international military measures to enforce the flight
ban. Britain and France, which fear Serbian retaliation against their troops
deployed as part of the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia, want a resolution 
that permits force to be used only against Serbian aircraft violating the 
flight ban.

The US could perform the mission  with warplanes based aboard the aircraft
carrier John F. Kennedy in the Adriatic Sea and others operating from bases
in Italy.

Along with enforcing the flight ban, the NATO foreign ministers also will
discuss a request from UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali that the
alliance draw up plans for a safe havens in Bosnia for Muslims fleeing Serb
attacks nad for military measures to prevent the Bosnian war from spilling
over into Kosovo.

Currently, the US has just a peripheral role in Western military activities
in the Balkans, with an American RADAR plane monitoring flights in the region
and American warships participating in the NATO enforcement of a trade embargo
against Serbia. The US is also taking part in the airlift of food to the Bosnian
capital of Sarajevo.

In Geneva, international mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen warned that the
use of military force to enforce the UN ban could endanger UN peacekeepers
on the ground in Bosnia and could jeopordize Serbian willingness to continue
to permit limited humanitarian aid to Bosnia.


____________________________________________________________________________
Reprinted from the Dec. 17, 1992 Chicago Tribune, Section One, pg. 1,6




There it is, guys. 
Lost Boy
Newsgroups: alt.politics.bush