From: wickerhauser-victor@math.yale.edu (Victor Wickerhauser)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna
Subject: Re: Assassination by Serb gunmen
Date: 8 Jan 1993 23:36:04 -0500
Organization: Yale University Mathematics Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2155
NNTP-Posting-Host: golem.math.yale.edu

In article <1993Jan8.234643.8806@midway.uchicago.edu> bitn@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>Could someone please explain exactly what happened in Sarajevo today and
>why?  All I know is that the deputy prime minister of BiH was dragged
>from his car after two Serbian tanks blocked the road from the airport
>and shot.  Why was he targeted?  What exactly happened? What has the
>reaction been?

Subject:  UPI, 01/08/93, 3rd part

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	Serb troops kill Bosnian deputy prime minister

by KEVIN SULLIVAN

        SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (UPI) -- Tank-backed Serbian troops
Friday halted a U.N. vehicle carrying Deputy Bosnian Prime Minister
Hakija Turajlic and assasinated the official in a potentially fatal blow
to already stalled international talks on ending the bitter civil war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, the U.N. mission said.
        There was no immediate reaction from Bosnian Serb leaders.
        Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic, acting head of the Muslim Slav-led
government while President Alija Izetbegovic was away in the United
States, said he was requesting an emergency session of the U.N. Security
Council.
      ``They killed our deputy prime minister,'' Ganic said. ``We are
asking for an emergency session of the Security Council right now.''
        In Washington, Izetbegovic told reporters he was cutting his visit
short and flying home.
        ``It is not only an attack on our government, but an attack upon the
United Nations,'' he told reporters after meeting at the White House
with U.S. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.
        Izetbegovic, whose eyes glistened with tears, said the slaying 
``shows very clearly that U.N. convoys are not protective and that
paramilitary Serbs can kill anyone.''
        The slaying occurred 400 yards from the airport on the U.N.-
controlled road leading to the city center through highly dangerous
territory over which Muslim Slav-led Bosnian troops and beseiging
Serbian forces constantly vie.
        Between 30 and 40 Serbian troops backed by an armored car and two
tanks halted at about 4:30 p.m. a French armored personnel carrier of
the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) returning Turajlic from the airport
to the city, said French Gen. Phillipe Morillon, the U.N. commander in
the former Yugoslav republic.
        French Col. Patrice Sartre, the commander of U.N. troops at the
airport, arrived at the scene, where he began negotiations with the
Serbian force, along with Bosnian and Serbian liaison officers. Turajlic
remained inside the U.N. vehicle, which had a crew of three, a U.N.
statement said.
        ``At 6:15 p.m., the back door of the vehicle was opened'' by Serbian
soldiers demanding to see the identification of those inside, said the
statement.
        Sartre placed himself between the Serbs and Turajlic. But he was
pushed aside by a Serbian soldier, who fired seven bullets from an
automatic weapon directly at the deputy premier, the statement said.
        The Serbs withdrew immediately. The U.N. soldiers did not return
fire, and rushed Turajlic to a French field hospital at the U.N.
headquarters, a 10-minute drive away in the western part of Sarajevo,
the statement said. Turajlic was pronounced dead on arrival.
        Earlier, U.S. and Bosnian officials had said that the Serbs dragged
Turajlic out of the vehicle and shot him to death.
        A U.S. State Department spokesman said Izetbegovic had told U.S.
officials that Turajlic was ``ambushed and killed'' in Sarajevo. ``We
understand he was taken from an UNPROFOR armored personnel carrier and
shot,'' spokesman Richard Boucher said in a statement.
        ``We deplore this apparent cold-blooded murder,'' he said.
        Turajlic, a relatively new, but highly respected politican and top-
notch electrical engineer by training, was the first high-ranking
official killed in the war. It erupted in late March when Serbian forces
set out to overrun a self-declared state proclaimed on 70 percent of the
former Yugoslav republic of 1.9 million Muslim Slavs, 1.4 million
Christian Orthodox Serbs and 750,000 Roman Catholic Croats.
        Bosnian Serb leaders seek to merge their territory with Serbia, their
main political, financial and military patron, Montenegro and Serb-
captured areas of Croatia into a ``Greater Serbia.''
        Turajlic had been taken by UNPROFOR to the U.N.-controlled airport to
talk with a visiting Turkish government delegation that had been
prevented from leaving the facility, officials said.
        ``The Turkish delegation was not announced,'' Morillon said. 
``Somebody told the (UNPROFOR headquarters) to send a (welcoming)
delegation to the airport. But no one was aware of the importance of the
delegation.''
        A joint session of the Bosnian Cabinet and multi-ethnic collective
presidency met after 8 p.m. in the shell-shattered downtown presidency
building to hear a report on the killing from Morillon.
        Ministers, some of them in tears, demanded Morillon's resignation.
        Morillon admitted that ``in principle'' the door of the French
vehicle should not have been opened.
        He said the Serbs had claimed the Turkish plane had delivered
soldiers to assist the Bosnian government and that they wanted to search
the vehicle for ammunition.
      ``I share the pain and revolt of the Bosnian government and the
Bosnian people after this asassination,'' Morillon said.
        He said the killer was arrested by Serbian authorities, but did
elaborate or say whether other arrests were likely.
        But he added that he regarded Maj. Gen. Stanislav Galic, the Serbian
commander of the Sarajevo area, responsible for the slaying. He said he
believed Galic sent the detachment to block the French vehicle on his
own initiative.
        ``Naturally, he (Turajlic) was under my protection. Naturally, it's a
failure,'' Morillon said when asked if UNPROFOR bore some responsibility
for not ensuring Turajlic's safety.
      On the demands for his resignation, he said: ``It's not my position
which is important.''
        Calling the killing ``a tragedy,'' he continued: ``I'm afraid it will
damage the cause of peace. The fact at the present time is that we are
between peace and war, with the risk that the peace process will be
broken.''
        He was referring to the Geneva-based U.N.-European Community-
sponsored negotiations that deadlocked on Monday after Bosnian Serb
leader Radovan Karadzic balked at a new peace plan because it excluded
the acceptance of his self-declared Serbian state.
        Instead, the proposal by mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen,
the chairmen of the Geneva conference, foresees a division of Bosnia-
Herzegovina into 10 largely autonomous provinces, while preserving the
integrity of the newly independent country.
        Western nations and other countries have become impatient over the
lack of progress in the talks and Serbian intransigence, and there have
been growing calls for the United Nations to authorize military
intervention to halt the war if the Geneva negotiations break down.
        Karadzic, given by Vance and Owen until Sunday to consult with his
leadership and return to Geneva, called a session of his self-styled
parliament in the northeastern town of Bijeljina to decide a position on
the proposal.
      He told delegates they had to chose whether they should make 
``minimum concessions'' in order to ``save the Geneva conference'' or 
``mobilize all of our forces and get ready to defend ourselves with all
our means to the end.''
        Sarajevo, besieged and bombarded for more than nine months by Serbian
forces, was largely calm during the day after a night of fierce
artillery, mortar and heavy machinegun duels.
        Bosnian government troops, comprising mostly Muslim Slavs but also
including moderate Serbs and Croats, traded infantry and anti-aircraft
fire around the Serb-held downtown neighborhood of Grbavica.
        Fighting flared elsewhere in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with Serbian attacks
reported in and around the Muslim Slav- and Croat-held towns of
Srebrenica, Cerska, Konjevic Polje, Maglaj, Doboj and Tesanj.
        British soldiers of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) escorting a
convoy of industrial salt from the northeastern Muslim Slav-held town of
Tuzla to Kladanj, north of Sarajevo, came under fire Thursday, U.N.
officials said.
        Eight mortar rounds exploded close to British armored vehicles north
of Kladanj, but there were no casualties or damage.

-- 
Prof. M. Victor Wickerhauser                      <victor@kirk.wustl.edu>
Department of Mathematics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130 USA
Telephone:  USA(314)935-6771, USA(314)727-0749;     FAX: USA(314)727-4963
Sto se ljuckim trudom uzdignulo, Ljuckim znojem jopet se ponavlja. --Medo Pucic
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna,soc.culture.arabic,soc.culture.pakistan,talk.bizarre