From: malenovi@plains.NoDak.edu (Malenovic Nikola V.)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Izetbegovic threatens to cut electricity
Date: 5 Sep 92 04:05:59 GMT
Article-I.D.: plains.20167
Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computing Network


-courtesy of SII-

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Subject: Izetbegovic threatens to cut electricity
Date: 4 Sep 92 17:55:17 GMT

	SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Sarajevo marked its fifth month
under siege Friday and President Alija Izetbegovic warned that his
government would begin shutting off electricity across Bosnia-
Hercegovina if Serb-sabotaged power was not restored to the capital by
day's end.
	``If the city's electricity is not restored during this day, we shall
begin cutting electricity to other areas of the republic,'' the head of
the Muslim Slav-led government said in an interview with a group of
foreign and domestic journalists.
	``We have voiced what has become almost a slogan: electricity for
everybody, or electricity for no one,'' said Izetbegovic. He said the
shutdown would be ``gradual,'' but declined to say how it would be
implemented.
	Izetbegovic said he had heard that repair work was under way, ``so
there is some hope that we will get electricity, at least some of it.''
	His decision came on the 29th day that most of Sarajevo went without
electric power despite U.N.-assisted efforts to repair cables and
distribution equipment damaged in three outlying Serb-controlled
locations by repeated Serbian gunfire.
	The repairs have also been halted by the planting of mines.
	The loss of power shut down the city's main water system, cutting
fresh supplies to most of the estimated 350,000 residents and 150,000
refugees trapped by Serbian forces fighting to rip a self-declared state
out of Bosnia-Hercegovina.
	Senior officials said interviews earlier in the week that they had
refrained from employing an ability to disrupt the entire republic-wide
power grid through the generating plants and distribution points still
under Bosnian control.
	But, they said, such a move was now needed to pressure the United
Nations into pressing Serbian forces to allow the repairs for Sarajevo.
	They said it was imperative to restore fresh water because existing
supplies have become contaminated and there were growing cases of
infectious diseases that could erupted into epidemics.
	In addition, they said electricity had to be restored to provide heat
to the city during the harsh Balkan winter and avert a humanitarian
disaster amid the massive devastation wrought to Sarajevo by nearly
relentless Serbian barrages.
	Encircling Serbian forces, armed by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army,
have poured millions of canon, small arms, anti-aircraft, rocket and
tank rounds into the predominantly Muslim Slav city, which they are
demanding be partitioned into ethnic districts.
	The beginning of the siege is marked as April 4, when Serbian gunmen
set up barricades on main access routes and snipers fired on tens of
thousands of peace protesters before the now-ruined Parliament.
	Two days later, the republic of Muslim Slavs, Serbs and Croats won
international recognition of its independence from the Serb-dominated
wreckage of former Yugoslavia, which was opposed by most of the 1.4
million-strong Serbian population.
	Serbian forces, backed with politically and economically by the
neighboring communist-ruled republic of Serbia, now control about 70
percent of Bosnia-Hercegovina. They want to merge their territories with
Serbia.
	More than 10,350 people are estimated to have been killed and in
excess of 110,000 others injured in the conflict pitting extremist Serbs
against Muslim Slavs, Croats and moderate Serbs opposed to the partition
of the republic.
	What was once one of the most picturesque capitals in the Balkans has
become reliant on the U.N.-organized humanitarian aid airlift that began
June 29.
	The airlift was suspended pending the outcome of an investigation
into the crash Thursday west of Sarajeo of an Italian military plane
bearing relief supplies. There were growing beliefs that the aircraft
was shot down.
	During the day Friday, Serbian artillery and tank crews pumped
sporadic shellfire into civilian areas of Sarajevo as occassional small
arms duels rang out across the bowl of mountains that encircle the city.
	The republic crisis center said that during the 24-hour period that
began at 1 p.m. Thursday, at least 10 people were killed and 63 others
injured in Sarajevo.
	They were amount a total of at least 17 dead and 153 injured
republic-wide.
	Izetbegovic reiterated claims that forces loyal to the government
were slowly advancing in a two-week-old offensive to break the Serbian
blockade in the western end of the city.
	``Every house in that area is a fortress,'' Izetbegovic said.
	He reiterated that the predominantly Muslim Slav Bosnian troops were
vastly outgunned and required heavy weapons that could only be obtained
with an exemption from a U.N. arms sale embargo imposed on all six of
the former Yugoslav republics.

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Xref: sparky soc.culture.yugoslavia:8516 soc.culture.europe:8152