From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: 10 December News (we may have already sent it!)
Date: 12 Dec 1992 00:51:59 -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

Headlines:

12/10 U.N. WANTS NO FURTHER CUTS IN CYPRUS PEACE FORCE
12/10 NATO MOVES SMALL STEP CLOSER TO YUGOSLAV ACTION
12/10 Serb 'Rape Camps' Are Alleged
12/10 Sarajevo Running Out Of Bread
12/10 DUTCH PREMIER URGES MILITARY INTERVENTION IN BOSNIA

12/10 DUTCH PREMIER URGES MILITARY INTERVENTION IN BOSNIA

    THE HAGUE, Dec 10, Reuter - Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers
of the Netherlands on Thursday made a strong call for
military intervention to stop the killing in Bosnia-
Herzegovina, the Dutch ANP news agency reported.
    "I don't give a damn who takes the initiative," Lubbers
told the Dutch parliament. "I just think it's scandalous
that we can do it in Somalia and not in Yugoslavia."
    Lubbers said the Dutch government would press European
Community leaders at the Edinburgh summit starting on Friday
to call on the United Nations Security Council to intervene
against almost daily violations of Bosnian air space by
Serbian forces.
    Lubbers and Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek,
increasingly {frustrated by the international community's
failure to halt the fighting in Bosnia, have been pressing
hard in recent weeks for stronger action there by the United
Nations.
    "We will adopt that line in Edinburgh. Of course we
can't achieve the impossible but we can talk about it," ANP
quoted Lubbers as saying.
    Lubbers recently told foreign correspondents in the
Netherlands the U.N. should stiffen economic sanctions
against Serbia and ensure its no fly orders were observed in
the Bosnian war zones.
    He said the U.N. should also make a more forceful effort
to bring heavy weapons by all the warring factions under the
supervision of U.N. peace-keeping troops.
    "That would not be perfect, but it woud be more
effective than what is now taking place," Lubbers said.
    The Dutch will press at the Edinburgh summit for the
creation of safe havens for Bosnian refugees, similar to
those established for the Kurds in northern Iraq after the
Gulf war.
    They also want the U.N. to ensure that humanitarian aid
and food convoys get through to civilians in besieged
Bosnian towns.
    "It is not acceptable that the warlords should block the
supplies of aid," Lubbers said.
    A U.S.-led multinational mission to protect food convoys
in Somalia was launched this week.

12/10 Sarajevo Running Out Of Bread

   SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (AP) -- The hungry hung on
the gates of Sarajevo's last functioning bakery Thursday,
but bread supplies were running out nine days after the
humanitarian airlift was suspended because of fighting.
   U.N. officials said their emergency food stocks were
almost gone.
   In Brussels, diplomats said several NATO nations were on
the verge of intervening militarily to stop the ethnic war
over Bosnia's secession from Yugoslavia.
   Fears have risen that Sarajevo is close to falling to
ethnic Serb forces that have besieged the Muslim-controlled
capital for eight months. Western nations have mainly blamed
Serbs and Serb-dominated Yugoslavia for failures to end the
war, in which Serbs have captured about 70 percent of
Bosnia.
   Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers made an impassioned
plea Thursday for outside intervention.
   "I don't give a damn who takes the lead," he told his
parliament. "I think it's downright scandalous that there's
intervention in Somalia, but not in Yugoslavia."
   Lubbers said his government would "do our absolute
utmost" to ensure that Bosnia was high on the agenda of the
European Community summit that begins Friday.
   At least 17,000 people have died in the fighting among
Muslims, Serbs and Croats, and more than 100,000 are
officially listed as missing. Sarajevo's 400,000 residents
have been surviving on meager rations for months.
   Sarajevo officials said they could barely produce 25,000
loaves of bread a day -- about a fifth of peak production
and only enough to meet the needs of hospitals and refugees
from fighting elsewhere in Bosnia.
   "The basic food now is bread," said Husein Ahmovic,
assistant manager at the bakery. "Without it, it's
starvation."
   Sarajevo suffered through a fourth straight wintry day
without electricity and water because fighting prevented
repairs to power lines.
   Dwindling bread production has heightened tensions at the
bakery's gates, where people collect a daily ration of a 6-
inch chunk of bread. One man who felt his slice was too
small Wednesday battered a bakery employee's head with an
umbrella, Ahmovic said.
   In Zagreb, Croatia's capital, U.N. spokesman Peter
Kessler said relief flights likely would not resume before
Tuesday. They were halted on Dec. 1 after a U.S. plane was
hit be gunfire.
   Fighting and Serb roadblocks also have hindered truck
convoys. One U.N. convoy of 19 trucks with 221 tons of
supplies reached Sarajevo on Thursday. A tire of one truck
was hit by a sniper's bullet on the way, Kessler reported.
   Diplomats said the defense ministers of NATO's 16 nations
discussed the possibility of military intervention under
U.N. auspices. German Defense Minister Volker Ruehe said
"several NATO states were ready" to offer military muscle to
end the war.

12/10 Serb 'Rape Camps' Are Alleged

   GENEVA (AP) -- Western Europe and the United States
should send troops to Bosnia-Herzegovina to free women and
girls being held in "rape camps" for Serb fighters, the
republic's foreign minister said Thursday.
   Haris Silajdzic, who has repeatedly urged Western
intervention to stop Serb military attacks in Bosnia, said
the increasing number of reports that Serbs are raping
captured women was reason enough to act by itself.
   "It's an organized crime against humanity," he said.
   In many cases the victims become pregnant and are held so
long they can no longer safely have an abortion, he said.
   He made the comments while attending the Yugoslav peace
conference, which is sponsored by the United Nations and the
European Community.
   Silajdzic said reports of the rapes made up part of a
growing pile of evidence "that immense genocide is taking
place in Bosnia-Herzegovina," including mass graves and
children being tortured and killed.
   Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Bosnia's Serbs, was not
in his hotel room and could not be reached for comment on
Silajdzic's charges. Serb representatives previously
dismissed the rape reports as fabrications.
   Silajdzic estimated that between 14,000 and 30,000 women
and girls have been raped by their Serb captors.
   He said he based his estimate on the number of women
believed held in the camps and the testimony of victims as
well as accounts by Western journalists and Serbian Orthodox
Church leaders.
   The rapists are "a special kind of monster," Silajdzic
said. "Some women, girls and children spoke about that in
such a way that it is quite clear that a part of their
personality has been destroyed forever."
   He rejected suggestions that intervention might lead to
the murder of women and girls if their captors feared being
caught by an international force.
   "Doesn't that (crime) merit an outright unconditional
intervention to punish these monsters instead of keeping the
women there and waiting for those criminals to dispense some
mercy on them and not to kill them?" Silajdzic said.


12/10 NATO MOVES SMALL STEP CLOSER TO YUGOSLAV ACTION

    By Nicholas Doughty
    BRUSSELS, Dec 11, Reuter - NATO allies, gloomy about the
prospects for ending the bloodshed in former Yugoslavia,
were set to take a reluctant step on Friday towards meeting
public and political demands for action to stop the
slaughter.
    Diplomats said NATO defence ministers, ending a two-day
meeting in Brussels, would charge military planners with
drawing up military plans which could be implemented by the
West if the United Nations decided further measures were
needed.
    But they stressed that the plans would need a fresh
mandate from the United Nations before NATO could start to
act on them.
    Military options included ideas on how to enforce the
no-fly zone over Bosnia with warplanes, create "safe havens"
for civilians or deploy peacekeepers in troubled areas like
Kosovo in the hope of preventing a wider conflict in the
Balkans.
    General Vigleik Eide, chairman of NATO's military
committee, told a news conference that proper planning would
mean the allies could respond to any U.N. request in days or
weeks.
    "We're looking at how we could best support future U.N.
resolutions...We want to be ready," Eide said.
    Almost all the NATO allies, fearing they could get
bogged down in a war lasting years, ruled out the
possibility of full military intervention with ground
forces.
    Although the 16-nation North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation has no intention of getting involved in the
fighting as an alliance, because some members sharply oppose
the idea, individual nations could play a key role under a
U.N. umbrella.
    Three of them -- the United States, France and Britain -
- sit on the permanent U.N. Security Council. Many NATO
members have sent troops to escort humanitarian aid convoys
in Bosnia, where fighting has claimed more than 17,000
lives.
    NATO's vast military structure, built up during the Cold
War, would be ideal for military planning and support.
    But it was clear on Thursday that the allies faced a
dilemma. Several defence ministers maintained that the West
risked losing credibility because of its reluctance to try
to end the bloodshed.
    But some of them also argued that taking sides in the
conflict would simply risk the lives of the thousands of
peacekeeping troops already there and provoke a worse
crisis.
    "It is now being asked whether we are not obliged to go
in and prevent a bloodbath in Sarajevo," said Norwegian
Defence Minister Johan Joergen Holst. "The question is then:
'What new bloodbath would we create?"'


12/10 U.N. WANTS NO FURTHER CUTS IN CYPRUS PEACE FORCE

    By Anthony Goodman
    UNITED NATIONS, Dec 10, Reuter - Secretary-General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali said on Thursday he had asked
countries contributing troops to the U.N. Peace-keeping
Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) not to reduce their contingents
any further while he draws up plans for restructuring the
force.
    In a written report to the Security Council recommending
another six-month extension of UNFICYP's mandate, he said
cuts already announced would reduce its size by about 28 per
cent, from 2,078 men to 1,488.
   He said the troop contributors had told him they wished
to make further reductions during 1993 and he would have to
take this into account in preparing proposals for
restructuring the force.
    Progressive strength reductions, largely for financial
reasons, "have brought UNFICYP to a point at which the
viability of its present operational concept is in doubt,"
Boutros-Ghali said.
    UNFICYP has been stationed in Cyprus since 1964 to help
keep peace between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot
communities.
    Unlike most other U.N. peace-keeping operations, whose
costs are assessed against all U.N. members, UNFICYP is
financed through voluntary contributions, with about 70 per
cent of the expenses being absorbed by the troop-
contributing countries themselves. Despite this, the force
now has a deficit of close to $200 million.
    The secretary-general has repeatedly complained that
unless the financing is placed on an assessed basis, it will
prove impossible to maintain the force. The Security Council
has so far balked at changing the method of funding.
    The main troop contributing countries -- Austria,
Canada, Denmark and Britain -- are also unhappy at the lack
of progress in talks which have dragged on for years between
leaders of the two Cypriot communities aimed at reuniting
the partitioned island under a federal system.
    Boutros-Ghali said he was exploring the possibility of
finding other countries prepared to replace the troops being
withdrawn by the existing contributors. But even if the
force was radically restructured, it was likely that a
viable arrangement could be made only if it were financed
through assessed contributions, he added.