From: stojanov@husc11.harvard.edu (Milan Stojanovic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna,soc.culture.croatia
Subject: <none>
Date: 22 Jan 93 23:24:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1993Jan22.182458.19689
Organization: Harvard University Science Center





Subject: Muslim-Croat fighting dies down, Croats claim upper hand
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 93 7:41:36 PST

       SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (UPI) -- Weeklong clashes between Muslim
Slav and Croatian forces reportedly died down Tuesday as Croatian
leaders claimed to have wrested control of most of a contested town in
central Bosnia-Herzegovina and threatened to withdraw from the Muslim
Slav-led Bosnian government.
       Violence was reported elsewhere in the former Yugoslav republic,
including sporadic shellfire into Sarajevo by besieging Serbian forces
and fresh confrontations between Serbs and Muslim Slavs near the eastern
border with communist-ruled Serbia.
     The Bosnian Serb leadership met in the Serb-held mountain stronghold
of Pale, to the east of Sarajevo, to vote on whether to accept the
principles of a peace plan that rejects the self-proclaimed state that
Serbian forces set out to capture in late March, igniting the brutal
civil war.
        The plan, proposed by U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance and Lord David
Owen of the European Community, would preserve the republic's
territorial integrity, while dividing it into 10 highly autonomous
provinces linked by a weak central government.
       The self-styled parliament of the unrecognized Serbian ``state'' was
expected to approve that principle as a basis on which to resume stalled
Geneva-based peace talks and avert threats of foreign military
intervention and a tighter economic sanctions on Serbia, the main
sponsor of the Bosnian Serb land-grab.
   But, political analysts said they did not expect Bosnian Serb leader
Radovan Karadzic to sign the plan as it is or abandon his ultimate goal
of merging his ``state'' with Serbia, Montenegro and Serb-held areas of
Croatia in a ``Greater Serbia.''
        State-run media reported a dropoff in weeklong clashes linked to the
peace plan in the central town of Gornji Vakuf that pitted Muslim Slav-
led Bosnian army troops against the Croatian Defense Council, a
nationalist paramilitary force nutured by rightwing President Franjo
Tudjman of Croatia.
    Vasa Vegar, a spokeman for the Croatian Defense Council, known by the
initials of HVO, claimed the militia had taken control of most of Muslim
Slav-dominated town and the surrounding region and arrested 60 ``Muslim
extremists.''
  ``The best part of the town and the district is under the control of
HVO units,'' Vegar was quoted by state-run Zagreb radio as telling a
news conference in the southern Bosnian city of Mostar.
    The radio said that Bosnian troops laid down their arms Monday night
and apologized for ``being under the influence of extremists.''
    The two sides have blamed each other for the fighting in Gornji
Vakuf, which spread to several nearby towns.
    The clashes are believed to have been triggered by a Bosnian army
rejection of HVO demands that it surrender control of Gornji Vakuf
because it is located in one of three provinces that would be
predominantly Croat under the Vance-Owen plan.
     Zagreb radio said that Bosnian Croat leader Mate Boban and Bosnian
Prime Minister Mile Akmadzic, widely viewed as proxies of Tudjman,
called on Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim Slav, to discuss
the crisis in Croatia's Adriatic port city of Split.
    In a letter to Izetbegovic, the two Croatian leaders also threatened
to withdraw all Croats from his Muslim Slav-dominated government.
  ``If you continue to insist on solving our problems through the U.N.
Security Council and if Bosnia-Herzegovina forces continue to attack
Croatian Defence Council forces, Croatian representatives will be forced
to depart from all Bosnian state positions,'' said the letter.
   There was no immediate reaction from the Bosnian government, which
held a three-hour session on the crisis.
    The government, though dominated by Muslim Slavs, also comprises
Croats and moderate Serbs. The Croats are members of the Bosnia-
Herzegovina branch of Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union and their
ultimate loyalty lies with the president of Croatia, not with
Izetbegovic.
     Tudjman is believed to harbor secret ambitions of annexing to his
former Yugoslav republic Croat-dominated areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina
controlled by the HVO with backing from his regime.
      But, the former communist Yugoslav army general-turned-nationalist
has not openly pursued that goal in order to avoid the same kind of U.N.
economic sanctions imposed on Serbia for supporting the Bosnian Serb
land-grab.
     Instead, the Tudjman-controlled HVO has maintained a shaky alliance
with the Muslim Slavs based on their emnity with the Serbs.
  Tudjman's regime on Monday threatened to expel more than 400,000
Bosnian Muslim refugees if the clashes in Gornji Vakud continued.
    In response, Izetbegovic said on Monday evening that he would
consider seeking a U.N. Security Council meeting on what he charged was
a Croatian attempt to wrest territory orchestrated by Tudjman's regime.
  Speaking on Sarajevo television, he said that the ``new aggression on
Bosnia-Herzegovina, this time from the other side, should be condemned
and sanctioned.''
       He called the Cabinet session to discuss his idea of appealing to the
U.N. Security Council, saying, ``We have avoided this, but we have been
pushed against the wall,'' he said.
 ``I will personally insist for a meeting with representatives of
Islamic states so they can warn the Zagreb government not to meddle in
Bosnia-Herzegovina's affairs,'' he added.

*****************************************************
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna,soc.culture.croatia