From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Serb troops kill Bosnian deputy prime minister. (From Haluk)
Date: 11 Jan 93 18:00:11 GMT
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
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 SERB TROOPS KILL BOSNIAN DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

        SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (UPI) -- Tank-backed Serbian troops
 Friday halted a U.N. vehicle carrying Deputy Bosnian Prime Minister
 Hakija Turajlic and assassinated 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, who late
 Friday rejected the central principle of a U.N.-European Community peace
 plan.
        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 New York, the Security Council issued a statement in an open
 meeting to condemn the killing.
        ``The council strongly condemns this outrageous act of terrorism
 which is a flagrant challenge to the authority of UNPROFOR (the U.N.
 Protection Force), as well as to the serious efforts undertaken with the
 aim of achieving an overall political settlement of the crisis,'' the
 council said.
        The Security Council ordered UNPROFOR to investigate the slaying and
 report back ``without delay.''
        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 besieging
 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
 deplore this apparent cold-blooded murder,'' spokesman Richard Boucher
 said.
        White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater issued a statement
 saying the United States was ``outraged to learn of the murder.''
        ``This heinous act of violence and demonstrated disdain for the
 authority of the United Nations deserves the opprobrium of the world.
 The United States condemns this crime,'' he said.
        Vice President-elect Al Gore said he would meet privately with
 Izetbegovic Friday night at New York City's Kennedy Airport to offer his
 condolences and those of President-elect Bill Clinton.
        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.
        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.
        The stalled peace talks received another blow when Karadzic called a
 session of his self-styled parliament in the northeastern town of
 Bijeljina to decide a position on the proposal. The leadership of the
 self-proclaimed Serbian state rejected the central principle of the
 peace plan late Friday and called for further internationally brokered
 negotiations in Geneva.
        The leadership warned that unless its demands were accomodated in the
 talks, it could move to merge territory overrun by its Yugoslav army-
 equipped forces with adjacent Serb-captured areas of neighboring
 Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia.
        The declaration raised serious prospects for a collapse in the latest
 round of the Geneva conference, which was scheduled to resume on Sunday.
        Should that happen, Vance and Owen would be constrained to defer
 further action to the U.N. Security Council, which is currently
 considering a resolution authorizing military intervention in Bosnia-
 Herzegovina in the form of enforcement of a U.N.-decreed ``no-fly''
 zone.
        The U.N. Security Council on Friday night called on all warring
 factions to work with Vance and Owen toward a peace plan, and warned
 ``any party which opposes such (a) comprehensive settlement against the
 consequences of its attitude.''
        ``The lack of cooperation will lead to the consideration by the
 Security Council of the situation in a most serious manner,'' the
 council said.
        Sarajevo, besieged and bombarded for more than nine months by Serbian
 forces, was largely calm Friday 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.
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