Fighting flared in Bosnia-Herzegovina Tuesday, worsening the refugee situation, hours after Bosnian officials demanded the departure of federal troops in response to formation of a truncated new Yugoslavia by Serbia and Montenegro.
About 400,000 people have been driven from their homes in Bosnia, according to the United Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, in two months of violence that has killed more than 250 people and wounded 2,000.Ethnic warfare has killed 10,000 people and at least 1 million have been made homeless since civil war broke out in Yugoslavia when Croatia and Slovenia seceded in June, said UNHCR spokesperson Sylvana Foa.
In Bosnia, which declared independence in February, "the number of displaced increases every day," said Peter Kessler, another UNHCR spokesperson. "Whole communities, whole towns have been emptied of their populations."
Bosnian schools, hotels and other facilities for refugees are crammed to overflowing, and the relief agency is considering for the first time in memory an appeal for tents to house refugees, Foa said.
The fighting in Bosnia casts doubt on any success for European Community talks in Lisbon, Portugal, between leaders of Bosnia's Slavic Muslims, Serbs and Croats.
Bosnia's presidency late Monday demanded the Serb-dominated federal military withdraw its estimated 100,000 troops under the supervision of the Bosnian Interior Ministry and European Community monitors.
Gen. Milutin Kukanjac, an army commander in Bosnia, told reporters earlier that the army would not withdraw. The army contends that more than 80 percent of federal troops in Bosnia are local ethnic Serbs.
According to a statement carried by the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency, army members can join a newly formed Bosnian defense force or leave the republic "in an orderly fashion."