Rebel Serbs captured a Muslim village Saturday and battled troops defending the last government stronghold in northwest Bosnia as the United Nations tried to negotiate a cease-fire.
Angry leaders of the Muslim-led government said the fate of 70,000 residents of the town of Bihac was up to the United Nations. The mayor of the greater Bihac region said residents were in panic, and he anticipated a slaughter if the town fell to the Serbs.The U.N. Security Council late Saturday night demanded an immediate cease-fire and a Serb withdrawal from the Bihac enclave. Its non-binding statement, adopted by consensus, didn't threaten the use of force against the Serbs.
Bosnia's U.N. ambassador, Muhamed Sacirbey, dismissed the effort and criticized NATO and U.N. forces for their lack of action.
"There clearly seems to be a lack of political will" to defend Bihac, Sacirbey said. "The military resources are there."
Three U.S. warships with about 3,600 U.S. sailors and Marines aboard were headed closer to the scene of Europe's worst conflict since World War II. A Pentagon official said the troops were on their way to the Adriatic Sea to provide support for rescuing any downed NATO pilots.
NATO planes buzzed Serb positions near Bihac late Friday but didn't strike because they couldn't find their targets before darkness.
Western military sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said NATO plans for more air action Saturday were vetoed by U.N. officials who feared it would scuttle attempts to reach a negotiated settlement. They wouldn't elaborate.
U.N. commanders have been loathe to flex NATO's military muscle for fear of reprisals against the 24,000 peacekeepers in Bosnia.
"There is a limit to how much force we can use in a peacekeeping mission," the U.N. commander in Bosnia, Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Rose, told the British Broadcasting Corp. "The United Nations has not said it would defend anything."
In Serb-held central Bosnia, NATO pilots said they were fired at by a surface-to-air missile Saturday while flying regular patrols. U.N. sources said the attack occurred over Donji Vakuf, 50 miles northwest of Sarajevo, as two British Tornadoes were flying overhead to enforce the "no-fly" zone over Bosnia. No one was hit, and the pilots returned safely to their base in Italy.
U.N. official Viktor Andreev met with Serb officials in Pale, their headquarters east of Sarajevo, but it wasn't clear what came of the talks.
The Serbs refused to see Yasushi Akashi, the top U.N. official in former Yugoslavia, sending a message that there was "no reason for him to come," according to U.N. sources.
To ward off NATO attacks, the Serbs continued detaining or restricting the movements of more than 200 U.N. peacekeepers around Sarajevo, another U.N.-designated safe haven where Serbs have also increased sniping. The gunfire paralyzed a main thoroughfare in the capital Saturday and at least one woman was wounded.
Bihac is one of six U.N.-designated safe havens entitled to protection from NATO warplanes. Some 1,200 U.N. soldiers are posted in the zone, which is roughly 32 square miles and includes the town of Bihac.
Anti-aircraft fire sliced through the town Saturday afternoon. Gunfights erupted near the U.N.-guarded hospital, and infantry and artillery battles raged on the town's southern perimeter, U.N. officials reported.
The mayor of the Bihac region, Hamdija Kabiljaqic, predicted the city would fall overnight and said if it did, there would be a slaughter. "The people of Bihac this night are scared and in panic," he told reporters in a conference call late Saturday.
"We will not stop," Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said on Bosnian Serb television Saturday night. "We will destroy the 5th Corps for all time."
The government army's 5th Corps is headquartered in Bihac and launched a surprisingly successful, though short-lived, offensive out of the Bihac area, capturing swaths of Serb territory in northern Bosnia.
With their latest offensive, Serb forces now control at least 30 percent of the Bihac region.
Vedro Polje, a village about two miles south of Bihac, fell in fighting early Saturday. Rebel Serbs from Bosnia and neighboring Croatia also narrowed the government army's only escape route to the north, U.N. officials said.