Serbs defiant over UN hostages

Hurd warns arms embargo on Bosnia will be lifted if United Nations forced to withdraw

Bosnian Serbs, spitting defiance at Western troop reinforcements, broke off talks about the remaining UN hostages, harassed peace-keepers, and shelled Sarajevo, killing five people and wounding at least eight.

As the stand-off continued, Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, yesterday explicitly warned that the arms embargo on Bosnia would be lifted if UN forces had to withdraw. And, while strongly reiterating British and French determination to maintain a strengthened force in Bosnia, he acknowledged that a Nato contingency plan for withdrawal was "virtually complete".

British sources said the decision in Paris on Saturday by defence ministers and armed service chiefs from 15 nations to back the creation of a rapid reaction force would be enactedby the end of the month.

Britain and France will spearhead the multi-national force designed to protect UN troops in Bosnia, and officials said that the United States had gone further at the weekend in promising help for the new Mobile Theatre Reserve with intelligence and helicopter support.

While strongly welcoming the Paris agreement, Mr Hurd said on BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend that withdrawal was "emphatically not the best answer for ourselves, the United Nations or for the people of Bosnia". Those who "blithely" advocated withdrawal and the lifting of the embargo "as if that was an easy option ... completely under-estimate the dangers of the damage that would be done and the suffering."

But he acknowledged: "The circumstances might turn wrong again, so that the UN simply could not do that job, in which case we would have to withdraw, the arms embargo would be lifted, the present uncertain peace - half peace, half war - would become a full war again. The war might spread."

Mr Hurd reiterated that Britain's priority was to get the rest of its hostages freed, and then to protect and reinforce the humanitarian operation and, thirdly, to step up diplomatic pressure for a settlement. The extra troops will consist of a 4,000 to 5,000-strong multi-national rapid reaction force. Britain is also dispatching the 5,000-strong 24 Airmobile Brigade as a second component.

At present, there are 23,000 UN peace-keeping troops in the former Yugoslavia. The US is increasing its air power, sending attack helicopters, transport aircraft and other equipment, but no ground forces.

The Serbs did not seem impressed with this show of strength. Yesterday they keptsilent on the hostages' fate, with the Bosnian Serb commander, General Ratko Mladic, slamming the phone down on the UN chief of staff in Bosnia, General Cees Nicolai. "There were questions on releasing detainees. He refused to discuss anything, including access by ICRC [the International Red Cross] unless we guaranteed no more air strikes," the UN spokesman, Lt-Col Gary Coward, said. "He even refused to communicate further until he received such assurances."

More than 250 UN troops and military observers remain in Serb hands. Two French soldiers trapped at separate locations in what used to be the Bare weapons collection point for more than a week were threatened by Serb soldiers who wanted to take them away, the UN said. "They refused," said Major Myriam Sochacki. The first soldier destroyed his communications equipment to save it from the Serbs, the second tried to reach his Jeep to follow suit.

"He was close to his vehicle when the Bosnian Serbs surrounded him and blocked him. He had a fist-fight with a Serb soldier and managed to get away," Major Sochacki said.

In the Serb-held town of Ilijas, north of Sarajevo, three Canadian peace- keepers were forcibly moved from a UN observation post, where they had been surrounded, to the local police headquarters.

The Bosnian Serbs have refused to supply any information about the American pilot shot down on Friday. Nato sources are pessimistic about his fate, believing the Serbs would have paraded him on television if he was alive.

Bosnian Serb television showed pictures of the back half of the F-16 that crashed near Mrkonjic Grad in northern Bosnia, but there was no sign of the front half, the pilot's uniform, canopy or ejector seat.