Belgrade Blocks Border, Cuts Phone Links With Serbs

The Age

Friday August 5, 1994

Belgrade, Friday.

Yugoslavia cut telephone links with Bosnian Serbs as part of a breakdown of all political and economic ties with the rebel Serb leaders in neighboring Bosnia, Belgrade Government authorities said.

Rump Yugoslavia, comprising Serbia and Montenegro, said yesterday it would severe relations with Bosnian Serb leaders over their rejection this week of the latest international peace plan.

Russia praised Serbia's President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, for his tough line against the Bosnian Serbs, hinting it might soon be time to ease sanctions against Belgrade rather than tighten them. The Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Vitaly Churkin, told Interfax news agency that Russia welcomed Serbia's decision to cut links with the Bosnian Serbs for rejecting an international peace plan put forward by Moscow and its western partners.

Bosnian Serbs seized a tank and other heavy armaments from a United Nations-guarded site today in violation of a NATO-backed weapons exclusion zone around Sarajevo, a UN official said. the tank and other weapons were taken from a UN collection point in Serb-held Ilidza, just wesr of Sarajevo.

The UN protection force warned earlier today that it would use all available means, including air strikes, to recover the weapons.

A French helicopter that had been sent out to search for the weapons was hit by Serb fire while a French UNPROFOR patrol was stopped on the ground by a Serb barrage.

The Bosnian Serbs' action seizure of the UN-guarded armaments signalled increasing desperation following the withdrawal of support from Serbia. Some five to 20 per cent of Yugoslavia's gross domestic product has been devoted to supporting the rebel Serb forces in Bosnia.

The Bosnian Serbs had threatened earlier in the week to retrieve heavy weapons from several UN collection points, saying they needed them to defend themselves against offensives by Muslim-led Government forces. A weapons seizure could pose a significant threat to an increasingly shaky ceasefire.

The UN can call in NATO warplanes to enforce a weapons ban in the exclusion zone but it has so far been reluctant to do so in if there has been no imminent threat to Sarajevo. -- Reuter

© 1994 The Age

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