December 11, 1995
Web posted at: 11:50 a.m. EST (1650 GMT)
MRKONJIC GRAD, Bosnia -- Three days before the U.S.-brokered Bosnia peace plan is set to be signed in Paris, the road to a genuine peace was proving rocky Monday. United Nations officials said Bosnian Croat forces, which have been participating in burning and looting in some areas, had delayed British U.N. armored personnel carriers from moving through in preparation for the NATO troops' arrival. Bosnian Croats had pledged to cooperate with the peace plan.
The five U.N. vehicles later were allowed to pass through a checkpoint in the mountainous area.
"We're experiencing intermittent restrictions of movement based on a lack of communication between the authorities rather than any restrictions," said U.N. spokesman Maj. Alastair Ross in the regional peacekeeping base of Gornji Vakuf.
Bosnian Croat military personnel and civilians are said to be torching and systematically looting the area, which they are required to return to Serb rule under terms of the Dayton peace accord.
Ross said the arson and looting by Bosnian Croats had not stopped, despite a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the actions. Some 20 houses were burning near the town of Sipovo, near Mrkonjic Grad, on Sunday, he said.
NATO spokesman Maj. Simon Haselock told CNN on Monday that once the NATO force is fully implemented, that kind of action won't be tolerated. (179K AIFF sound or 179K WAV sound)
Meanwhile, Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic told a visiting NATO delegation that Bosnian Serbs will issue a positive statement Monday about the fate of two French pilots shot down over Bosnia more than three months ago, a delegation source told Reuters news service.
France had issued an ultimatum demanding word about the two French pilots by Monday morning. The deadline passed with no word from either side until the report on Bulatovic's statement.
Bulatovic said that the statement would satisfy the families of the pilots captured alive by the Bosnian Serbs after their Mirage 2000 was hot down over the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale during a NATO air raid August 30.
President Jacques Chirac held a meeting with his prime minister and foreign and defense ministers Monday to discuss the pilots' fate. The French have said the fate of the airmen is putting the Bosnia peace process at risk just three days before the accord is to be signed in Paris.
Advance troops continued to trickle into the area Monday to prepare for the larger NATO peacekeeping force. In Tuzla, where the U.S. troops will be headquartered, two American and two British planes landed. Two more U.S. planes are expected to land later in the day.
American troops set up sophisticated systems around the airport in preparation for the arrival of more transport planes filled with troops and equipment for the NATO force.
Austrian customs officials said the first U.S. military convoy rolled into Austria Monday en route to a Bosnia mission NATO base in Kapsovar, Hungary. There they will help set up a logistics center to prepare for U.S. forces and heavy equipment heading to Bosnia as part of the NATO peacekeeping force.
"By 8:10 a.m. (0710 GMT) the first load of 37 trucks and small vehicles with 65 soldiers had crossed into Austria from Germany," said Josef Stelzmueller, head of the Suben crossing in northern Austria, 140 miles northwest of Vienna. And Hungarian officials said the first two trains carrying U.S. equipment from bases in Germany crossed the Hungarian border into Croatia Monday morning.
The trains left Mannheim, Germany, on Friday, carrying equipment from the U.S. Army's 72nd Signal Battalion for communications networks in Croatia and Bosnia, and crossed the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
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