Boutros-Ghali says UN ready for more air strikes

MADRID (Agencies): UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said yesterday the world body would not hesitate to authorize more air strikes around the Bosnian enclave of Gorazde in order to protect peacekeeping forces deployed there.

"We will continue to ask for air support from NATO as long as we have the mandate of the (UN) Security Council and as long as we believe this is in the interests of maintaining the peace in former Yugoslavia," he told journalists in Madrid.

NATO bombed Serb forces besieging the Moslem pocket of Gorazde, a UN-declared safe haven, earlier this week.

"We have a responsibility to protect the security of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia and we will not hesitate to ask for air support if (their) security is endangered," said Boutros-Ghali.

"I want to confirm this is not against any party. It is not taking a position in favor of A, B or C. It is in conformity with the resolution of the Security Council," he added.

The secretary-general is on a three-day official visit to Spain. He had talks with Foreign Minister Javier Solana yesterday and is due to meet Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez today before traveling to Barcelona for a day.

Boutros-Ghali arrived in Madrid on Wednesday, hours after Russian President Boris Yeltsin left the country, having expressed anger at not being consulted before the strikes.

"A resolution was adopted by the UN Security Council and it was adopted by unanimity. The resolution gave the secretary- general a mandate to demand air support from NATO if UN troops are in difficulty," Boutros-Ghali said.

He added he hoped the UN could help to contain the destruction in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda by drawing the parties concerned into negotiations.

Denial

The Rwandan Patriotic Front yesterday denied a UN report they had agreed to truce talks. The UN had said talks would be held under their auspices between the Front and recently-installed interim government.

Meanwhile, in Sarajevo, AFP reported Bosnian Serb forces bombed Tuzla, fired on UN peacekeepers and took others hostage yesterday, ignoring a Moscow-brokered cease-fire and raising the stakes in the Serb confrontation with the West.

Eleven shells were fired on Tuzla's airport yesterday morning and three on the town's market but there were no injuries, UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) spokesman Maj. Dacre Halloway said. A Nordic Battalion observation post at the airport came under small-arms fire, he added.

Earlier, Serb forces detained 17 UN peacekeepers and a Serb sniper wounded a French soldier, raising to 155 the total number of UN soldiers held or prevented from moving by Serb forces, UNPROFOR spokesman Maj. Rob Annink said yesterday.

NATO has warned that it was ready to launch new air activity in Bosnia-Herzegovina if UN forces were endangered in attacks there.

Boycott

UN officials have been trying to renew peace talks and secure the soldiers' release, but Serb leaders have been boycotting them since NATO airstrikes on Serb positions around the besieged Moslem enclave of Gorazde, a UN-declared safe area, on Sunday and Monday.

Serb strongman Radovan Karadzic has "canceled" all accords with the United Nations after the air strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization planes, requested by UNPROFOR, saying he could no longer trust the world body.

But Karadzic gave permission for a meeting today in Pale including UN special envoy Yasushi Akashi, the UNPROFOR commander, Gen. Bertrand de Lapresle, and Geneva peace conference negotiators David Owen and Torvald Stoltenberg, Annink said.

The latest UN team to be detained were guarding a weapons stockpile at Cifluk, 19 kilometers northwest of Sarajevo within a 2O-kilometer heavy weapons exclusion zone.

The team arrived in the village after the discovery of an arms cache there which violated a Feb. 9 agreement to withdraw all heavy weapons from the exclusion zone, ordered by the United Nations.