Muslims flee as Nato jets fail to halt attack

Bosnia: Serbs overrun Srebrenica in crucial test of the international community's commitment to defend Muslim 'safe areas'

CHRISTOPHER BELLAMY

Defence Correspondent

The UN's first attempt to defend a ''safe area'' in Bosnia has ended in a degrading defeat, and the UN now faces the choice of losing at least one of the areas or withdrawing altogether. The Rapid Reaction Force, assembling in Croatia and southern Bosnia, is as yet incapable of mounting any rescue attempt for UN forces in the isolated enclave, close to the Serbian border.

The Nato air attacks on the Bosnian Serb forces near Srebrenica yesterday were practically inevitable after the UN committed itself to defending Srebrenica - the first time it has defended one of the so-called "safe areas" since they were established, against military advice, in 1993. But whereas the Bosnian Serbs had previously given in to robust action, this time they brushed the Nato air attacks aside and pursued the Dutch UN troops into the enclave.

The UN had deliberately set up a "blocking position" south of the town, with seven armoured vehicles and about 60 troops, which the Serbs would have had to attack if they advanced northwards, thus enabling the UN to request "close air support" from Nato.

Close air support in defence of UN troops is considered by UN and Nato officials to be less provocative than "air strikes" against targets not directly threatening the UN, such as the attack on a Bosnian Serb ammunition dump near Pale at the end of May. In response to that bombardment, the Serbs seized 400 UN troops as hostages, plunging the UN and the West into its deepest crisis in Bosnia until yesterday.

It is unlikely that the Bosnian Serbs will draw a fine distinction between yesterday's air attacks and previous raids. As they moved northwards, Bosnian Serb forces seized about 30 Dutch from three UN observation posts, whom they promised to release. In the aftermath of yesterday's air attacks that looks increasingly unlikely.

The Serbs are also effectively holding the rest of the 450 Dutch peace- keepers and the 42,000 residents of the enclave as hostages. About 20,000 residents fled the Serbs' advance north to the village of Potocari, which the Serbs threatened to shell unless Nato aircraft were withdrawn.

The threat of another hostage crisis and yesterday's humiliating defeat once again raises the prospect of a complete collapse of the UN mission. The UN and individual contributing nations have consistently dismissed suggestions that the UN might pull out from any of the enclaves - especially Gorazde, Srebrenica and Zepa - and concentrate their forces in central Bosnia where the UN mission has been relatively successful.

UN sources refused to speculate on what went wrong at Srebrenica but the UN clearly tried to block the Serbs with insufficient force. The Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) was designed to be used in such circumstances, but it looks as if the acting commander in Bosnia, French Brigadier General Herve Gobillard, who normally commands Sarajevo, gave the order to defend the enclave when the reinforcements were not yet ready.

The only RRF element which could possibly mount a rescue across Bosnian Serb-held territory - the British 24th Airmobile Brigade - does not begin arriving in earnest until Friday.