Progress on Vance-Owen map for Bosnia

IN WHAT appeared to be a positive step in the Bosnian peace talks yesterday, the Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegovic, was said to be ready to sign the map drawn up by Lord Owen and Cyrus Vance that would divide Bosnia and Herzegovina into four semi-autonomous provinces.

The positive signals came as all three leaders of the warring factions in Bosnia - Muslims, represented by Mr Izetbegovic, the Serbs led by Radovan Karadzic and the Croats led by Mate Boban - were preparing to leave New York. They said they would return next week. Lord Owen said he would brief the EC tomorrow and also return next week.

The Croat leader, Mate Boban, said the talks had been 'very positive' and forecast that Mr Izetbegovic would sign the peace accord after returning from consultations in Sarajevo. Even Mr Karadzic was last night sounding positive. 'We are going to think over and over again about the map,' he said.

In a frustrating week of negotiations, the strategy of Mr Vance and Lord Owen was to bring the Muslims on board with the Croats. Their hope was that Russia would then put pressure on the Serbs to compromise.

In Sarajevo, meanwhile, the commander of UN troops in Bosnia, General Philippe Morillon, said that the Muslim village of Cerska in eastern Bosnia had fallen to Serb forces. Returning from a visit to the village he said Serb soldiers were in in full control, after conducting a 10-month siege, and all civilians had fled.

Gen Morillon went to Cerska to check rumours of Serb atrocities and widespread starvation. He said the village had suffered heavy shelling, and many houses were burned, but he found no immediate evidence of any massacre and saw no dead bodies.

The end of the latest round of talks in New York came after extraordinary efforts by the mediators, Mr Vance and Lord Owen, and by the Secretary-General of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He had arranged with President Clinton that he would publicly support the US aid air drop in Bosnia, even though he was not happy about its effectiveness, in return for a full US diplomatic effort to persuade Mr Izetbegovic to accept the Vance-Owen plan.

In the event the US effort, as seen by the two mediators, was less than total and led to some strong exchanges between Lord Owen and the US special representative to the talks, Reginald Bartholomew. On Friday it appeared that the talks might break up without Mr Izetbegovic accepting the map, and there being little chance of getting the three leaders together again. Of the three warring factions, only the Croats have accepted the map.

In a separate move on the Balkan war, Mr Clinton has promised further sanctions against the delivery of oil and other supplies to the Serbs in former Yugoslavia. He did not say how the existing sanctions might be tightened.