Serbs shrug off air strikes as fantasy

'I WOULD clobber the crap out of any RAF pilot who started bombing]' said the British soldier. In his blue United Nations beret, he was waiting for his officer at Pale, capital of Bosnian Serbia.

'The Serbs have multi-barrel rockets up on those hills. The first air strikes, and they swivel them round and take out our headquarters at Kiseljak. Hundreds of dead. No, it's just not . . . happenable.'

Opinion in Pale, Bosnian Serb or foreign, is still incredulous about the prospect of Nato air strikes on the Serb positions around Sarajevo. The Bosnian Serb leaders, Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic have wriggled out of tight corners before by bluff and procrastination. Most people here find it hard to believe that they cannot do it again.

'Air strikes can harm us, but not change the situation,' said Slavisa Rakovic, Mr Karadzic's chef de cabinet. In the short term, he may be wrong. The Serbian forces around Sarajevo and in the battle areas of Bosnia are thin on the ground; air attacks could initially silence much of their heavy fire-power and prevent the movement of artillery, armour and supplies by road. Later, though, the guns could be re-located and supplied by night or on foot. And anyway the Serbs can afford to play the game long. They do not plan to storm Sarajevo and lack the troops to do it. They are waiting for political collapse, and winter is less than three months away.

Humanitarian aid is now being allowed through again to Muslim enclaves in eastern Bosnia such as Srebrenica. The Bosnian Serbs lose nothing by that. They possess the region, and the temporary survival of Muslim pockets no longer has political meaning. The same may prove true for Sarajevo.

The latest Karadzic offer, to hand the captured hills over the UN troops and to open routes for aid to Sarajevo, costs him little. If he keeps his promise, Sarajevo has still become tactically defenceless and the physical survival of the city's population begins to lose its meaning. On paper, the 'Serb stranglehold' would have been relaxed, meeting Nato's ultimatum terms and at least putting off the threat of air attack. At the Geneva conference, the 'international community' could partition Bosnia - on essentially Serbian terms.

The wild card here is General Mladic. At Pale, last week, he was swollen with victorious confidence, rested as Mr Karadzic stood beside him to read out his new 'offer'. If he defies or delays withdrawal, then the air strikes may begin. But - as UN officers here privately agree - air intervention without ground troops to follow and consolidate is unlikely to change the outcome of the political struggle. And there the Serbian side holds the winning hand.

US officials said last night they had agreed not to bomb any target in Bosnia without clearance from UN commanders on the ground. Nato is meeting in Brussels tomorrow.