Saving Sarajevo: Hopes raised as all sides support Bosnia ceasefire: New peace proposals put forward at Geneva talks but diplomats doubt opposing leaders can control their field commanders

MUSLIM, Serbian and Croat leaders yesterday ordered all their forces to cease hostilities in Bosnia as new peace proposals were tabled during a third day of talks in Geneva.

A spokesman for the international mediators, Lord Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg, said the leaders agreed to 'an immediate direction to their commanders for cessation of hostilities' at lunchtime yesterday.

The talks adjourned while President Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim, the Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and the Croat militia chief, Mate Boban, telephoned instructions to their military staffs in Bosnia.

President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, the patron and armourer of Mr Karadzic, lent his support to the ceasefire. 'Whoever continues to fight is irresponsible, totally irresponsible,' he told journalists. 'We hope that the order which was issued today will be respected.'

Military experts at the conference have expressed doubts about the degree of control exercised by the nominal leaders over individual units in the field.

However, the ceasefire announcement contributed to an atmosphere of progress during the talks, an impression fostered by the official spokesman, John Mills. He said all three sides would meet each day in Sarajevo under the auspices of the United Nations to preserve the ceasefire, adding that the fact that talks were simultaneously continuing in Geneva 'speaks for itself'.

Mr Mills declined all comment, however, on reports circulating among diplomats that the co-chairmen have presented a modified plan of their own to make the tripartite division of Bosnia more palatable to its Muslim-led government while satisfying the dominant Serbs and Croats.

Mile Akmadzic, the Bosnian Prime Minister, predicted that all three Bosnian factions, would accept the new peace plan. Speaking after the 10-member Bosnian presidency failed to reach agreement on the plan, Mr Akmadzic, a Croat, said: 'I am really convinced that all three sides, including the presidency . . . will agree on the new constitutional arrangement.'

The modified plan was intended to reconcile the government's wish for a federal state with the Serb and Croat proposal for a loose confederation of three ethnic states. It was said to envisage a title such as the 'union of Bosnian republics' to avoid the use of either term. President Izetbegovic and the Bosnian Presidency remain opposed to the Serb-Croat plan, saying it would reward armed aggression and mass expulsions while providing no protection for minorities.

Feelings are running high among the Muslim-led Bosnian government and a strong faction still urges President Izetbegovic to resist any concessions and to fight on in the hope of foreign intervention.

Plans to put UN observers in place to guide air strikes in Bosnia by early next week may have contributed to the hardline Muslim argument.

In an interview with Reuters Television, Mr Siladjzic said the conference 'should not legalise ethnic cleansing and not legalise genocide'.

He went on: 'These negotiations are based solely on the results of the gains made by force. Our rights as a government, democratically elected and a recognised member of the United Nations, were not honoured. All these principles have been abandoned in the most flagrant way. We have had to talk about reality. The UN Charter says nothing about reality, especially not reality by force.'

Mr Siladjzic said that if his government was forced to concede it would usher in a world governed by force, guns and tanks, where the UN or the Security Council counted for nothing.

(Photograph omitted)