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Izetbegovic seeks

help to break

Sarajevo siege

PARIS: Bosnia, believing its military fortunes are rising, is determined to break the Serb siege of its capital Sarajevo by winter and hopes France will help, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic said.

"We are determined to break the siege of Sarajevo, either through military force or diplomacy, before winter sets in," Izetbegovic told the French daily InfoMatin in an interview published on Tuesday.

"I will say so to the French president. We'll see if France wants to play a part. We think it can. Does it want it?"

The interview, published to coincide with Izetbegovic's meeting with French President Jacques Chirac in Paris, was granted just before shelling killed 37 people in Sarajevo on Monday, InfoMatin said.

Izetbegovic discussed a possible NATO response to the shelling and the U.S. peace initiative with U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke when he arrived in Paris late on Monday. He was meeting Chirac later on Tuesday, as the major powers' Contact Group on ex-Yugoslavia meet in the French capital.

Izetbegovic said time was working in favour of Bosnia. "Our (Bosnian Serb) opponents are still strong. We are still weak. However, we get stronger by the day and they get weaker," he was quoted as saying.

He said Bosnia would be obliged to accept the Contact Group plan for the partition of Bosnia - giving 51 percent of the territory to Moslems and 49 percent to Serbs - if the arms embargo was not lifted.

But if the embargo was lifted "we would no longer have to accept it", he said.

The U.S. Congress is to vote next month on lifting the embargo on arms to former Yugoslavia with the aim of aiding the Bosnians.

US PLAN HAILED

PALE, (Bosnia): The Bosnian Serb assembly on Tuesday welcomed the U.S. peace initiative for Bosnia and confirmed its readiness to conclude peace in the embattled republic.

"The national assembly welcomes the U.S. initiative for a political solution to the conflict in former Bosnia-Herzegovina and confirms a readiness by Republika Srpske to conclude a lasting and just peace," the parliament said in a statement issued after a 12-hour extraordinary session.

The Bosnian Serb parliament, which met on Mount Jahorina near Sarajevo, also decided to include a Bosnian Serb delegation in the negotiating team of rump Yugoslavia "to decide on a common approach towards the international community".

The self-styled parliament also demanded full normalisation of political and economic relations between Bosnian Serbs and rump Yugoslavia.

The Bosnian Serb welcoming of the U.S. initiative contrasted with their adamant rejection last year of an earlier peace plan which carved up Bosnia into two almost equal halves.

This rejection isolated them from the international community and from their patron Serbia.

HOSPITAL HIT

SARAJEVO: A shell hit Sarajevo's main hospital, wounding two patients, a spokesman for the Bosnian Ministry of Health said on Monday.

The hit on the Kosevo hospital, yet to be independently confirmed, followed a mortar attack on the city centre earlier in the day in which 37 people were killed and 85 wounded. Many of the victims were treated at the hospital.-Reuter