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Bosina hails strike but wants

removal of all serb guns

PARIS: Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey welcomed U.N.-ordered air and artillery strikes on Bosnian Serb positions on Wednesday but insisted all Serb heavy weapons around Sarajevo must be destroyed or withdrawn.

He told reporters he and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic had talks with U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke on Tuesday night in Paris and the that U.S. team, now on its way to Belgrade, appeared satisfied with the Bosnian position.

"We certainly have confidence in the way the situation has been handled in the past few hours...It is essential that the heavy weapons surrounding Sarajevo either be destroyed or withdrawn," he said.

"We'll find out over the next hours, maybe the next few days how effective this has been but it is an exclamation point." France urged Bosnia's warring parties to seek peace following Wednesday's huge U.N.-ordered air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions around Sarajevo.

"France appeals to all the parties to show their willingness and determination to seek a political settlement," President Jacques Chirac's office said in a statement.

"The large-scale operation jointly undertaken last night by Atlantic alliance aircraft and the Rapid Reaction Force... underlines our determination to assure respect for the Sarajevo safe zone as well as the other safe zones," the statement said.

It said the raids fulfilled a French pledge to protect the Bosnian havens as they had been made possible by the recent deployment of the Rapid Reaction Force. The force, which includes soldiers from France, Britain and the Netherlands, was initially proposed by France.

Chirac's office said that Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, in Paris since Monday to promote the interests of his country in emerging peace negotiations, would meet Chirac on Wednesday for a second time, at noon (1000 GMT).

The two men met on Tuesday over lunch at the Elysee presidential palace. PEACE PROCESS JACKSON, (Wyoming) President Bill Clinton, saying NATO's retaliatory military strikes on Wednesday "had to be done," does not believe the bombing will interfere with the peace process in Bosnia.

"The United States' peace activities will continue, and I hope that they will be successful," Clinton said on Tuesday as he interrupted his vacation to discuss the NATO strikes.

The NATO military operation, with the United States playing a major role, was launched against Bosnian Serb positions in response to the shelling of Sarajevo on Monday, which killed 37 people.

"I strongly support this operation. I think it is an appropriate response to the shelling of Sarajevo," Clinton told reporters as he proceeded to a party for the White House press corps near the end of his Wyoming vacation.

PORTILLO

LONDON: British Defence Secretary Michael Portillo said on Wednesday the bombing of Serb positions round Sarajevo would continue until the city's civilians were safe.

"We have to take out the Bosnian Serb artillery," Portillo told Sky News television. "Therefore, the bombing will continue until that has been achieved -- until we can say that we have removed the threat to Sarajevo from the shelling."

Portillo said the Bosnian Serb artillery around Sarajevo must be bombed out of existence, withdrawn or put out of use by its commanders.

He said there was no deadline on the ongoing U.N.-NATO operation, saying: "It's an objective rather than a time limit. The objective is to make the people of Sarajevo safe."

NATO planes and artillery launched multiple raids on Bosnian Serb targets around Sarajevo and in central, southern and eastern Bosnia on Wednesday in a major operation to silence siege guns targeting civilians.

SERBS SILENT

BELGRADE: The Bosnian Serb leadership remained silent on Wednesday after raids by NATO warplanes and French and British artillery but Serb radio in the northern town of Banja Luka said the attacks had caused immense damage.

Telephone lines to the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale were cut and the local news agency SRNA was silent during and after the initial attacks, the biggest raids the United Nations has authorised against the Serbs in the 40-month-old war.

SRNA's office in the Yugoslav capital Belgrade later said it had no communication with its head office.

RUSSIA CRITCYES

MOSCOW: Russia's ambassador in Belgrade criticised NATO's air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions in former Yugoslavia on Wednesday, Interfax news agency said.

Interfax said ambassador Gennady Shikin believed NATO had acted hastily in launching the raids. "It is hard to talk about any sort of peaceful solutions when bombs and shells are falling," Shikin said.-Reuter