INTO BATTLE

By Bruce W. Nelan

Despite a couple of successful campaigns, the army of the Muslim-led Bosnian government always seemed to be the beleaguered combatant, retreating from Serb onslaughts, unable to recover the initiative. Thus, when the government ordered up to 15,000 of its troops to mass north and west of its besieged capital of Sarajevo, few expected anything dramatic-even after a nationwide state of alert was imposed and the populace was warned that something had to be done "to prevent an obvious catastrophe."

And then the Bosnian guns opened up. Beginning Thursday morning, Bosnian artillery, machine-gun and infantry attacks raked rebel Serb positions 10 to 12 miles north of Sarajevo, and fighting spread to the west and southwest. Inside the city, government units pressed out toward the heights on which Serb heavy artillery, mortars and armored vehicles encircle the capital. The Serbs responded by blasting government strongpoints below and lobbed shells into civilian areas, hitting a hospital.

Under the guns, in an apartment building in downtown Sarajevo, a group of Bosnians waited out the battle. Nijaz Mutevelic, 66, was resigned. The Bosnians might not succeed, but he was glad they were trying. "The question is very simple," he said. "Is such a life worth living, or is it not better to fight?" His wife Rada and their neighbors Senada Hukovic and Ksenija Crvenkovic agreed. "Politics has not managed to tear us apart," said Crvenkovic. "And see, I'm a Croat, Rada is a Serb, and Nijaz and Senada are Muslims. That's Sarajevo."

Last week's fighting looked very much like an attempt by the Bosnians to break the three-year siege. President Alija Izetbegovic almost said as much. His army, he declared, had been "ordered to undertake measures to prevent any further strangulation of the city." There was no question the Serbs' grip was throttling Sarajevo. For three weeks the city's natural gas and electricity had been cut off, and water had to be pumped by hand. Humanitarian-aid shipments were halted by the Serb blockade, and food warehouses were empty. Air shipments of supplies have been impossible for two months because Serbs have threatened to shoot down incoming planes.

Even so, is the lightly armed Bosnian army really launching a thrust straight into the ring of armor the Serbs have clamped on the city? The Serbs, 12,000 strong, hold all the high ground and have hundreds of heavy artillery pieces and mortars zeroed in on approach routes. An uphill battle against the Serbs would not only produce huge Bosnian casualties but would also open the entire capital to retaliatory shelling from Serb positions. The bloodshed would be sickening, and there is no certainty the Bosnians could succeed no matter how professional their forces have become or how high their morale may be.

But perhaps the Bosnian game is deception rather than surprise. Most of the military experts watching last week's offensive take shape confessed that they were confused. One of them, Canadian Lieut. Colonel Daniel Redburn, had a particularly close vantage point. He was bottled up with his detachment of peacekeepers at a U.N. base in Visoko that had been blockaded and mined by Bosnian-government troops. He could see smoke and explosions rising from a battle a couple of miles away but could only guess at their significance. "Is that a bluff?" he asked. "Do they want to get to Sarajevo? Is that the aim?" Then he answered, "Not for the moment."

There were also prolonged exchanges of artillery around three other towns north and east of Sarajevo, leading some military analysts to suspect that the Bosnian-government forces were trying to stretch the Serb defenders as thin as possible, probing for a weak point to exploit. They made progress in places, and U.N. observers said they had cut some Serb supply routes.

Whatever its strategy may be, the government plainly does not retain much hope for protection from the U.N. "We cannot live through another winter of siege," Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey told reporters in Vienna. Britain and France, the main contributors to the U.N. military force in Bosnia, reacted with dismay. French President Jacques Chirac, on his first visit to Washington since taking office, cautioned Sarajevo that an offensive "would be a grave error." He joined Bill Clinton in an appeal to the Bosnians for a cease-fire.

Chirac pressed Washington hard to vote in the Security Council to approve reinforcements for the U.N. Protection Force, UNPROFOR, in Bosnia. Clinton was amenable, but Republican congressional leaders, believing the peacekeeping mission to be a failure, objected to paying the customary U.S. peacekeeping assessment of 31%, which could mean an additional $128 million for the rest of this year. The French President argued that the reinforcements, up to 12,500 French, British and Dutch troops, were needed "to react any time U.N. soldiers are attacked, humiliated or deprived of their freedom."

There is ample reason for concern about the U.N. troops in Bosnia, but it is not certain that more of them will improve their circumstances. Three weeks after the Bosnian Serbs had taken hundreds of peacekeepers hostage, they were still holding 26 of them prisoner and confining 91 others at their posts. In the process of eliminating the U.N. role around Sarajevo, the Serbs started using several hundred artillery pieces and mortars the U.N. had placed under guard at collection points around Sarajevo. What came as a surprise last week was that Bosnian government forces joined so eagerly in the abuse of UNPROFOR. They shelled and blockaded Visoko, where Canadians were posted, and disarmed a Russian unit at a U.N. observation post in the suburb of Mojmilo, south of the capital. At the same time, government troops emulated the Serbs by retrieving 42 mortars and artillery pieces from a U.N. weapons-collection station.

In Halifax, Canada, for an economics summit, Chirac claimed that the rapid-reaction force would "have a serious and effective military capability" to come to the aid of Blue Helmet contingents in trouble. That sounded like a threat to both the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian government, but it was immediately undermined by the declarations made by peacekeeping officials on the ground in Bosnia. The senior U.N. representative, Yasushi Akashi, announced that the new force will operate under the same rules that have applied in the past and thus will undertake no actions without the consent of the Bosnian Serbs.

Britain and France hope the U.N. peacekeeping mission can hang on long enough to help produce a negotiated settlement, which some experts believe might finally be possible. The Serbs have held their 1,000-mile-long front lines for three years, and their field army of up to 80,000 is stretched thin. The Bosnian government's forces lack heavy weaponry but have grown to about 150,000 troops. "The Bosnian Serbs are overextended," U.S. General John Galvin, the former NATO commander, said in Washington last week, "and they are outnumbered." Still, they have artillery. Norman Cigar, a military analyst at the Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting outside Washington, says the Bosnian advantage in manpower and the Serbs' advantage in artillery create a "recipe for an indecisive, bloody, volatile stalemate."

A military standoff could provide the opening diplomats are looking for. With war-weariness and lower morale setting in, even the Serbs may be interested now. The Contact Group still hopes it can persuade Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to provide the extra push that will get his Bosnian Serb kin to the bargaining table. If the new offensive that exploded last week shows both sides they are on a path to greater violence in a war neither can win, the moribund negotiations could take on new life.

--Reported by Massimo Calabresi/Visoko, Thomas Sancton/ Halifax, Alexandra Stiglmayer/Sarajevo and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by MASSIMO CALABRESI/VISOKO, THOMAS SANCTON/ HALIFAX, ALEXANDRA STIGLMAYER/SARAJEVO AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON