U.S. DROPS TONS OF AID INTO BOSNIA

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 1, 1993                   TAG: 9303010110
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post and The Associated Press
DATELINE: SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA                                LENGTH: Medium
U.S. DROPS TONS OF AID INTO BOSNIA
Three U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo planes, launching the Clinton administration's airlift to Bosnia, flew to the Balkan republic late Sunday to parachute more than 22 tons of emergency food and medicine to civilians isolated by more than 10 months of factional warfare.
The lumbering turboprop aircraft, which took off on the seven-hour mission from Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, Germany, were ordered to drop their 50 aid-laden pallets from high altitude to stay out of range of antiaircraft guns and shoulder-fired missiles in the hands of the republic's warring Serbs, Croats and Slavic Muslims.
U.S. officials had said that if the first airdrop went smoothly, it would set the stage for more such missions in the coming few days - chiefly to isolated Muslim enclaves, but also to Serb- and Croat-held areas. The airdrop aims mostly to help Muslims suffering from cold and hunger in enclaves almost entirely cut off from relief for months, but they will also provide aid for Serbs and Croats.
The Clinton administration began the airdrop initiative - over the objections of U.N. military officials who described it as perilous and inefficient - as a means of circumventing roadblocks and other obstructive Serb tactics that have prevented U.N. aid convoys from reaching all but a few Muslim towns and villages in eastern Bosnia since the war began last spring.
More than 10,000 U.N. troops - mostly French, British and Spanish - are now deployed in Bosnia to escort such relief convoys, but they have shied away from using force to deliver aid, even though the U.N. Security Council last fall authorized the use of "all available means" to guarantee such deliveries.
The U.S. effort got off to an inauspicious start Saturday when two C-130s flew over four beleaguered Muslim enclaves in eastern Bosnia, dropped more than a million leaflets explaining that food and medicine would be parachuted to them soon and warning them to stay out of the way of the falling supply pallets, which drop at a rate of 80 feet per second. Other leaflets urged the warring Bosnians not to fire at U.S. planes.
Unfortunately, officials here said, almost none of the leaflets fell within miles of where they were supposed to.
U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, speaking on NBC television's "Meet the Press," stressed that the Pentagon believes risks from the operation are minimal and said the high-flying planes would be safer than relief flights that land in Sarajevo.
Meanwhile, ham radio operators in the beleaguered eastern Bosnian town of Cerska were issuing urgent reports that rebel Serbs had overrun seven surrounding villages.
In another development, the Observer newspaper reported in London that Russia has agreed to supply $360 million worth of arms, including sophisticated missiles, to Serbia and Serb-controlled areas of Bosnia and Croatia. That would violate a U.N. arms embargo.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB