ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9602060017
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: TUZLA, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
SOURCE: Associated Press
A land-mine explosion in northern Bosnia on Saturday killed an American soldier, the first member of U.S. forces to die in action since the NATO-led peace mission began.
Opposing armies complied with a Saturday deadline to withdraw from territories that, under the peace treaty, must be handed over to their former enemies. But the progress toward peace was marred by a dispute over Serb police remaining in Sarajevo suburbs.
The American was killed north of Tuzla, headquarters for U.S. forces, when he apparently stepped on a land mine. He was the first U.S. soldier to die in Bosnia and the ninth alliance soldier to die since NATO began deploying to the Balkans in December. Another American soldier died in January at a logistics base in Hungary, apparently of natural causes.
The soldier, whose name was withheld pending notification of next of kin, was wounded at 3:45 p.m. (10:45 EST) at a checkpoint near the town of Gradacac, 25 miles north of Tuzla, said an Army spokesman, Lt. Bill Donovan.
``We believe he was on foot'' and standing guard at the checkpoint, Donovan said. He said the soldier was pronounced dead at the 212th mobile Army surgical hospital nearby.
President Clinton was briefed about the death during a campaign stop in New Hampshire. Asked by a reporter whether the accident gave him second thoughts about the Bosnian mission, he said: ``No, not at all.''
``I told the American people before it started, the place was filled with mines,'' Clinton said, noting that other allied soldiers had been killed in land-mine accidents.
In a statement, Clinton extended sympathy to the soldier's family.
``They should know that he died in the noblest of causes - the pursuit of peace. ... We will continue to take every precaution to protect American troops as they continue to perform this critical mission of securing and enduring peace in Bosnia.''
In another incident, two British soldiers got facial cuts when their vehicle was hit by rounds of sniper fire in Ilidza, a Serb suburb of Sarajevo, according to Staff Sgt. Christopher Lethhiers of the French air force.
As part of the peace agreement, Croats and Muslims on Saturday signed documents giving them control of Serb suburbs in Sarajevo. But Serb police remained in place, despite protests by the Bosnian government.
All over Bosnia, by midnight Friday, Muslims and Croats were to take control of territory given them under the peace treaty. Serbs were to do the same. Such transfers have been relatively peaceful because most residents already have left areas being handed over to their former enemies.
But while thousands of Serbs fled their five Sarajevo suburbs, tens of thousands remain. Officials who hope to preserve the city's ethnic diversity want the Serbs to stay, and they are reluctant to scare the Serbs with a sudden change in police or other overt signs of a power shift.
Full transfer of authority is to be finished by March 19. Aides to Carl Bildt, a former Swedish foreign minister implementing the transfer, said the deadline would be met even in Serb-held parts of Sarajevo.
Western officials said all parties agreed with the decision to keep Serb police in the suburbs. But Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic clearly was unhappy, saying his government wanted international police to take over.
``The presence of Serb police ... is illegal,'' he told reporters. ``We do not agree with that.''
Bildt aide Michael MacLay suggested the government had agreed but was blaming Bildt for a decision that is unpopular with its constituents.
A plan to include patrols of international police has been suspended, in part because there are not enough officers available. Of the 500 due to be in place in Serb-held sectors of Sarajevo, fewer than 50 have arrived.
Serb police at Grbavica, a southern Serb-held district, were permitting people from the government side to cross over Saturday after checking documents. Bosnian police said 1,300 people crossed from both sides since Friday, when most travel restrictions were lifted.
At a news conference with U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Izetbegovic also said his side would soon release its last five war prisoners.
Christopher pledged strong U.S. support for the search of the thousands of civilians presumed to have been massacred during the war. He said Assistant State Secretary John Shattuck would soon go to Ljubija and Omarska, both purported mass-grave sites in northwestern Bosnia.
Other officials also were visiting some of Bosnia's killing fields. Manfred Nowak, the top missing-persons expert for the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, inspected the Ljubija mine near Prijedor in northwestern Bosnia, where war-crimes victims are believed to be buried.
Land mines hidden in the coal pits will delay excavation of the bodies, but digging could begin in April, said Nowak, whose mission is to help trace the 27,000 missing in Bosnia's war.
U.N. human-rights envoy Elizabeth Rehn was scheduled to go to the region of Srebrenica today to investigate survivors' reports of massacres by Serbs last summer.
Up to 7,000 bodies may be buried around Srebrenica, U.S. officials say. Bosnia has an estimated 300 mass graves.
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