UFO Info Week-End

The fighting has displaced some 55000 refugees

The fighting has displaced some 55,000 refugees.Shaping Bosnia, page 15. Their next target is likely to be the Serb stronghold of Banja Luka, where the Serbs are sure to put up a fight. But some of the international resolve over the issue of ending the Serb threat to Sarajevo has clearly dissipated in the past few days. General Ratko Mladic, the Serb commander, has been allowed to keep 100 of the 300 heavy weapons in place because they are of smaller calibre, and an initial demand for the restoration of utilities has been dropped.The US envoy Richard Holbrooke, leading the peace effort, returned to Belgrade yesterday for fresh talks with the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic.In western Bosnia, the Bosnian 5th Corps, attacking from what had been the Bihac pocket, has joined Croatian troops along the western border, taken the towns of Bosanki Petrovac and Kljuc, surrounded Bosanska Krupa and were said to be marching on Sanski Most.

UN commanders insisted that the road would be opened “soon”.Nato and UN commanders will decide after 8pm tonight whether the Serbs have made sufficient progress or whether new air strikes are needed. “We remain sceptical about the Bosnian Serb commitment to honour to the full the undertakings they have made,” a UN spokesman said.
Serb soldiers also turned back a convoy of vehicles from the Rapid Reaction Force attempting to open the main road to Sarajevo via Hadzici. Half-way through the 72-hour deadline for the Serbs to show willing, the UN had seen only four artillery pieces, three tanks and five mortars, of an estimated 200 heavy weapons, leave the 20km exclusion zone around Sarajevo. The Serb delaying tactics cast a fresh shadow over the delicate, US-led attempts to broker peace in Bosnia.

In western Bosnia, meanwhile, the Serbs were suffering staggering territorial losses in the face of a Muslim-Croatian offensive. A UN official said Bosnian government forces now controlled 45 per cent of Bosnia, compared with 30 per cent a week ago, bringing the battle-lines closer to the internationallyproposed division of the country: 49 per cent to the Serbs and 51 per cent to the government. SERB forces around Sarajevo, risking further air strikes if they fail to comply with Nato demands by tonight, dragged their heels yesterday in withdrawing heavy weapons from the area and opening up the city to the UN. And last weekend a fire halted the Paddington- to-Swansea train near Maidenhead. It led to one death, when an escaping passenger jumped into the path of an InterCity train travelling in the opposite direction.Mad railways, page 8.

Services from London’s Euston station to Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham were delayed for up to three hours on Friday night because of signal failures.There were further delays yesterday, with services out of Liverpool Lime Street stopped for three hours.Two weeks ago, services on the West Coast main line in Hertfordshire were held up for two days when a farmer’s muckspreader covered the track with five tons of manure. This was only prevented by a campaign of public opposition led by Labour. But the absurd structure of privatisation has now produced another time-bomb for rail passengers.”n For the third weekend running, rail travellers have faced severe delays. If people travel by a route not permitted, there obviously will be an excess cost.”Mr Meacher said: “The Government has already tried to cut by three-quarters the number of stations where passengers could buy tickets.

However, he added that the post-privatisation fare structure “could hardly be more flexible than the present one”. He said: “With different companies trying to agree a share in the ticket sales revenue, you clearly have to decide what is acceptable. This could be done for pounds 72 under the old Saver fare, but could cost as much as pounds 156.50 under the new regime.A BR spokesman confirmed that the work was being prepared but said it was “too early to draw conclusions”. But the 25 new operating companies will each demand a share of the revenue for journeys involving their services.From next year, passengers who make stops at “unpermitted” stations face demands for two additional single fares: from the station of origin to their stop-over, and from the stop-over to the destination.One journey mentioned by the Opposition as involving a likely change involves a London-to-Glasgow passenger breaking his or her journey in Sheffield – a station not directly en route. BR always took the view that, since it was one organisation, imposing tight restrictions was pointless.