Hurd to push Bosnians towards peace

THE Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, and his French counterpart will travel to Bosnia tomorrow seeking to persuade the warring parties to accept the international peace plan for the country or face the consequences. Should the Bosnian Serbs reject the plan, Britain and France warned they may agree to lift the United Nations arms embargo against the Bosnian Muslims and withdraw their peace-keeping troops.

With just nine days left for the warring parties to meet the deadline for acceptance of the plan, the two- day mission was announced at the summit of the world's seven leading industrialised nations in Naples.

'We have said that a continuing Serb rejection could lead to a lifting of the arms embargo, Unprofor would withdraw,' said a senior British official. Should the Muslim- Croat side reject the proposal to divide Bosnia into 49 per cent Serbian and 51 per cent Muslim-Croat territory there would be a lifting of sanctions against the Serbs - but only as they comply in practice to the terms by withdrawing. 'It's not just enough to sign up,' said the official. 'We don't think the Serbs are unintelligent enough to say 'No', but there may be a lot of 'Yes, but'.'

Mr Hurd, who will travel with the French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppe, to Sarajevo, Belgrade and Pale, the Bosnian Serb capital, said: 'The message is that here is this plan - it's not a perfect plan - but the choice is agreement or going back to savagery.'

The French President, Francois Mitterrand, said: 'We all insist they respect the deadline. Mr Juppe is going to Pale to make sure the Bosnian Serb government understands the importance of the stakes.'

A British official said the Anglo- French mission was intended to explain how the two countries, as the biggest troop contributors to Bosnia and as permanent members of the UN Security Council, 'see the sticks, the carrots and the process'.

The United States has been urging a lifting of the arms embargo against the Muslims for more than a year - a move so far resisted by the European troop-contributors.