Bosnia crisis update

Fighting between Muslims, Croats and Bosnian Serbs, oblivious of a truce signed last Tuesday, flared across central Bosnia and artillery and infantry battles for disputed towns drove more people from their homes yesterday. Despite the fighting, the United Nations judged it was safe to reopen Sarajevo airport to relief flights after a six-day closure.

In a setback for the relief effort, Bosnian Serbs at the border with Serbia proper halted the first UN aid convoy for a month for the besieged Muslim enclave of Gorazde. The convoy, which set out from Belgrade, was due to reach Gorazde on Monday with 80 ton of food and medicine for about 70,000 trapped and starving local people and refugees.

Muslim-controlled Sarajevo radio said that amateur radio broadcasts from Gorazde reported Muslim fighters still resisting the Serbian offensive that began three weeks ago.

The Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic met Mate Boban, his Bosnian Croat counterpart, in the Montenegrin town of Herceg Novi and apparently discussed the division of Bosnia, the news agency Tanjug said.

The jailed leader of a Serbian opposition party was reported to be in a stable condition in a Belgrade clinic yesterday, three weeks after his arrest and beating by police. A statement carried by the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug said Vuk Draskovic, head of the Serbian Renewal Movement, was in hospital and that 'further diagnostic procedures and therapeutic measures are continuing'. The agency said his condition was stable, but gave no details about his injuries. The statement made no mention of Mr Draskovic's wife, Danica, who also was said to have been beaten in police custody.

President Alija Izetbegovic said he will not attend talks in Geneva on carving Bosnia-Herzegovina into ethnic states because such a division could only be made by the republic's parliament, Sarajevo radio said.