September 10, 1995 -- 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT)
LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- A day after Serbian-Americans stepped up protests of U.S. participation in the bombings of Bosnian Serbs, French President Jacques Chirac said Sunday NATO will temporarily halt its Bosnian air raids for a few hours so he can meet with Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic.
The Serbian-American protests came on the heels of Bosnian Serb claims that a NATO shell killed 10 civilians when it crashed into a hospital in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. A demonstration in Los Angeles on Saturday night was followed by a candle-light service in memory of those the group calls innocent victims of bombing.
"My mother's and father's grave was bombed five days ago," said one woman. "And they are buried next to the Orthodox Church where ... they were married. ... I can't forgive (NATO). There are no military installations in that place. They also bombed the place that I grew up in, which is 50 miles from Sarajevo. It has no military installations of any kind."
-- Serbian-American protester in Los Angeles
Referring to the land disputes at the heart of the conflict, the woman said, "They are trying to force and give the victory by force to the other side that lost the war. The Serbs won the war fair and square. We own the land."
"The American policy has done great harm," said Anna Harkins of SerbNet, who spoke in Washington. "It has prolonged the war and the suffering in the Balkans. It has undermined the United States as a neutral peacekeeping force. It has divided NATO internally and estranged the Russian government, which seeks to join the West."
Hundreds of native Croatians and Croatian-Americans were expected to participate in a "mass for peace among the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia" in Washington Sunday afternoon.
In Italy, Pope John Paul led a poignant open-air mass Sunday morning on the shores of the Adriatic. Speaking to a crowd of more than 300,000 people, the Pope called for peace, saying, "We are all witnesses of this war in the Balkans, this interminable war that had made mincemeat of every form of humanity and continues to devastate houses, schools, universities, transforming what were once tranquil places of work and life into cemeteries. ...
"Together with their mothers and fathers in tears, we kneel before the tombs of so many young people [killed in Bosnia]."
Sunday afternoon, French President Chirac announced a temporary cessation in the NATO attacks so that he and Mladic could discuss how the Bosnian Serbs might remove their heavy weapons from the 20-kilometer exclusion zone around Sarajevo.
NATO has said that air strikes will continue until the guns are moved. Earlier Sunday, Bosnian Serbs paid the price for shelling an air strip in the Tuzla safe area. NATO planes launched air strikes in response. Officials say they destroyed a Bosnian Serb bunker and also hit an artillery site.
Meanwhile, U.N. observers have postponed until Monday a trip to a hospital Bosnian Serbs say was struck by a Rapid Reaction Force shell. Investigators say the Serbs were unable to guarantee their safety. The Serbs claim that 10 people were killed in the incident. The United Nations is not denying that a RRF shell hit the hospital but it is holding off on outright admission of responsibility until it can complete the investigation at the site itself.
There was no new information from any source on the fate of the missing French fliers whose plane was downed by a Bosnian-Serb missile two weeks ago.
For more information, see selected articles from theLEXIS®-NEXIS® Information Service.
![[Imagemap]](/WORLD/Bosnia/images/bosnia_nav.gif)
Copyright © 1995 Cable News Network, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.