1 The Bosnian government threatened on Tuesday to ignore a four-month truce unless Serbs halt attacks in the northwest and allow humanitarian aid to reach the region's hungry.
2 The warning, in a statement issued Tuesday by the Bosnian Embassy in Zagreb, Croatia, was delivered Monday by Bosnian Foreign Minister Irfan Ljubijankic to chief U.N. envoy Yasushi Akashi.
3 Ljubijankic said conditions in the northwestern Bihac pocket had to improve within the next 24 hours or the Bosnian government would consider the truce invalid.
4 In a letter to Akashi and to U.N. commanders, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic made a similar threat but cited no deadline.
5 Fighting died down on two of three fronts in the northwest Bihac region. U.N. spokesman Col. Gary Coward said it was quiet around the town of Bihac.
6 But 200 explosions were recorded Tuesday south and southeast of Velika Kladusa, Coward said.
7 The Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA quoted Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic as protesting in a letter to U.N. commander Lt. Gen. Rupert Smith a government offensive in which five villages south and southwest of Bihac were captured.
8 Mladic claimed government forces were 'brutally destroying Serb settlements, plundering and burning houses and expelling civilians.'
9 Croatia's news agency HINA also quoted a Bosnian Croat commander as saying his troops and the government army had jointly retaken six villages.
10 Paul Risley, a U.N. spokesman in Zagreb, quoted Izetbegovic's letter as saying that unless Serb attacks on Bihac cease immediately, 'we will have no other choice but to activate other fronts' to draw Serb soldiers away and relieve pressure on Bihac.
11 Meanwhile, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said the existing four-month truce would be the last the Serbs accepted before 'final victory' if the international community does not negotiate a solution.
12 SRNA quoted Karadzic as telling members of his Serbian Democratic Party in Banja Luka that in case of a new government offensive, the Serb army will respond with counter-offensives against all 'vital parts of their territory.'
13 Except for the Bihac pocket, the ceassation of hostilities agreement signed by the government and Bosnian Serbs has kept most of Bosnia quiet since coming into effect Jan. 1.
14 Serbs from Croatia and anti-government Muslims, both allied with Bosnia's rebel Serbs, are fighting the Bosnian government in the region and have repeatedly blocked aid shipments from the north and west.
15 After they denied passage of a relief convoy for Bihac on Tuesday, Kris Janowski, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said Croatian Serbs and rebel Muslim forces had given the go-ahead for four convoys to move to the battered city this week.
16 The route goes through Velika Kladusa, held by renegade Muslims, who unloaded three of the nine trucks in the convoy Feb. 9 before permitting it to proceed.
17 The arrangement with Fikret Abdic, the rebel Muslim leader, is that his people will get 25 percent, or the entire 10-truck relief convoy scheduled to move Thursday.
18 'On paper at least this is quite a breakthrough,' Janowski said. 'It remains, of course, to be seen how it will work out in practice.'
19 Only six convoys, carrying 307 tons of food arrived in February, way short of the monthly requirement of 1,934 tons.
20 U.N. officials are increasingly alarmed by the severe food shortages in Bihac, one of six U.N.-declared 'safe areas.'
21 'We believe this is the first time during the war that people in a safe area are seriously threatened with starvation,' Janowski said.
22 Ron Redmond, spokesman at the agency's headquarters in Geneva, said the agency knew of no one who starved to death yet, but said that could happen 'unless we are given immediate and full access.'

The Bosnian government threatened on Tuesday to ignore a four - month truce unless Serbs halt attacks in the northwest and allow humanitarian aid to reach the region ' s hungry .
four - month truce
Why is there a four-month truce?