EVENTS

MORE HARD DIPLOMACY OVER BOSNIA Thorvald Stoltenberg of Norway, who replaces Cyrus Vance as the United Nation's Bosnian peace negotiator, sought yesterday in Sarajevo to soothe the Bosnian government's fears that a new peace initiative would create de facto Muslim ghettos. The Muslim-led government contends that the formula, which calls for six UN-guarded areas for Bosnian Muslims, would legitimize Serb control of about 70 percent of Bosnia and do little to stop Bosnian Serb forces. The new formula does not include foreign military interv ention and appears to have taken some pressure off Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. The issue of placing international monitors on Bosnia's border with Serbia to make sure that only humanitarian goods and not military supplies were being sent into Bosnia also has not been worked out. More `travel' business

The White House has backed down somewhat on the firings last week of its entire travel office and reinstated 5 of 7 who were dismissed. "There's nothing funny going on here," a frustrated President Clinton said. However, he acknowledged, "I know that there is a feeling ... that someone in the White House may have done something that was inappropriate or that wasn't quite handled right or something." The essential criticism has been that the employees were tossed out to make room for political friends and

to create travel business for Clinton's pals. Karadzic and war crimes

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said yesterday he would refuse to cooperate with a newly created UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. "Absolutely not," Mr. Karadzic told Britain's Sky News television channel when asked whether he would participate in the new court's activities. The Security council, in a first step to punish human rights abusers in the former Yugoslavia, agreed on Tuesday to set up an 11-judge court in The Hague to try those accused of murder, rape, torture, and "ethnic

cleansing." Karadzic is among those accused of being a war criminal. Protest in Bonn

Helicopters in Bonn flew German legislators to parliament over lines of leftist protesters trying to block debate yesterday on a bill to sharply limit the number of refugees entering the country. The measure would dilute a liberal asylum law that is part of Germany's 1949 Constitution. It was considered certain to pass in the lower house because of support by the opposition Social Democrats. The upper house, called the Bundesrat, votes on the legislation tomorrow, and if both chambers pass it, it becomes

law July 1. France privatizes

Automaker Renault and Air France are among 21 state companies that the French government said will be converted to private ownership under the new conservative administration. The list was presented to the weekly Cabinet meeting and will be submitted to the National Assembly in a few weeks. "The world economy is evolving quickly," Economics Minister Edmond Alphandery said. "We recognize that a modern and competitive economy depends on decentralization of management decisionmaking." `Satanic Verses' published

A prosecutor yesterday ordered an investigation against the leftist Istanbul newspaper Aydinlik that printed passages from the controversial novel "Satanic Verses," which has been banned in Turkey. The novel is considered blasphemous by some believers of Islam and its author, Salman Rushdie, went into hiding after the late Ayatollah Rohallah Khomeini offered a $1 million reward for his ordered death. The paper published the first excerpt under the headline: "Is Salman Rushdie a charlatan or a thinker?" Peace plan rejected

Leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh rejected a revised peace plan aimed at halting the five-year war over a disputed region in Azerbaijan, the Interfax news agency reported. The decision could doom the joint effort by the United States, Russia, and Turkey to get the warring parties to return to negotiations and end fighting that has killed more than 3,000 people.

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