US Sends Aid To Bosnians, But Still No Military Help

THE Clinton administration on Nov. 30 contributed an additional $150 million in winter aid to Bosnia's battered civilians but withheld any offer of military help, claiming their situation has improved since last summer.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced the aid hike - which comes on top of more than $400 million the United States is currently donating - at a 53-nation European security conference in Rome and said the US was ready to double its daily relief flights to Sarajevo, the capital of the war-torn former Yugoslav republic, to 10. He said the US also was prepared to begin flights to Tuzla in eastern Bosnia but said Bosnian Serbs and Croats had made that impossible by keeping the airport closed.

``This winter the snows have come early to Bosnia and the humanitarian crisis has deepened,'' Mr. Christopher said.

However, Christopher did not threaten a NATO military assault against the Serbs after having said in August that could be the result if relief shipments were impeded. President Clinton, having accused the Bush administration during his campaign of an inadequate response to ``ethnic cleansing,'' had proposed lifting the UN arms embargo against the Muslim-led government and bombing Serb artillery sites. But the proposal was shelved after Christopher was unable to enlist the European allies. HUD's call to action

Little was known about the homeless woman or how she died, but it happened practically on the doorstep of the nation's top housing agency as officials inside discussed getting more money for homeless programs.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros said he hoped the death of Yetta Adams on Nov. 29 would help motivate policymakers and ordinary Americans into doing more to solve the homeless problem.

``No one chooses to die on a bus bench, no one chooses that as the end of their life,'' Mr. Cisneros said. ``I hope this encourages people to understand, to be more supporting.''

Cisneros wants to double the agency's annual budget on homeless programs to $1.5 billion from the current $823 million a year. The secretary recently unveiled a $20 million pilot program make the nation's capital a national model on homelessness.

``A tragedy like this in the shadow of a government building were homeless programs are run particularly calls us to action,'' he said.