The Southern Front

Thursday, August 17 was the fifth day of fighting on the Dubrovnik-Herzegovina front. Just prior to the cease-fire on Wednesday, Croats and Herzegovina Serbs trade threats: Bozidar Vucurevic, mayor and chairman of the war council in Trebinje told VREME that he told Dubrovnik residents through the UN observer mission in Podgorica that "Dubrovnik will cease to exist if a single shell lands in the Trebinje area". General Zvonimir Cervenko, Croatia's chief of staff said he would no longer tolerate the shelling of targets in the Dubrovnik region.

At virtually the same time, a threat came from a third party: Dragomir Djokic, FR Yugoslavia's ambassador to the UN, sent a letter to the Security Council informing it that the Croatian army fired shells into the territory of the FRY from Konavle (author's note: no one in Montenegro knows of the incident) and that if similar attacks continue "the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia reserves the right to respond adequately".

A worried Yasushi Akashi said on Wednesday he expects fierce armed clashes north of Dubrovnik since the Croatian army (HV) has been bringing in reinforcements. UN observers registered 100 HV trucks coming into the area where an HV brigade with 3-4,000 troops is already stationed while another is on stand by in Split.

On the Montenegro side there have been some military movements from Mamula island (close to Prevlaka), reinforcements on the slopes of Orjen and along the Herzegovina border. A Montena-faks correspondent from Niksic said the road to the Herzegovina border had been damaged by tank tracks and added that a tank had overturned injuring one soldier.

In a statement to VREME, Vucurevic did not hide his wish to "launch a counter-attack to free 40 Serb villages Croatia occupied in July 1992, clear the road to Ljubinja and enable the farming of Popovo Polje".

The Herzegovina Corps information service in Bileca said "military operations will stop once occupied territories in the Trebinje area are liberated."

In a statement to Beta after Cervenko's threat, Vucurevic said his goal isn't Dubrovnik and added that in 1992 presidents Tudjman, Milosevic and Karadzic agreed on granting Herzegovina access to the sea along 30 kilometers of coast from Ostra (Prevlaka) towards Dubrovnik. Vucurevic told VREME that he had to give the Croats some of the occupied territories they now hold for that, not all of it."

The Herzegovina Serbs are now hoping for help from Montenegro, a military expert told VREME. But Montenegro's army reserves are keeping cool amid the signals of war. So much so that some people are wondering whether they want to go to war at all. Some figures have been leaked showing that the response by reserves to the mobilization has been catastrophic. A VREME source in Niksic said just seven of the 147 reserves called reported to a unit there, five of 60 in Danilovgrad, and just 80 of 1,180 in Bar.