HELICOPTER CRASH KILLS 12.

Twelve international diplomats, human-rights workers, and UN police officials were killed last week when the Soviet-made Mi-8 helicopter transporting them crashed into a mountainside on the way to Bugojno. All four of the Ukrainian crew members survived. Weather was clear when the aircraft left Sarajevo, but the craft hit dense fog in a valley 20 miles east of its destination.

Bosnia's collective presidency declared a nationwide day of mourning for the victims, who had all chosen to serve in Bosnia to help the implement the Dayton peace treaty.

U2 PLAYS SARAJEVO.

In a mega-event that would have been impossible just two years ago, rock ``supergroup'' U2 held a concert in Sarajevo before an estimated 50,000 people.

Fans from across central Europe -- including Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia as well as Croat- and Serb-held parts of Bosnia -- traveled to the Bosnian capital for the event. A special train brought concert-goers from the still-divided city of Mostar, while OSCE buses transported fans from Banja Luka. Hardline officials in Pale, however, reportedly halted sales of U2 tickets there.

Many tickets were selling for just 20 German marks, around $12, so average Bosnians might have a chance to attend. ``They cannot be accused of coming here to make profits, by some estimates they will lose 2.5 million dollars,'' the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje noted.

Security was as heavy, as attendees were searched for weapons or explosives. The concert went off without incident.

During the city's brutal four-year siege, U2 arranged for live phone linkups with Sarajevo for several concerts and tried to draw public attention to the suffering there. The group also raised money for Bosnian aid.

``Music is beyond politics,'' lead singer Bono told CNN Tuesday. ``All are welcome here tonight.''

U.S. DIPLOMAT BOWS TO FEARS OF SERB VIOLENCE.

Putting the fear of Serb mobs ahead of the rule of law, top U.S. diplomat Robert Frowick overturned an OSCE decision that 50 hardline SDS nationalist candidates in Pale violated Bosnian election laws and should be disqualified.

Frowick made his ruling ``after consultations with Washington,'' the New York Times reports, saying the safety of Western election observers was paramount.

The OSCE's senior legal counsel Sandra Mitchell and Stephen Bowen resigned in protest.

The chair of OSCE's Election Appeals Subcommission, Judge Finn Lynghjem of Norway, said the SDS in Pale flouted regulations by keeping Radovan Karadzic in a top position. ``For a person indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity to maintain a position or function in one of the leading national parties shocks the conscience,'' Lynghjem wrote in his four-page decision, according to the Washington Post.

``If we make concessions and forget the Dayton provisions every time they threaten violence, why the hell are we here?'' said Hrair Balian, head of the International Crisis Group.

``[T]he implications of the OSCE decision to buckle under mob pressure -- pressure quite likely generated by the indicted, mocking Mr. Karadzic -- are devastating," the Washington Post editorialized.

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS GO OFF PEACEFULLY.

Bosnia's municipal elections, delayed for a year, were finally held this month and went off without major violence. Croat nationalists withdrew their boycott threat under heavy diplomatic pressure.

Most Bosnians cast their votes for ethnic-based nationalist parties, fearing that splitting votes among opposition parties would assure another ethnic group's hardliners would triumph. However, ``in the northern town of Tuzla, Bosnia's leading nationalist Muslim party, the SDA, conceded defeat to the non-nationalist joint list of the Tuzla mayor [Selim Beslagic],'' AFP reports.

``Tuzla is a special city. Everyone lives together. It doesn't matter here if someone is a Muslim, Croat or Serb,'' said Alisa, a Muslim student there. Most of the city's pre-war Croat population as well as half its Serbs still remain. Beslagic has been nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

But other residents were worried about Beslagic's win, fearing the citywould be last for money and favors from the SDA-controlled government inSarajevo.

Most Serbs were voting to keep the company's de facto ethnic carve-up, whilemany Muslims were hoping the balloting would help reverse ethnic cleansing. ``I am going to cast a ballot so that I can return home,'' Hasim Kahliman, a 64-year-old Muslim from a village near Visegrad, told AP. ``The war is over and this, voting, is the only way we can fight to go home.''

Scattered incidents were reported. In northwest Bosnia, one man was shot andtwo grenades were thrown. An explosion went off in front of a building housing both the Croatian HDZ and a group allied with the Muslim SDA, while a bazooka was fired from the Croat-held part of Travnik at a Muslim home.

Shortly before voting, an explosion damaged an OSCE vehicle near Vitez.

In Croat-held Drvar, meanwhile, authorities initially blocked returning Serbrefugees from voting; but they were finally able to cast votes after lengthydelays.

Results, initially expected last weekend, are not going to be announced atleast until this Friday.

If Muslims win election in some ethnically cleansed towns, it is unclear howthey will take office. In Srebrenica, officials in the now Serb-only townvowed they would not accept the election results if they lose. ``I don'tthink it would be possible for any Muslims to sit on the municipal councils,'' local SDS leader Momcilo Cvjetivonic told AFP. ``The first nightthey come back, it means fighting.''

One of the poverty-stricken residents there, though, said: ``It doesn'tmatter who comes to power as long as they take care of the people.'' Addedher friend, who fled her Sarajevo suburb when Serb hardliners pulled out: ``Half of the people are hungry, we have little to eat, little to wear,nobody is doing us any good.''

CAR BOMB EXPLODES IN MOSTAR, INJURING 50.

A car bomb detonated outside a police station in the Croat-controlled sector of Mostar, injuring about 50 people and damaging scores of buildings. It was the first time this particular terror tactic has been used in Bosnia.

``The blast wrecked four floors of a neighboring apartment block, started a fire in another, flattened a sentry post and destroyed dozens of vehicles in the area,'' AFP said.

Gradimir Gojer, leader of a multi-ethnic opposition party (the Social Democrats) and a Croat, said the blast occurred during the final stages of efforts to defuse an ethnic crisis in the now-divided city. A joint police force had finally begun operating, although last week Croats said they would no longer send officers to joint training sessions.

Some blamed Croatian mafia who control crime and commerce in west Mostar for the attack.

Hardline Croat officials in Mostar refused to allow a joint Muslim-Croat investigation into the attack, a Muslim official in the region said.

INTER-ENTITY PHONE LINES RESTORED.

``People on either side of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat/Serb ethnic divide can now speak to each other over the phone without paying international charges for the first time since war broke outfive years ago,'' Serbia's independent Radio B92 reports. ``Telephone links between former wartime foes in the two halves of divided Bosnia were re-established on Friday.''

SERB FACTIONS SKIRMISH. Forces loyal to Srpska President Biljana Plavsic took over a police station in the strategic town of Prnjavor Sunday, prompting an armed attempt by Karadzic police to seize it back. ``Shootingbroke out between police units from rival factions in a Bosnian Serb powerstruggle in the early hours of Monday morning,'' Agence France Pressereported. One Serb officer was shot in the leg.

``The rival police forces had each erected a roadblock about 11 miles out of the town and NATO-led troops were in a buffer zone between them, witnesses said,'' according to Reuters.

The changeover in Prnjavor leaves only one significant Karadzic police presence in the Banja Luka region, in Doboj, which is now surrounded by Plavsic forces and the Bosniak-Croat federation.

MOB ATTACKS NATO TROOPS WITH MOLOTOV COCKTAILS.

About a hundred Serbs threw stones and gasoline bombs at NATO troops manning a checkpoint on a bridge near Doboj. No casualties were reported.

Similar mob violence succeeded in pressuring U.S. soldiers to abandon another bridge checkpoint in Serb-held Bosnia a few weeks ago. Critics of the retreat said it would just lead to more attacks

ATROCITIES UNDER THE `RED CROSS' BANNER.

``The Serbian Red Cross participated in war crimes including murder, mass rape and extortion during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to human rights groups and reports to the United Nations,'' the Toronto Star reports.

``Hundreds of civilians may have been killed - and thousands of others sexually abused and tortured - by people working under the emblem of the world's largest humanitarian agency between 1992 and 1995. And Red Cross vehicles were reportedly used to drive people to their deaths as part of a campaign of `ethnic cleansing,' UN and human rights experts say.''

Yet while International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) knew of these accusations back in 1992, no effort was made to warn civilians that trusting the Serbian Red Cross could lead to their deaths. ICRC officials in Geneva told the paper that ``any independent country can set up its own Red Cross and do whatever it wants under that banner,'' according to the Star's report. And, the need to appear ``neutral,'' to have access to civiliansduring war, prevented the ICRC from complaining about the atrocities, they said.

One survivor of the Keraterm concentration camp told UN investigators: ``About 20 persons chosen arbitrarily among the prisoners were forced to lie on the floor. A truck from the Serbian Red Cross then drove over their legs.'' Another testified -- with corroborating witnesses -- that the head of the Trnopolje camp, Pero Curguz, also headed the local Red Cross there. He organized the murder of a hundred people in convoys.

``Hundreds, possibly thousands of non-Serb women and girls were detained, raped and gang-raped for months'' at a Serbian Red Cross refugee camp in Doboj, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki reported. "The women deemed unattractive were `disappeared.'"

Non-Serbs were regularly forced to pay the Serb Red Cross for their ownethnic cleansing, called transport fees -- in some cases thousands of dollars. Some of the refugees were killed anyway.

``In a response faxed Sept. 2, 1994, to Canadian Red Cross headquarters[about the atrocities], Helen Alderson of the ICRC did not disavow the Serbian Red Cross, and referred to the alleged war criminals in the UN report as `Red Cross personnel,''' the Star reports. ``It is quite likely officials within the Serbian Red Cross will be indicted for war crimes.''

Nevertheless, Serb Red Cross officials were among those brought to Switzerland from across Bosnia last year for a conference ``to share their experiences and working problems,'' the Star reports.

PALE HARDLINERS NOMINATE AMBASSADORS WITH TIES TO WAR CRIMES, CRIMINALS.

Ultranationalist Velibor Ostojic, who refugees say organized rape camps during the ethnic cleansing of Foca, has now been named head of the Bosnian Parliament's human rights board.

Muslim refugees say he helped organize the expulsion of tens of thousands of non-Serbs, commanded forces that destroyed Muslim cultural landmarks, and currently opposes the return of refugees to ``Srpska.''

Meanwhile, the one-time spokesman for indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic, Jovan Zametica, is rumored to be Pale's choice for Bosnia's ambassador to the U.S. Under a deal brokered by Dayton architect Richard Holbrooke, Serb hardliners get to choose Bosnia's representative in America.

Zametica's one-time tutor and Ph.D. advisor at the London School of Economics, D.C. Watt, wrote to him in an open published by the London Observer two years ago: ``Being soured off by disappointment is one thing. Becoming the mouthpiece of a man who regards mass murder and `ethnic cleansing' as normal means of warfare is another. Lying in public for him as you do, pretending that the men taken at Srebrenica were going to be treated as prisoners of war, is a third. You have made yourself despicable in the eyes of those who knew you and respected you in this country.''

JOURNALISTS ATTACKED.

A Swedish journalists returning from Pale to Sarajevo was shot at by five masked men and wounded in the chest and arm. The injuries are not life threatening. Six days later, men opened fire on a Danish television crew traveling the same road; there were no injuries.

SEVERAL HUNDRED MUSLIMS MOVE BACK AROUND BRCKO.

``In this shattered territory around the fiercely contested northeastern city of Brcko, [American] soldiers have worked a minor miracle: Muslims have moved back into about 600 ruined homes on Serb-held land,'' AP reports from Stari Rasadnik. ``Muslim returnees say they feel safe with regular U.S. Army patrols from nearby Camp McGovern churning through the ruined remnants of their villages.'' More than 90 percent of the Muslim population was killed or expelled from Serb-conquered territory during the war; almost none have been able to return.

UN SEEKS SANCTIONS ON JAJCE POLICE.

Concluding that Croatian police in Jajce refused to respond when Muslim returnees were threatened and their houses burned, the UN has sought the firing of the town's police chief and his deputy.

Meanwhile, the UN discovered that new mines had been laid around the homes of returning Muslims. ``The mines had been planted right in the middle of the paths, near garden doors targeting someone who was going about their daily routine,'' Don Simpson, regional head of the Mine Action Center, told AFP.

``I know who did this, they are living in the next village and their leaderis called Jija -- I know him. We fought the Serbs together in 1992,'' said returning resident Kassim Kajminic.

AFTER SFOR?

Just as SFOR replaced IFOR when the IFOR mandate expired, NATO may seek a politically acceptable way to maintain a presence in Bosnia after SFOR's mission. ``The international community should not abandon Bosnia,'' NATO Secretary General Javier Solana told reporters in Washington.

```SFOR as such will not be continued -- as such' beyond June, Solana said, putting emphasis on the term `as such' to suggest that an intervention force under some other name and form could replace SFOR in Bosnia and continue the work of maintaining peace,'' according to AP.

WASHINGTON DEBATE.

``Senate and House negotiators reached agreement to cutoff funds for U.S. forces in Bosnia next June but left President Clinton the option of requesting a waiver and formally seeking supplemental funds to keep American troops in Bosnia for a longer period,'' the Washington Post reports. ``The move reflected hardening congressional resistance to any further extension of American military presence there. But it stopped short of legislating an absolute withdrawal deadline that the White House had threatened would prompt a presidential veto.''

Last night, meanwhile, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger warned that an early pullout from Bosnia will risk reigniting war there -- and possibly elsewhere in southeastern Europe. ``Peace is beginning to take root,'' he said at Georgetown University. ``The gains are not irreversible and locking them in will require that the international community stay engaged in Bosnia in some fashion for a good while to come.''

--Sharon Machlis Gartenberg, for the Bosnia Action Coalition (Mass./NH)