Commander-in-Chief of NATO's Southern Command to launch air strikes against artillery or mortar positions in or around Sarajevo that were determined by UNPROFOR to be responsible for attacks against civilian targets in that city The North Atlantic Council in its decision of 9 February 1994 decided to establish a "heavy weapons exclusion zone" of 20-kilometre radius around Sarajevo excluding Pale. On 18 April 1994 faced with an extremely difficult situation in Gorazde I addressed a similar request to the Secretary- General of NATO in which I asked him to obtain a decision by the North Atlantic Council with respect to the five other safe areas namely Tuzla, Zepa, Gorazde, Bihac and Srebrenica.The North Atlantic Council's decision for Gorazde was more complex, as explained in detail in my report of 19 May 1994 (5/1994/600). it created two zones around Gorazde:   a 3- kilometreradius "total exclusion zone" and a 20-kilometre-radius "military exclusion zone" within Bosnia and Herzegovina. No exclusion zones were proclaimed around the other safe areas.

49. I welcomed both decisions by the North Atlantic Council as being in accordance with paragraph 10 of Security Council resolution 836 (1993), namely to support UNPROFOR in the performance of its mandate regarding the safe areas. However, there is a certain ambiguity about the use of air power with regard to the exclusion zones around Sarajevo and Gorazde. On the one hand, the Security Council resolutions regarding the safe areas do not refer to the exclusion zones nor do they establish any special regime for those zones. The decisions by the North Atlantic Council, on the other hand, state that certain weapons systems, if found within the 20-kilometre zones after a certain date, will be subject to attack by NATO aircraft. In both places the weapons concerned were either withdrawn or placed in authorized weapons collection points by the dates specified, in accordance with agreements reached with the parties. While the exclusion zones, with the threat of NATO air enforcement, initially proved successful, compliance with them has since been difficult to maintain because of the large area to be covered and the difficult terrain. If either side chooses not to comply with the agreements it has signed, it is easy for it to hide weapons in the zones or to introduce new ones into them.

50. UNPROFOR's mandate as regards the exclusion zones can be summarized as follows:

(a) To monitor the parties' compliance with them;  

(b) To control the heavy weapons placed by the parties in designated weapons collection points.

The experience of recent weeks in Sarajevo has shown that this mandate immediately ceases to be viable if the parties fail to honour their commitments. UNPROFOR has found it impossible to prevent the Bosnian Serb side, in particular, from entering the weapons collection points and either withdrawing heavy weapons or firing them from within those sites. By the date of this report, UNPROFOR had lost control of all the weapons collection points in the Sarajevo exclusion zone. It has also become clear that both parties introduced heavy weapons into the exclusion zones after implementation of the agreements of February 1994.

51. As in other cases, the only reliable solution to this problem is the cooperation of the parties and their readiness to respect agreements they have entered into. Enforcement of the exclusion zones can be done only imperfectly from the air. The troops deployed at the weapons collection points, which are within territory controlled by the party that owns the weapons, are vulnerable to detention, nor does UNPROFOR have the means to extricate them in a crisis without the consent of that party. To guarantee complete respect for the

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