Yasser Arafat's Plane Downed in Storm; Search Continues

NICOSIA, Cyprus--A jet carrying Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chief Yasser Arafat disappeared in a sandstorm 15 minutes before it was to have landed in Libya on a flight from Sudan, officials in his office in Tunis, Tunisia reported.

"We're trying to find him now," said Bassam Abu-Sharif, Arafat's chief adviser, speaking when the plane was more than seven hours overdue.

He appealed to France, Italy, Britain, the United States and Egypt "to help with all possible means to locate the aircraft."

Abu Sharif sounded distraught and refused to answer further questions.

Other sources reached at the office of the PLO chair said 12 people were aboard the aircraft. They included three crew members and a team of bodyguards and administrative assistants.

No other PLO official was on the flight from Khartoum, capital of Sudan, the sources said.

Warplanes Strike Bosnia; U.S. Recognizes Its Independence

SARAJEVO, Yugoslavia--Airstrikes by Yugoslav jets killed at least six people in Bosnia-Hercegovina yesterday as the United States recognized the republic's independence along with that of Croatia and Slovenia.

Ethnic Serbs in northern Bosnia proclaimed their own state and said they intended to remain allied with Serbia, the largest republic in what was the Yugoslav federation. Two Serb members of Bosnia's seven-person presidency announced their resignations.

The Serb-dominated federal army, believed to have about 150,000 soldiers stationed in Bosnia, is generally viewed as the decisive factor in the Bosnian equation. Ethnic Serb leaders have called on it to support a separate Serbian state.

In Belgrade, Gen. Zivota Panic, acting head of the federal general staff, said the army would not withdraw from the republic and warned: "We are closer to war than peace."

Bosnia's deputy premier, Muhamed Cengic, said the commander of the Sarajevo corps of the Serb-dominated federal military had promised to respect Bosnia's independence, "and I trust him."

But federal air force jets rocketed an ammunition depot and a factory in Siroki Brijeg, near the Adriatic coast, and an armaments factory in nearby Citluk. Six people were killed, Bosnian radio said. REGION

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