SARAJEVO -- The commander of UN troops in Bosnia called Monday for a demilitarized zone, or DMZ, around Sarajevo, after NATO warplanes struck at defiant Serbs last Friday.


Lieutenant General Sir Michael Rose was trying to set up a meeting with the commander of the Bosnian Serb forces, General Ratko Mladic, to discuss the issue, a UN spokeswoman said.


The plan calls for a withdrawal of all armed and uniformed soldiers and would allow both Serb and Moslem forces to take their weapons out of the zone for use elsewhere.


Weapons collection points, set up when a 20-kilometer heavy-weapons exclusion zone was set up around Sarajevo in February, would be scrapped.


There had however been no response from Mladic, whose forces in Sarajevo have been blamed for an increasing number of sniping incidents.


UN sources said UN sharpshooters had shot and killed one or two Serb snipers in the past two days and this had stopped sniping in the past 24 hours.


Tension rose in the city after NATO launched an air strike against the Serbs last Friday to punish them for seizing back some of their heavy weapons from under UN guard in Sarajevo.


The Bosnian Serbs are becoming increasingly isolated following the decision by Serbian-led Yugoslavia to cut relations in an attempt to force the Bosnian Serbs to sign the latest peace plan.


Rose said he hoped the Bosnian Serb side would see sense and start talking peace. Despite bellicose language from some Bosnian Serb leaders the rift with Belgrade was having an effect on the public mood.


"The impression I have is that most people want peace. I think the voice of sanity in the end will prevail," Rose said in an interview with BBC Radio.


Since Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic closed Serbia's border with the Bosnian Serbs, hundreds of trucks have been turned back.


Radovan Karadzic, chief of the Bosnian Serbs, has ordered local authorities to mobilize a compulsory workforce to compensate for the blockade.


He acknowledged that his forces must somehow do without Belgrade's lifeline of arms, fuel and other supplies.


Momcilo Krajisnik, the speaker of the Bosnian Serbs' self-declared parliament, said the Serbs could not accept the peace plan unless it gave them more land and guarantees of sovereignty.


The peace plan divides Bosnia roughly in half between the Serbs, who now hold about 70 percent of the land, and a Moslem-Croat alliance.


At its most recent meeting last Wednesday, the Bosnian Serb parliament called a referendum to ratify its rejection of the peace plan.


The referendum would go ahead on Aug. 27 and 28, when "a positive response to the proposed peace plan cannot be expected," Krajisnik said.


The Moslem-led Bosnian army has pressed ahead with offensives against the Serbs in central Bosnia, with the UN saying Bosnian government forces had taken the Serb-held hill town of Brgule, south of Vares.


Bosnians had seized about 32 square kilometers of territory in their southward thrust from Vares towards the crucial point between Sarajevo and Tuzla.


Annink reported heavy small-arms and machine-gun fire southeast of Brgule, indicating Moslem units were pressing ahead with their offensive.


Bosnian troops, on a roll, were still refusing to let the UN position peacekeepers between them and the Serbs along the shifting southern Vares front.