Agencies Defy U.N. Order to Suspend Aid : Balkans: Action sparks anger and confusion among relief workers. Convoys push ahead for eastern Bosnia.

ZAGREB, Croatia — International relief agencies and U.N. peacekeeping forces on Thursday defied a controversial order to suspend aid to embattled Bosnia-Herzegovina, pushing ahead with several food convoys destined for starving Muslim Slavs.

Aid officials, caught off guard by a sudden decision by the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, Sadako Ogata of Japan, privately criticized the move as just the kind of political manipulation of their humanitarian efforts for which she sought to punish leaders of the warring factions.

Ogata on Wednesday called off all relief operations for Bosnia after Serbian gunmen had for days blocked deliveries to desperate Muslim communities in the east of the republic and because the Sarajevo government was refusing to distribute aid in protest of the Serbian actions.

She ordered the blocked convoys to return to their bases in the Serbian capital of Belgrade and said the U.N. agency would immediately pull its staff out of the besieged republic.

The actions set off protests at U.N. headquarters in New York, where Ogata was accused of exceeding her authority by failing to consult the Security Council before cutting a lifeline to 1.6 million Bosnian citizens.

The moves and varying interpretations of them unleashed widespread confusion.

Jose Maria Mendiluce, the U.N. aid agency’s special envoy to the region, told his staff that the edict applied to all areas of Bosnia, while agency spokeswoman Sylvana Foa said in Geneva that aid would continue to those areas where local officials were willing to cooperate in its distribution.

On orders from French Gen. Philippe Morillon, the commander of U.N. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, a convoy carrying goods to the eastern Bosnian town of Gorazde continued to negotiate its way through Serbian rebels’ roadblocks, U.N. spokeswoman Shannon Boyd said.

The convoy succeeded in gaining passage through the rebel barricades near the city of Rogatica, but it was stopped short of Gorazde by a huge crater in its path, forcing it to spend a third night on the road.

Peter Kessler of the U.N. aid agency’s Zagreb office also confirmed that several convoys carrying relief goods from the Adriatic port of Split had made their way across the Bosnian mountains to Muslim and Croatian communities around the central city of Zenica.

“In the areas where the authorities want us, we will distribute our aid,” Kessler said of the shrinking central Bosnian territory that is under neither Serbian rebel control nor subject to protest hunger strikes as ordered by city officials in Sarajevo. “We hope the Bosnian government authorities will change their minds and let us deliver to Sarajevo as well.”

Neither U.N. aid agency officials nor those with the U.N. Protection Force were certain whether deliveries would continue today.

The U.N. refugee agency “has been speaking with two voices in the last 24 hours,” one U.N. source here complained. “One says the convoys will continue where they can, while the other says they are not going to selectively serve Bosnia so the whole thing is suspended. We just don’t know what the finally policy is going to be.”

The surprise action by Ogata and the resulting dissent reflect a division of opinion among Western governments and aid agencies over whether assistance to civilian victims should be made subject to the actions of their political leaders.

Bosnian Serbs and Croats have repeatedly sought to interrupt food deliveries to Muslim communities in the hopes of starving those loyal to the Sarajevo government into submitting to ethnic division of the republic.

Serbs have already conquered 70% of the republic, and increasingly militant Croatian forces control much of the rest.

Muslims, who comprised the largest of Bosnia’s three ethnic groups before a Serbian siege began last April, live scattered throughout the republic and oppose any ethnic division.

Angered by Serbian gunmen’s attempts to starve its supporters, the Sarajevo government last week announced that it was halting distribution of relief in the capital until the U.N. aid agency succeeded in getting food to Muslim communities that have been cut off by the rebels for as long as 10 months.

The government-imposed hunger strike has largely backfired, though, leading relief officials to believe the Bosnian government is as willing to manipulate their humanitarian mission as are the widely denounced Serbian rebels.

Bosnian officials have stood firm in their refusal to pass U.N. aid agency food on to Sarajevo citizens.

Republic Vice President Ejup Ganic shrugged off Ogata’s decision, saying, “The people of Sarajevo have found out the high commissioner has done nothing for them.”

The aid suspension also ruffled many in the relief ranks.

Asked if the Sarajevo government hadn’t shot itself in the foot with its ill-advised protest, a relief official snapped: “One could say the same” about the U.N. agency.