The New York Times

May 8, 1996, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Family Calls Serb a Victim of Mistaken Identity

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 10; Column 4; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 789 words

DATELINE: KOZARAC, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 6

Ljubomir Tadic's family videos are fuzzy from use. But he assures visitors that poor quality does not hide veracity, and as he pops one after another into his recorder, rewinding and re-running them, he says there can be no doubt that a terrible mistake has been made in The Hague.
On the screen there is a party before the war, his brother Dusan Tadic toasting with Muslim neighbors. Then there is the burial of his father, with Muslims among the pallbearers. Later comes Dusan firmly denying to international war crimes investigators that after the Serbs took over control of Kozarac four years ago he tortured and killed those Muslims he once knew.
Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, is now in the dock in The Hague at the first international war crimes trial since the aftermath of World War II.
"The tribunal has to know that this is all a big mistake," said Ljubomir Tadic, 43, waving one of the tapes after it jammed in the machine. "It's a case of mistaken identity, and we can prove it."
Dusan's brothers, Ljubomir and Mladen Tadic, have begun a campaign to prove his innocence, saying the videos are only a fraction of what they have collected during the last two years in preparation for the trial.
"At first we were mad at the Muslims because we had all been friends and we didn't understand how they could accuse Dusan," said Mladen Tadic, 47. "But now we think they have just mixed him up with someone else. There is a guard at one of the camps with his last name, and another one who looks just like him."
Witnesses interviewed by tribunal investigators describe Dusan Tadic as a sadistic thug and freelance killer who helped herd Muslim neighbors into three prison camps at the beginning of the war in Bosnia, then tortured and mutilated at least 16 of them to death.
But his brothers say others did the killing, adding that Dusan, a karate instructor and bar owner, had many Muslim friends. And they say he and his wife, Mira, often had Muslims over for dinner. "He became a traffic cop in order to keep from being drafted and stay out of the war," Mladen Tadic said. "He wouldn't hurt anyone smaller than him, and would never kill a friend. He was a karate instructor, and after a match, you always shake hands. That is the sort of person he was."
The three camps -- Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje -- were closed in August 1992, after pictures distributed around the world showed starving Muslim and Croat prisoners at Omarska. Although the Serb leadership has continued to say the camps were humane, the pictures led to an international outcry, and the indictment of Dusan Tadic and 20 other commanders or guards at the camps for crimes against humanity.
Far from denying that atrocities took place in the camps, the Tadic brothers assert that terrible things did happen to their neighbors there, but that Dusan was not one of those who did them. They say the tactic has not left them in good stead with the Serbian authorities.
"The police in Prijedor have kept us from interviewing some witnesses and we have gotten threats over the phone," Ljubomir Tadic said. "I have had calls from people claiming to be Muslims and Croats, people saying that they would finish me like they did my brother."
"But I think these people were really Serbs because I have told everyone that we will prove Dusan's innocence by uncovering evidence against those truly responsible," he said, opening a book to the names and phone numbers of two men who he says he believes are the killers from the Omarska camp. One of them repeatedly hung up on reporters. The other could not be found.
Dusan Tadic was arrested in Germany in February 1994 after being spotted by Muslim refugees from Kozarac, but he has steadfastly denied committing any crimes, saying he never worked at any of the camps and only entered Trnopolje twice.
In an interview conducted by a German television news program, the commandant of the Omarska camp, Zeljko Mejakic, supported that assertion, saying, "I am a religious man, and I swear to God that this man never worked at Omarska." Mr. Mejakic is also under indictment.
The brothers now say their family is a victim of a conflict they did not create, adding that they are sickened by what has been done to their country and the cruelty visited on their former friends. "I talked to Dusan about them and he was upset because 90 percent of the Muslims who lived here were good and should not have been treated badly," Ljubomir Tadic said. "But none of us were allowed to help them, and Serbs who did were beaten."
"We were brought up as Communists, and our father always preached brotherhood and unity," he added. "This was not our war, and we were not nationalists."

Chicago Tribune

May 5, 1996 Sunday, CHICAGOLAND FINAL EDITION

DESPITE DAYTON PACT, DIVIDED BOSNIA LIKELY;
NEITHER SERBS NOR CROATS WELCOME RETURNING REFUGEES

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6; ZONE: C

LENGTH: 630 words

DATELINE: ZENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

When 18-year-old Esad Kovic fled his home four years ago, he expected to return one day. Peace would come to his country and the division bred by war would ease.
But Kovic and thousands of other refugees have been bitterly disappointed in recent months, with some saying that they have found the Serbs just as resolute about ethnic purity as they were when they first began kicking the Muslims out of their homes in 1992. And far from being forced to accept their return by the NATO-led implementation force, there are allegations that the Serbs have been allowed to subvert this key tenet of the Dayton peace agreement using the same tricks once applied to stop aid convoys to Muslim enclaves or keep United Nations peacekeepers out of town.
Lining roads with old women, or "concerned citizens" wielding rocks and sticks, local Serb authorities have managed to turn back NATO-escorted refugee convoys, critics say. Intimating that these troops cannot be guaranteed safety if they continue to help in the returns, the Bosnian Serb leadership in Pale has been able to stop most convoys before they start.
Refugees say the Serb success has dashed their hopes of ever returning to their former homes and now a good portion are seeking to populate houses left vacant by Serbs in areas around Sarajevo that recently came under Muslim-Croat federation control. The result will be the separation of Bosnia into two republics, where Bosnia as a country exists only in name.
"This is certainly one of the nails in the coffin, though if we are very lucky, not the final nail," said Paul Beaver, a Balkan analyst with Jane's Defense Information Group in London. "It hardens the division and shows up how superficial the Dayton agreement is in many areas.
"There is a chance, if the international community sorts itself out, that they can get both sides to work out a schedule acceptable to all parties. I hope that will happen, though I am not convinced."
Kovic and many others are not planning to wait. A refugee from Foca, in central Bosnia, he and his parents are looking for a new home in Ilidza, one of the suburbs vacated by Serbs in March. They say they can no longer take living eight to a room and subsisting off humanitarian aid. They say they need roots in order to grow again.
"We don't think about returning to Foca anymore, because we know the Serbs will never let us," he said. "All we want is a house outside Sarajevo. There at least we will have a home."
Other refugees from Doboj and Srebrenica are following suit. They can be seen wandering among the vacant homes in the former Serb-held suburbs, checking papers on doors to see of the homes have legal owners and talking to neighbors about moving in next door.
Jakub Becirovic, who has already moved outside Sarajevo, said that he wouldn't return to his home in Doboj, even if NATO provided a secure path allowing him to move back. His brethren now demonstrating for a return, he says, are "stupid."
"The Serbs have their country now. If I went home, it would be the same harassment and threats that I received before I left," he said.
Though the Serbs have been the target of most allegations concerning blocking the freedom of movement and return promised in the Dayton agreement, there are charges that the Muslim-Croat federation bears guilt too. Refugees from areas now held by the Croats say they have also had problems returning. In Croat-held Jajce, most Muslims have only been allowed to visit their homes for 5 or 10 minutes, they say. And only a few have been allowed to move back permanently.
"I can't go back because the Croats are just as bad as the Serbs," said 34-year-old Suljo Cagalj. "They all want a divided Bosnia, and now they've got it."

The New York Times

May 5, 1996, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

In Bosnia, Paint and Plumbing Alone Cannot Heal

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1106 words

DATELINE: ILIDZA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 4

Sanija Mulic was in her garden transplanting flowering tulips. Emin Koca was trying to fix the wiring in his home. Across the street, Mera Kosovac worked on plumbing, and Jasna Hadzimehmedovic stood nearby calculating the costs of repairs to her family's house.
There was plenty of work to go around the other day along this tree-lined street in a suburban-looking neighborhood. Where families had celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, now lay charred walls. The gardens that were once the scene of barbecues had been uprooted. Graffiti covered what was not burned or reduced to rubble, and litter was blown aimlessly by the wind.
"I'm the electrician, plumber, yard man and painter," said Ms. Kosovac, a 58-year-old widow. She moved back into her dilapidated home on March 12, the day Ilidza, a suburb of Sarajevo that had been controlled by the Bosnian Serbs, was transferred to the Muslim-Croat federation. "But what can we do? Unless we put our block back in order, it will never return to what it was."
Mr. Koca added while wrestling with a knot of measuring tape that he was reminded of 25 years before, when he moved into the neighborhood. "This is a new beginning for all of us and I feel great," he said, wiping his brow. "Only thing lacking now is water and beer."
The quiet life on Gavrilo Princip Street -- named for the Serbian nationalist whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand set off World War I -- died four years ago with the torture of several Muslims and the expulsion of them all, residents said. It came at the hands of what were sometimes close Serbian acquaintances from down the street.
And now many of the original Muslim owners return here in their spare time to work at putting their homes back in order. As they worked, most peppered their talk with recollections of the street, a row of town houses and one- and two-family homes, in happier times.
"This street used to be profiled on television every spring because of all the beautiful flowers that bloomed here," Ibro Karup, a 49-year-old economics professor, said as he hoed the dirt. "We all worked together to make it beautiful, and there was no division among us."
Looking next door to where his elderly Serbian neighbor, Stanko Pokrajic, still lives, he added, "I hope it can be like that again."
Mr. Pokrajic, 74, has begun to rekindle his old friendships, offering tools to his former neighbors and congratulating them on their progress in sprucing up the place. It was a nice change, he said, after watching Serbs he said he could not understand, mostly from outside the neighborhood, rip up the block.
"I was never very close to the new people who came when the war started, " Mr. Pokrajic said. "They built army trenches in my garden and kind of kept to themselves. Then when they left, they started burning everything."
"I couldn't believe it," he added. "My old neighbors would have never done that."
Mr. Pokrajic is the only Serb left on the block, which once held a mixture of Muslims, Croats and Serbs. Most other Serbs fled when the neighborhood was transferred to the Muslim-Croat federation, joining nearly 60,000 refugees from the five Serb-controlled suburbs that changed hands.
Few here saw the war coming in late 1991, even as their childhood friends took sides and some Serbian neighbors began to parade under their nationalist flag. And of those who finally fled to Sarajevo, most only packed enough for a weekend.
Haris Pehilj, 22, remembered that his best friend, a Serb who lived three houses down the block, began to talk about "Greater Serbia" a couple of years before fighting broke out in March 1992. But they still went out to the disco together. He never thought the talk would turn to action.
"Then, one day, he and other Serbs took over my mom's home and began holding militia meetings there," he said. "One of them had helped her fix up the place when we first moved in, but all of these people began to see differences in stupid things. And finally they made us leave."
Mr. Koca, a close friend of Ms. Hadzimehmedovic's father, added that he and Mr. Hadzimehmedovic stayed around long after things got bad. Neither was in the army, so it seemed safe, at first.
"Muhamed and I were just sitting there in the yard when the Chetniks began to roll into town," he said, using the common name for the Bosnian Serb fighters. "We couldn't believe the looks we were getting and we couldn't go anywhere so we just sat there and drank. It killed the fear but, boy, we were scared."
While Mr. Koca later escaped to Sarajevo, Mr. Hadzimehmedovic found himself in police custody, interrogated by the Serbian authorities. After two weeks of being beaten and burned by cigarette butts, he said, he was saved by a Serbian friend and exchanged as a prisoner.
The Muslims and Croats on Gavrilo Princip Street are among a lucky few who will see their homes again. Tens of thousands of refugees remain displaced, with little hope of ever returning to their former homes. And that those in Ilidza have realized their dream has left the residents of Gavrilo Princip somewhat open to forgiveness.
They speak of inclusion and the return of Serbs who have not committed war crimes, and say how pleasant it is to chat with the one Serb who stayed.
But there is skepticism in their words. And their block is no longer on a track aligned with the past.
Ms. Hadzimehmedovic, 24, now often comes to Ilidza to sit in her garden. When she moves back, she said, she will change the flowers and make the house new by knocking out some of the walls.
Just a few years ago, it had been a place of parties and first kisses, where her parents provided all the drinks and food necessary for a good time. Then her friends were not known by their ethnic make-up, and she never asked.
But something changed in the war, she said, looking at the crayon markings now scrawled across her home and the burn marks left by Ognin Glogovac, the 16-year-old Serbian youth who claimed her room after she departed and wrote his name all over the house. She does not like to talk to Mr. Pokrajic, just across the street, and like most, she is leery of all Serbs who left.
"I had so many friends who I never thought would expel us, or kill us, and they did," she said. "We were always the ones shouting that people should live with one another. But now I think maybe that was stupid."
"It's like I had this picture of my house in my mind during the war," she added. "But that picture no longer exists. Everything is different now. So when we rebuild here, it will all be different. Nothing can be like it was before the war."

GRAPHIC: Photo: Jasna Hadzimehmedovic and her neighbors on Gavrilo Princip Street in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza. Bosnian Muslims have returned to the neighborhood, which had been under the control of Bosnian Serbs. (Alexandra Boulat/Sipa, for The New York Times)

Map of Bosnia showing the location of Ilidza

The New York Times

May 2, 1996, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Muslim Visitors Called Mortal Danger by Serbs

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 10; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 945 words

DATELINE: TRNOVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 1

When Obren joined the Serbian exodus from the Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza more than two months ago, he thought Muslims would be just a bad memory. He wouldn't have to see their children playing in the streets, watch their women hoe in their yards, or their men bow in prayer.
"I was finally going to be through with their war, their oppression and their crafty lies," he said with a grimace. "We had our republic and they had their side, and things were finally going to be peaceful."
But Obren found out on Monday that his life as a Serbian separatist was not to be so easy. Busloads of Muslims came that day to Trnovo, where Obren lives in a little house expropriated from its Muslim owner. Other Serbs across the country found similar unwanted guests on the way, as multitudes of Muslims tried to visit their former homes and the graves of their relatives on Bairam, one of Islam's main religious holidays.
The right to make such visits, and ultimately the return of refugees to their former homes, is guaranteed by the Dayton peace accord. But what NATO calls freedom of movement seems more of an invasion to the Serbs. With sticks, shovels and rocks, they have gathered daily to defend their new republic from the Muslim visitors.
Outside Trnovo, 20 miles south of Muslim-held Sarajevo, Obren's neighbors ignored the NATO tanks escorting the convoy, attacking the buses and their Muslim occupants with clubs and bricks. Serbs routed another group of returnees in Doboj, northwest of Sarajevo. Scuffles gave way to shootings. And as the Muslims fled, some ran into a minefield. The end result of this exercise in freedom of movement: two dead and more than a dozen injured.
"We can't live with them. If they don't understand that, I guess the only solution is to kill them," Obren said matter-of-factly. His 80-year-old neighbor, who would not give her name, added that she was too old to participate in the Trnovo rumble. "The defense must be left up to the younger ones," she said, looking back to her 64-year-old neighbor, who smiled.
"I don't know why they chose now to visit their graves anyway," Obren said. "Muslims never tended their graves like the Serbs do. Besides, we're not going over to their side, so they shouldn't come over here. I don't care what the Dayton agreement says. It's just a piece of paper. The border is real."
Some Serbs have crossed what is known as the inter-entity boundary line separating the two republics to visit their homes. But they are far fewer than the Muslims, and their returns have usually been accepted, thought not always.
The fact that Serbs have generally chosen to boycott this section of the agreement, and resist anyone who doesn't, has left NATO in a peculiar quandary that so far seems incapable of resolution. A few NATO ground commanders have attempted to escort convoys into Serb areas, such as Trnovo, only to find themselves blocked or stoned. But for the most part, NATO has used its muscle to prevent returns, stating that overwhelming safety concerns outweigh enforcement of this provisiont of the agreement and that it is up to local police to control their people and assure the safety of those returning.
Blocking the pilgrimages has appeared fruitless, however, as returnees now routinely evade checkpoints. But depending on the Serb police to protect the Muslims is equally ill-advised. When Mina Meduselav 56, tried to cross into Doboj the day before the mine accident, she was quickly sent packing by the Serbian police, as a menacing mob of Serbian civilians stood by.
"I just want to go there and see my daughter, just for five minutes, and then I will leave," Ms. Meduselav pleaded.
"The masses won't let you," replied one officer before yanking her out of the car. "Get out and go back to your side."
The Serbs, many of them refugees themselves, say they are blocking the returns because the Muslims have been given too much in the Dayton accord. The Muslims got Sarajevo and an international commitment to arm them, they say, adding that their own region is being treated like a poor stepchild.
They also say there is no room left in their republic, noting that Serbs who fled the Sarajevo suburbs, such as Obren, now inhabit former Muslim homes. And they argue that the Serbs fought a war for separation, which should be respected.
"If we could have lived together, we would have," said a man who gave his name only as Milutin, a lifelong resident of Trnovo. "We couldn't, and that's why we had a war."
Their attitudes are steeped in fear. In Trnovo, most Serbs refused to give their names, or offer what appear to be aliases, saying they are scared that former Muslim neighbors will sneak into town and kill them. They told of Serbs found beheaded and how Muslim troops made a habit of shooting the innocent.
In all this, they say, their side is, of course, blameless. The shelling incidents that killed dozens of Muslims in Sarajevo are seen as clever fabrications, while the 8,500 Muslim men missing from Srebrenica, a Muslim enclave overrun last July, are commonly said to have either died of venereal disease or because they attacked Serbian soldiers who were giving them safe passage.
"In our whole history, the Serbs have never attacked anyone," said Obren. "We wanted a divided country but the Muslims wanted war."
His elderly neighbor added that when her sons went off to war, she told them "never to fire on children or women, but the Muslims shot whatever moved."
"I had two houses before the war and a Muslim family lived in one," she said. "We were great friends until they burned them down. Muslims aren't like Serbs. They scare me to death."

Chicago Tribune

April 30, 1996 Tuesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

3 MUSLIM RETURNEES DIE IN CLASHES WITH BOSNIAN SERBS;
GROUP FLEES INTO LIVE MINEFIELD; WOMEN ATTACK NATO CONVOY

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 504 words

DATELINE: ZENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Three Bosnian Muslims were killed Monday and nearly two dozen were injured as ethnic Serbs again thwarted their attempts to visit their former homes and graves of relatives.
It was the first time anyone was killed in showdowns between would-be returnees and current land holders, who don't want them coming back even for visits. The returns are sanctioned by the Dayton peace accord.
In one of two major clashes, a Serb mob forced some returnees into a minefield and pummeled other Muslims with stones.
"Both sides bear a heavy responsibility for what happened--one for organizing potentially violent demonstrations, the other for confronting them with violent intent," said Maj. Simon Haselock, a NATO spokesman.
The minefield confrontation occurred in Sjenina, 5 miles east of Doboj in central Bosnia. It was the worst confrontation yet between ethnic Serbs and Muslims, the latter of whom have been testing their right of return by staging large-scale demonstrations and marches into Serb-held sectors.
NATO officials said about 300 Muslim demonstrators had massed Monday at a Swedish-U.S. checkpoint set up to block their march into Sjenina.
Some marchers threw rocks at armored personnel carriers and berated NATO soldiers before trying an alternate path through a woods, where they encountered a Serb mob. Shots were fired, dispersing some marchers into a minefield. Several blasts were heard.
NATO officials confirmed one death by small arms fire and attributed the second to a mine blast. There were unconfirmed reports of several bodies still in the minefield.
Along with the stoning of a NATO-escorted convoy Monday outside Sarajevo, the clash underscores NATO's difficult mission under the Dayton accord: Enforce a peace in Bosnia while ensuring free movement across the line separating the hostile factions. In most instances, NATO has decided to block the marchers rather than have them fall into confrontations.
"We are clearly in a delicate and complex situation," Haselock said. "We have to make a valid judgment between the right of free movement and the possibility that allowing it will create an incident that may seriously compromise the peace agreement."
He confirmed that a NATO escort had been unable to prevent a separate attack on a convoy of about 250 other Muslims en route to Trnovo, outside Sarajevo.
A crowd of mainly elderly Serb women used sticks and shovels to smash windows on buses and vans carrying the returnees, paying little attention to the French escort, which included six light tanks.
According to Bosnian TV, one person later died of wounds and 14 others were injured. The Trnavo trip was one of two returns organized for Sunday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
"I was very close to seeing my house, but I never got there," said Zineta Belko, 44, after receiving eight stitches on the back of her head. "I won't try this ever again. I have realized that I will never be able to live with the Serbs."

The New York Times

April 28, 1996, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Savage Spite

BYLINE: By Gilles Peress; Gilles Peress is a New York-based photojournalist. Kit R. Roane reports on Bosnia for The New York Times.

SECTION: Section 6; Page 51; Column 3; Magazine Desk

LENGTH: 563 words

AMELA FAKO FOUND ONLY ONE FAMILY PHOTO when she returned to her home in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza last month. The picture, taken in the 1970's in front of the Hotel Serbia in Ilidza, showed her with her family; now, their faces were obliterated by a drill bit. "The picture was a primitive message, part of the other war, one not done with guns," Fako said. "It was the war of fear, the war on the mind. They wanted to make it difficult for us to come home."
The rest of the house had been cleaned out. All of the Fako family's possessions and nearly all of the house's fixtures -- windows, doors, bathroom tiles and even the wood on the floor -- had been removed by the Bosnian Serb nationalists who had squatted there for the last four years. It was their way of compensating for the impending loss of what had become theirs through conquest.
In the three weeks before Fako's return, the Sarajevo suburbs of Vogosca, Ilijas and Hadzici -- like Ilidza, ethnically mixed towns before their seizure by the Bosnian Serbs -- had come under the control of the Muslim-Croat federation, in accordance with the Dayton, Ohio, peace agreement. Days later, Grbavica, a ransacked, burned-out wasteland on the edge of Sarajevo, would similarly trade hands. Their transfer meant the end of the Bosnian capital's siege and the opportunity for thousands of Muslims, like the 24-year-old Fako, to return to the places from which they had been driven. But the transfer also brought an end to the fiction of multi-ethnic inclusion.
As early as Feb. 23, when the first suburb, Vogosca, was handed over, more than 30,000 Serbs, even those who had once lived peaceably among Muslims, had begun the trek to Serb-controlled territory around their capital, Pale, or "ethnically cleansed" Srebrenica. Others stayed only long enough to loot, intimidate and burn out those Serbs who sought to remain living among their former enemies, the Muslims and the Croats.
By the final transfer of Grbavica on March 19, only a few elderly and infirm people remained in these former Serb squatter towns. And after weeks of threats from their own because of their refusal to leave, these Serbs faced another round of terror, this time from their new occupiers. Squads of angry Muslim refugees roamed about with guns and knives, looking for an easy mark and seizing property that wasn't theirs. The final, fading dreams of restoring a multi-ethnic Bosnia died amid the smoke and fear.
Two Serb families had lived in the Fako house after its Muslim owners had fled through Bosnian Serb lines to the Government-controlled center of Sarajevo in 1992. The first family torched all the previous occupants' personal effects and then took to scratching away the Fako family picture. The second left the portrait -- a reminder of the futility of the Fakos' return.
The day Amela Fako discovered it, other Muslims a few blocks away were concentrating their hatred on an elderly Serb woman, Lena Srkvenjas. They were some of the thousands of house-hunters and ne'er-do-wells who flooded this suburb after it was transferred to the federation police on March 12, and they had come to tell her that it was time to go.
"We will come back later," one said as he was carrying off some of the frightened woman's possessions. "She will leave to her side, and we will move into ours. There can be no together."

LOAD-DATE: April 28, 1996

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Scorched-Earth Policy - A house burning in Vogosca the night before it came under Muslim-Croat control. Gasoline became a scarce commodity as retreating Serbs torched their homes and businesses rather than turn them over to the returning refugees. Faceless, but Not Victims - Bosnian Serbs left this memento for Amela Fako, 24, when she returned to her home in Ilidza. The family portrait, once a reminder of happy times before the war, now symbolizes for her the hate that has destroyed her country and divided its people. (pg. 51); Fire and Ice - With more than 60,000 Serbs on the move, the 10-mile trip from Ilidza to the Bosnian Serb capital, Pale, could take days. While they awaited their turn, the Serb refugees burned their belongings for heat and ate their last scraps of food. (pg. 52); Last Call - The day before the transfer at Grbavic, drunken Serb men celebrated the destruction they had wrought, gulping brandy and listening to nationalistic tunes outside the charred remains of the town's market. Five days earlier, they had grimly carried their Orthodox cross and bell to safety in Lukavica, the last Serbian bastion around Sarajevo. Breaking Ties - Inside his bare home in Vogosca, a Bosnian Serb named Zoran tried to console his daughter as they prepared to leave. In many cases, moving trucks promised by the Bosnian Serb Government never arrived, forcing them to leave with whatever they could carry on their backs. Caught in the Act - Young Serbs roamed the streets of Grbavica, setting fires and looting the apartments of those who wished to stay. Only 13 were detained by IFOR soldiers, and even those joked about an arrest procedure that left them in the hands of the Serb police. Later, they would be seen running from yet another burning building. (pg. 53); Welcome Back - A Muslim woman, Suada, who had not seen her house in Ilidza for four years, standing amid the rubble in tears. Muslims who had been forced from their homes at the beginning of the war in 1992 returned to find their properties either destroyed by arsonists or stripped by looters. (pg. 54); Cooling the Fires - The few Serbs who refused to flee the suburbs were harassed by hooligans. Locked doors were not enough to protect their nearly vacant apartment buildings from the tossing of gasoline. Most hoarded water in plastic jugs, hoping they could quench the blazes with the few drops they had preserved. Salving the Wounds of War - Occasionally, Serbs returned in hopes of retrieving the rest of their possessions. Here, Zoran has discovered an old Muslim friend looking over his house. After several drinks, they began joking, saying the other is responsible for the shrapnel in his head or the pain in his heart. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY GILLES PERESS/MAGNUM, FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. 55)

Chicago Tribune

April 23, 1996 Tuesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

AMERICAN TROOPS GO STIR-CRAZY IN BOSNIA;
PEACEKEEPERS WENT IN EXPECTING A FIGHT, BUT NOT WITH BOREDOM

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 8; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 747 words

DATELINE: KLADANJ, Bosnia-Herzegovina

When Nestor Hernandez arrived four months ago as part of the NATO peacekeeping contingent, he expected a fight.
Hernandez, 22, an Army specialist from Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood, had seen the military's videos of wartime terror and destruction, and he was ready to fight for peace.
Combat so far hasn't been necessary, however. And the only action Hernandez has seen in the war zone is on a Parker Brothers gameboard called D-Day.
"I'm playing the Germans and trying to stop the Americans from invading," he said, pondering his next move. "I beat up the Brits but the U.S. is kicking my butt."
Arising later from his bunk, Hernandez said his mind was focused on ending his tedious duty in Bosnia and finding a job in law enforcement back home.
"I'm probably safer here," he added. "People don't really respect the police in Chicago."
Hernandez is not alone in wanting to leave Bosnia. Among the men of Company C, Fourth Battalion, 12th Infantry, boredom has trickled in like a spring since their arrival in late December.
They have built roads, fortified camps and watched warring factions clear land mines. But nobody has lifted a finger against them, and the only scent of standoff has been in the form of a scowl.
Company C has grown weary of peace.
"All we got is mosquitoes, lice, rats and disease to worry about here," said Sgt. Roger Lamb, 33, of Rockdale, Texas, as he sat on the back of his Bradley fighting vehicle.
Lamb cited just one day of high drama, a little over a month ago, when the war's combatants began moving out their big guns from NATO's zone of separation.
The entire camp thought several hundred armored vehicles were coming to attack.
"We were really shook up and the men were excited," he said. "But it turned out that the Serbs were just moving them into one of our containment areas.I guess we were a little disappointed. I mean, peacekeepers isn't really our line of work."
Some 18,000 U.S. military personnel are hunkered down around Tuzla, the base for the American sector's NATO deployment in Bosnia. They have tanks, heavy artillery, fast armored personnel carriers and the latest high-tech war gadgetry--but no occasion to use them.
Unlike the other nations comprising the NATO force of 60,000 soldiers and support personnel, the Americans have been placed in a sector where little has happened so far--contrary to early expectations-- and the typical confrontation is over an illegal checkpoint erected by Bosnian Serbs or Bosnian Muslims.
Even this is a rare find nowadays, and as the warring parties conform more wholly to the Dayton peace accord, the Americans have found themselves increasingly confined to their bases.
It has reached the point that many of the soldiers at Charlie Company's Camp Demi refer to the ringed perimeter as "the prison" or "the cell." Unless they are on patrol, they remain at Camp Demi, about halfway between Tuzla and Sarajevo, and there has been no need to patrol for two months.
The fact that the British and French NATO troops are free to roam within their areas, and can be seen whooping it up in Sarajevo at restaurants and a disco, hardly makes matters better for the Americans, whose activities essentially consist of re-cleaning unused M-16s and changing the oil in their Bradleys.
Alcohol is prohibited on the base, and smoking is discouraged. Most soldiers spend free time writing letters, dreaming about their family, or sitting in front of the TV, waiting for a good show on Armed Forces Network.
But many say they have run out of ideas when talking "smack"--shooting the breeze-- and they are bored from seeing the same people in the six-man trailers where they sleep.
"It's three hours on duty, and three hours off," observed Spec. Scott Unterseher, 25, of Santa Rose, Calif., from his Bradley at the camp's entrance. "It's just boring out there. Nobody to talk to. Nothing to do. It's nothing like I expected after what we saw on TV."
Most American troops will depart without seeing much of Bosnia, or learning much about the conflict they came to stop. The only Bosnians they meet are those who work on the base, or those they pass on the road--a wave means they're friendly, a stare means they're not, said Cpl. John Smith of Carmel, N.Y.
"I think there are a lot of good people here, but driving down the road you see some colder than the weather. The farther away from Tuzla, the colder it gets," he said.

The New York Times

April 23, 1996, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

WITH CHARLIE COMPANY: Fighting Boredom;
For G.I.'s in Bosnia, There's More Action on TV

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 886 words

DATELINE: KLADANJ, Bosnia and Herzegovina, April 20

As his fellow soldiers sat on guard duty or loped through training exercises outside, Sgt. 1st Class Amos L. Hardy, a veteran of the Persian Gulf war, settled himself in for what now defines excitement for the boys of Charlie Company.
On the television screen, big men in brightly colored tights flailed about inside a wrestling ring as an announcer gave a blow-by-blow account.
They were the World Wrestling Federation Superstars, and the long-haired pretty boy known as The Kid had his man down. It would be a bloodbath, the announcer promised, and Sgt. Hardy, 37, from Danville, Va., as well as a growing audience of fellow soldiers, was eagerly anticipating the final blow.
"This is the only action we get," he said dryly, as the voice on the screen announced "lights out" for a man withering on the mat. "This is as good as it gets."
When the men of Company C, Fourth Battalion, 12th Infantry arrived in Bosnia last December, they expected action and danger, snipers in the hills and mortar rounds coming in the perimeter.
But the reality has been quite the opposite. Asked about dangers, they recite tales of icy roads, or concerns about ticks and mice carrying disease. And they talk about training -- just in case they have to fight -- recounting small hills and easy tasks. In the end, they are bored, terribly bored, cleaning weapons until the metal shines and changing the oil in their Bradley fighting vehicles as often as workers at a quick-lube garage.
"We got fed up here the first week," said Sergeant Hardy. "I thought we would see some action. Thought it would be at least challenging. I mean, Desert Storm was at least a challenge and you got a chance to do your job. Everything you train for was put to the test.
"But here we got none of the above and nothing coming on the horizon."
Other soldiers nodded in agreement with Sergeant Hardy, their eyes glazed after another day of busy work in their home of Camp Demi, halfway between Sarajevo and Tuzla. While in some regions tensions have risen over the question of whether Muslims and Serbs can return to former homes now held by the other side, suggesting the possibility of conflict that could draw in American troops, so far Charlie Company has not faced any serious threats.
"I expected a lot of shooting," said Pvt. Daniel Kline, from Niagara Falls, N. Y. "We expected people to be getting plugged in the streets, all over the place. But it's calm, really slow here. Nowhere, man."
There is no drinking on the base and smoking is discouraged -- though the tedium has driven many to the lure.
Others write letters home, or gaze at photos of their wives and girlfriends.
Embracing the stereotype of a soldier away from home, the photos seem always to be plastered on the walls of their six-man trailers next to other pictures of scantily clad women they do not know.
In the breaks from hours of guard duty, they take a shower, or might play a game of touch football inside the compound. But even here, there are rules to be followed. And as they run down the small muddy field in their jogging suits or leave the bath house in their skivvies, the mandatory outside gear of camouflaged helmets always bobs on their heads.
Concerns for safety have taken on a perverse logic, they said, explaining that they carry unloaded weapons while on duty because officers worried that soldiers faced with such boredom would become sloppy and forget to clear the breach before going to sleep.
"But I've learned that everything's not black and white here, and I see all the shades in between," said Second Lieut. Sean Duvall, 24, from Tucson, Ariz., thinking of his men's frustration. "For one thing, I see that my commanders have been given a plate they must deal with, and that when certain orders come down that I disagree with, it's not necessarily because the guy's a jerk."
Lieutenant Duvall added that the many quiet moments at Camp Demi are of some use, allowing him time for introspection.
"Before I came here, I didn't think much about the causes of the war," he said. "But now I look outside here and see this country where one day the neighbor who helped you build your house comes around and destroys it. And you think to yourself that maybe, like with these orders, perception is the answer. In this case, it's maybe that these people are basically the same and that they just can't see it."
Because of other orders that keep them on the base unless on patrol, most American soldiers have little chance to talk with the people whose peace they came to enforce. While the Swedish battalion jogs on the road to Tuzla, or the British and French forces go out for drinks and dinner in Sarajevo, or mingle with the locals at the disco, these Americans have little to ponder but America, wondering whether they should telephone their families again, or sit in front of the television waiting for another sitcom or more wrestling.
With nothing but the base for them, they count the days until they can leave and spend the minutes dreaming of home.
"We fantasize about waking up next to our wives or girlfriends, instead of our buddies, and of some sweet voice in the morning calling you to breakfast, instead of a raspy noise telling you to get on guard duty," said Specialist Anthony Galindo, 23, from Los Angeles.

The New York Times

April 10, 1996, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Pazaric Journal;
In a World Gone Mad, Mental Home Offers Sanity

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 4; Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 972 words

DATELINE: PAZARIC, Bosnia and Herzegovina

For four years, Danico Sladoje has played the straight man for a running joke at the Pazaric Social Institution, where, unlike his patients, he has braved shells, starvation and disease by choice.
"Who is crazy here!" the 47-year-old director yells as he makes a path through his cordon of fans.
"You are!" shouts Gas Senko, a 29-year-old patient, grinning a gap-toothed smile as laughter fills the hall.
During the war, Mr. Sladoje and his small band of helpers resisted the temptation to abandon their posts at this mental hospital. And though their hospital remains short of supplies and promises of help despite the peace accord, neither Mr. Sladoje nor his crew say they will give up now.
"Sometimes I play with the sentence to try to fool Senko," Mr. Sladoje said, shaking his head and thinking about the years of hardship. "But he knows what he is saying. He always gets it right."
"Maybe I am the crazy one," he added. "But I stayed because of our patients. I am the director, and I am supposed to take care of them. Only a fool would have been in this situation without fear. But if I fled, it would be like leaving my family. I was not about to do that, and I still won't."
His dependents are a group of mentally retarded and physically disabled patients whose families either could not take care of them or refused to do so. They were left to fend in a war zone with only Mr. Sladoje to provide.
Provisions were sparse, and even today the patients live in abject conditions. Children lie motionless in iron beds among the stench of recent waste. Others sit crowded on rows of benches, rocking to the beat of scratchy records and being tended by the handful of staff members left.
Music, a few puzzles and building blocks are all that now constitute therapy at the hospital, where beans and pasta are the only diet and the greatest anticipation is getting outside in the summer. That is when the bedridden can be wheeled into the sunlight to bask under the warmth of a better day.
In the winter, all but a hardy few remained inside, where months revolve around staring at a wall.
"Conditions continue to be very bad here, but without Sladoje they probably wouldn't have survived the war," Anne-Sophie Bonefeld, spokeswoman for the International Committee for the Red Cross, said of the patients. "They have nothing else but him and his staff."
When Mr. Sladoje came to the hospital 13 years ago, it was one of Bosnia's premier institutions. More than 100 doctors, nurses, specialists, therapists and their staff cared for 460 patients, keeping them happy with games and teaching them what they could learn.
Then the war came, leaving the director, his wife and a skeleton crew of 24 others to keep the institution running and its patients alive. All but 98 survived. Those who died are now buried under homemade wooden crosses in a nearby field.
Their deaths were not necessary, Mr. Sladoje said, noting that an institution that had only five or six a year suffered dozens during the war because of winters without enough coal, bad diet and exhaustion.
Forty-seven bodies were carted to the cemetery in 1993 alone, a year in which the siege of Pasaric was complicated by a new conflict between Bosnian Muslims and Croats. Three patients died of illness in one day.
"A simple cold was enough to kill," Mr. Sladoje said. "Our electric supply was gone and we were virtually cut off from all sides after these two went at each other. We had enough food for only two months, and the only thing that saved us was a ton of protein powder we had stocked away."
Although there has been no major fighting in Bosnia for more than four months, the trickle-down of funds to rebuild the country have yet to reach the Pasaric hospital, and no firm commitments are in the works.
There is only a small amount of coal for heaters, the roofs leak and food remains basic and in short supply, Mr. Sladoje said. "But the Government has said they cannot help us and no international organizations have come forward to provide funds."
Patting one of his patients on the head, he added: "I have to be an optimist, but essentially the war has not stopped here because war conditions remain. It seems we are left alone to deal with this."
Mr. Sladoje reached into the crib of little Dina, who at 5 is the youngest patient in the hospital. She is one of many refugees left by mothers fleeing to safety. The shy little girl inexplicably cannot walk. She grasps at the director's hand, staring up with big brown eyes from her bed as she tries to rise.
"We need a specialist to find out why she cannot walk, but you can tell she wants to by the way she grabs at the bars," he said. "Look at her. She is the most beautiful child in the institution."
Pointing to a tiny wheelchair shoved under her bed, he smiled: "You know, we can't catch her when she's in that chair. It's just amazing how fast she goes."
Pasaric is full of such small examples of beauty and lucidity. The more able-bodied patients spent the war feeding and clothing those who could not; others ran outside in shelling to pull the patients too scared to move back inside.
There is a television room in the hospital, and when the electricity is strong enough, some patients spend their days watching the news. Mr. Sladoje goes there most mornings to catch up on the latest political gossip from the patients.
On a recent morning, the talk was, as usual, of war and pessimism about the peace. Mr. Senko was there again to greet the director.
"The war was because of the Serb aggression on Bosnia," Mr. Senko said, adding with a look at Mr. Sladoje, a Serb, "But not all the Serbs are bad, only some."
Calling the crowd in the television room the hospital's "intellectual group," Mr. Sladoje replied, "I couldn't have said it better myself."

Chicago Tribune

April 12, 1996 Friday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

FROM CHICAGO TO SARAJEVO: JOURNEY OF HOPE

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane and Charles Osgood. Special to the Tribune.; Kit R. Roane is a Tribune special correspondent and Charles Osgood is a Tribune staff photographer.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 1505 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina

It was Pasan Bajraktarevic's first visit in two years to the outdoor produce market, a place that stirs vivid memories of blood-covered asphalt and screams of pain.
Bajraktarevic, 66, walked along the rows of new stalls in disbelief, examining the colorful fruits and vegetables the Bosnian capital had been denied during the war.
He sniffed at the flowers and felt the fruit. But he could not stop himself from receding into the past, to that day he went out for salt and landed in the path of a Bosnian Serb shell.
"It is awful to be here again because it reminds me of the moment when I saw people's heads and body parts flying in the air," he said, shaking. "Here is where I fell, and there were so many screams. Even today it makes me nervous standing here because I am afraid we will be killed."
Pointing to what under the new peace accord has become a busy thoroughfare, he added: "Here is where I dragged myself, to this street. Then this car came by and took me to the hospital. It's the last time I saw Sarajevo. When I can, I will find that man who picked me up. I just want to thank him for saving my life."
Bajraktarevic was one of the lucky survivors on Feb. 4, 1994, of Markala I, the first market massacre in Sarajevo. It took the lives of 69 people and wounded 297, many of them his friends. He ended up with a serious leg wound and a trip to Chicago to repair the damage.
Now suffering from throat cancer, he and his wife, Fadila, have returned to Sarajevo to be with the family he left behind in the war zone.
"We thought only about our children when we were away," said Fadila, 65, back in the couple's apartment. "People in America told us to wait because it was still dangerous. But we were too nervous and afraid for our children.
"We were in Chicago with our bodies, but our minds were always here," she said.
Both said they would have come back home sooner, had they been able. But the very help provided them in the U.S. had contrived to make any return almost impossible.
In order to get Bajraktarevic's leg mended, the pair had to become legal refugees in the U.S. Without money to travel, and no official method of repatriation, they languished for months in a welfare existence before the Bosnian Refugee Center in Chicago managed to cajole return tickets to Croatia from a local travel agency.
Once they were in Croatia, a photographer drove them the eight hours to Sarajevo, passing at night through the tense Serb-held suburbs only days before control of the towns transferred to the Muslim-Croat federation.
If Serb police had stopped the car, they likely would have been arrested. "We were most afraid after a hubcap fell off the car in a tunnel in Ilidza," said Fadila. "(The photographer) was driving. He didn't know where we were and got out to retrieve it."
They calmed down only as the lights of the city came into view. They drove down Sarajevo's old "sniper alley" and pulled up to a small, dark figure in front of their apartment.
It was their 16-year-old grandson waiting for their arrival. His shouts brought others, and soon the couple were surrounded by family--hugs and tears flowing from those they thought they might never see again.
But some were missing when Bajraktarevic scanned the crowd. Their lives, like much of the town he left, had been destroyed by the war. As he sat in his chair during the first few days back at his apartment or moved around the city remembering the past, Bajraktarevic was often consumed with pain.
"I look at how it is and think about how it was," he said a few days after his arrival home, driving along the river that separates the main town from what was Serb-held Grbavica and enemy sniper hills. "There are so many apartments and buildings destroyed.
"Here is the destroyed post office," he said. "Here's where they dropped the grenade on the water line. And look at the library; it was once the most beautiful building in all of Bosnia."
Down the road, in the martyrs' cemetery, a niece and a nephew are buried. Both of the children were killed on different front lines during the war, he said, getting out of the car to walk along a cobbled path to the gravesites.
He added matter-of-factly that four other family members were torn apart when a grenade hit their home.
He and Fadila walked up the path and looked among the stones for a familiar name. They wiped cobwebs from the tombs of friends and dusted off the nameplates of those they did not know.
Graves were not something one visited during the war; too much chance of staying permanently if the "Chetniks," or Serb nationalists, caught you there, he said.
"I see so many people here I know. It is a tragedy and my heart is full of pain," he said, kneeling before Badema Saracevic's marker and kissing the crest, as Fadila pulled weeds and wept.
Others prayed nearby, Sarajevo's dead as a silent audience to the pain of the living.
"She left two twins," said Fadila of her daughter-in-law. "It is all so sad and unnecessary."
Bajraktarevic had been confident before his trip to the market in 1994 that he would never end up in a place like this. He had survived World War II and the ensuing power struggle that followed, and made a place for himself in Tito's socialist regime.
By the time the Bosnian conflict began in 1992, he was content to live out his life as a carpenter and watch his children make their way in the world.
He had developed habits, like going to the market before lunch and sitting outside with his friends to drink coffee in the town center, and as the shells began to rain down, he refused to change his ways.
While his neighbors in the apartment building would empty into the underground shelter during frequent shellings, Bajraktarevic stayed in his chair, eating his dinner and taking a few drags off his cigarette, or he just took a walk.
"I wasn't afraid because during World War II, I heard many grenades. Before the market massacre, I just kept walking in the town and didn't run to the cellar when the shelling came," he said, his wife shaking her head in disapproval. "I knew no one had yet made a bullet or a grenade to kill me."
But on that February day in 1994 one shell came close, its shrapnel hitting him in the same leg as his last Serb wound during the World War II.
Like that day a half-century before, he was taken to Kosovo Hospital. "But this time there were hundreds wounded and more than 50 dead. After the massacre there was too much chaos to think about the past."
His family didn't know for hours that there had been a massacre. Even after they heard of the shelling, they felt confident Bajraktarevic was not among the victims.
But when he did not show up for lunch, his wife became worried and sent her sons to the city's two hospitals and the morgue. They couldn't find him.
"It was strange because we got used to shells. They were so common," said Fadila. "I expected him to just walk in the door. Things were fine till 1 o'clock . . . then I didn't know anything, I was frantic."
The realization came a day later as Behija, the couple's daughter, looked at the morning paper. Banner headlines and a graphic picture of the massacre confirmed their fears.
"I saw his boot in the picture," she said. "My husband saw it first but didn't want to show me. He found out that my father was OK and told me not to be afraid because he was only a little wounded."
Bajraktarevic just smiles at his family during these times of recollection, then complains about how the "Chetniks," got him again.
"I couldn't believe that this was going to happen to me because I had been around so many massacres without a scratch," he said. "But then I saw a man without a head two or three meters away."
The couple's days are now spent with family and friends in their old apartment not far from the city center. A parade of well-wishers visits daily to rekindle the old times and talk about the future.
Bajraktarevic takes treatment for his throat cancer, but refuses to stop smoking. Fadila cooks and shops, and gets re-acquainted with her many children and grandchildren. They drink local brandy and cheer the peace over folk dances performed by the youngsters.
But in their time of optimism, there is also pessimism and distrust of what lies ahead for the next generation. The war divided people along ethnic lines, and the peace has only solidified this estrangement.
Serbs have scurried to be in their own republic, while illegal checkpoints along the Muslim-Serb boundary line continue to flourish. Each side has made a sport of arresting those who cross the invisible line.
"The war began in the 1800s when the Turks came and it didn't stop until maybe now," said Bajraktarevic. "The Serbs wanted to destroy all the Muslim and Croat people--all people who were not Serb--and they killed so many.
"It will be years before things are normal again. Before we are together," he added. "And I am not sure the war is really over."

Chicago Tribune

April 19, 1996 Friday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

SETTLING INTO A NEW HOME, SERB DISCOVERS HIS LAND IS FULL OF HORROR;
EX-SOLDIER'S FARM SITE OF MUSLIMS' MASSACRE

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane, Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 14; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 792 words

DATELINE: ORAHOVAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina

The vacant house was a godsend to 31-year-old Branko Kapul when he saw it in January.
It was a brick structure with two floors and a shed in the back. On every side there was land, lots of it, for corn and potatoes once the planting season began.
For Kapul, a Bosnian Serb soldier recovering from wounds suffered in fighting around Sarajevo, the farm promised a dramatically better future.
But when the snow began to thaw in Orahovac, a horrific sight was revealed outside his window--human bones protruding from the earth. Then men in blue uniforms arrived in United Nations trucks. They sifted through his dirt with gloved hands and marked off his newly claimed farm with yellow crime-scene tape. Piles of blindfolds were found in the nearby woods.
Far from being a new start for Kapul and his family, the farm proved to be a place of infamy and ghosts. Now known as the Sahanici gravesite, it is believed to hold the bodies of thousands of Muslims executed after they fled Srebrenica, the UN-declared "safe area," last July.
It was a cruel twist to a wretched life. Kapul, who said he had obtained permission from Bosnian Serb authorities to inhabit the farmhouse formerly occupied by Bosnian Muslims, had brought his family to Orahovac after fleeing Ilijas, the Bosnian Serb suburb outside Sarajevo just before it was turned over to the Croat-Muslim federation under the Dayton peace accord.
"I don't mind them here, because the investigators have all been nice and the reporters have brought the kids sweets," said Kapul, standing beside his wife and three small children.
"But they've had these helicopters flying low over my property recently, and it scares the children. We just want to fix the place up and make it nice. And it's hard to do with all this going on."
Kapul's farm has become the key to an international war crimes investigation emanating from The Hague. A substantial number of the estimated 8,000 missing Muslims are thought to be buried there after being executed by Bosnian Serbs who had overrun Srebrenica, 36 miles from Kapul's farm. Three survivors of the executions have placed Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic at the scene of the massacre.
It's difficult for most Serbs to muster the thought that their military leaders could be involved in such a bloodbath. But with so much evidence at hand, they aren't so skeptical that the massacres occurred.
Kapul conceded the possibility that a massacre had occurred, but "of course . . . I can't imagine it." He added that the 8,000 figure seemed too large.
"Whenever we captured soldiers, we treated them correctly and we even took two to the hospital once," he said. "And when Mladic visited our forces in Ilijas, he always said we should defend our homes and shoot if we were attacked. He never said that we should kill everyone or slaughter them--just to kill if you have to kill."
Most residents who have lived around Orahovac during the war are more close-lipped. They become tense when asked what they might have heard in the nights after Srebrenica's fall. Most said they were out of town.
"I was in Serbia with my children," said Koviljka Ivanovic, 31, a neighbor of Kapul.
"I was visiting my sister in Belgrade, and only my husband was here," added her mother, 58-year-old Ivanka. "But he's sick . . . and deaf. So he couldn't hear anything. And he's in bed all the time, too."
Whether there are bones in Kapul's land or not, he has few other options for a home.
Bosnian Serb territory is flooded with refugees from the formerly Serb-held land around Sarajevo. While his new house still may not be complete--he installed doors, windows, electricity and running water--it is a better foundation for a life than many other Serbs have found.
Thousands are living in collective centers outside Sarajevo. Others are rebuilding apartments and homes from scratch, since Bosnian Serb forces had destroyed most of the Muslim homes around Srebrenica in 1992.
Most residents of Orahovac say the soldiers came from outside and expelled their Muslim neighbors but they had no part in the brutality.
Kapul's wife, Petra, 35, said she misses her Muslim neighbors. The war was something out of their control, like the graves outside their new house. Kapul added that the Muslims "aren't any worse than any other people, and there are good ones like anywhere else."
Kapul said he worries that the Muslim owner of his home might someday turn up and cause trouble, and he has no money to move should it come to that.
"I would prefer to stay here so that we are not homeless," he said. "Then next year we can level out that field and start planting. Hopefully things will get better. They can't get much worse."

Chicago Tribune

April 5, 1996 Friday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

BAD WEATHER, PILOT ERROR MAY HAVE CAUSED CRASH

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: C

LENGTH: 741 words

DATELINE: DUBROVNIK, Croatia

NATO troops began the tortured task of hauling the dead down a mountain path Thursday as investigators searched for clues to the crash of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's plane in Croatia.
Investigators said the cause of the crash appeared to be a combination of bad weather and pilot error.
They said the bad weather forced the pilot to take the plane through dense fog and thunderstorms, off its original path over the Adriatic, and through a treacherous valley. The other cause, the investigators said, was probably the pilot's decision to turn the plane left--straight into an unseen mountain--instead of steering it right, toward safety over the sea.
The plane, which was on the first leg of a three-part tour of Croatia and Bosnia, crashed into the cloud-covered mountain three miles northeast of the Dubrovnik airport Wednesday, killing all 35 people aboard.
In Washington Thursday, President Clinton ordered flags lowered to half-staff and led a memorial service for Brown and the other crash victims.
Clinton began the day with a telephone call to Brown's wife, Alma, confirming that the secretary's body had been identified on a rain-swept Croatian hilltop. Much of the rest of the day was spent calling the families of other victims.
Eleven American investigators from the military Safety Board flew to the crash site Thursday, along with 13 other airplane experts. Their commander, Col. John Mazurowski, said his group would pick up the investigation where the initial search and rescue team had left off.
He said their efforts could be hampered by the fact that the plane, a T-43A medium range jet used for VIP travel, had no voice data recorder on board. Commonly referred to as the "black box," the device is carried routinely on most aircraft to record the transmissions of a pilot and the readings of his gauges in the event of a crash.
"It would be important, but we will physically figure out as best we can what happened here," Mazurowski told a group of reporters at the Dubrovnik airport.
Teams began to search for the plane at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, after the control tower lost radar contact with the aircraft. They found the wreckage four hours later, when residents on the mountainside contacted Croatian police. At that time, NATO helicopters dropped 20 American special operations soldiers into the area to look for survivors and begin to secure the accident site.
Forty French troops trudged up the hill to encircle the area, and more than 100 Croat special police joined the cordon.
After scouring the area over the last 24 hours, investigators concluded that, except for a flight attendant who died several hours after the crash, none of the plane's passengers survived the impact.
Two Illinoisans were among those killed: John A. Scoville, chairman of Chicago-based Harza Engineering Co., and Air Force Staff Sgt. Gerald V. Aldrich, a member of the crew. Aldrich, 29, is from Louisville, Ill., south of Effingham.
Investigators then began the arduous task of removing the bodies to a makeshift morgue at the airport. Bodies had to be carried more than a mile down steep paths before reaching a road where they could be loaded into helicopters and trucks. Only seven had been removed by nightfall.
Investigators said that when they arrived, bodies were clumped near the tail section of the plane or scattered to the left of the site. One woman lay on the floor inside the passenger compartment; another man was thrown 150 feet away. His seat lay in the dirt nearby.
One body in a flight suit was found but the cockpit had disintegrated on impact.
Residents in the area said they heard no explosion when the plane crashed, only a loud screech. They said only one other aircraft accident had occurred there in the last 10 years, when a Russian helicopter crashed on a slightly lower level after encountering similar bad weather.
Commerce Secretary Brown had been in the region, along with representatives from 12 U.S. companies, to boost reconstruction efforts in the former Yugoslavia. He was scheduled to meet with economic and government leaders in Sarajevo after spending a day in Croatia.

"Secretary Brown's presence here was a sign that peace can bring real prospects to this war-torn region," said the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith. "I think the best way we can honor Secretary Brown is to redouble our efforts to bring it here."

Chicago Tribune

April 4, 1996 Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

AS U.S. TROOPS WATCH, BOSNIA MASSACRE EVIDENCE IS GATHERED;
BURIAL SITE SHOWS SIGNS OF WIDESPREAD TAMPERING

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune. Tribune news services contributed to this report.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 766 words

DATELINE: LAZETE, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Guarded by U.S. troops, war crimes investigators began tagging human remains Wednesday at suspected mass graves around Srebrenica and collecting evidence against Bosnian Serb soldiers.
The investigators focused on Karakaj, where the bodies of some 1,000 Bosnian Muslims are thought to be buried.
The victims were among an estimated 8,000 civilians and fighters still missing after last July's capture of Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces.
Evidence of mass executions wasn't difficult to find. Human femurs and ribs were among the bones found partly embedded in the soil, along with ammunition, identification cards and UN rations.
Investigators marked the site's perimeter with yellow tape, whispering notes into tape recorders and videotaping or photographing nearly every inch by noon.
"We are taking detailed logs of everything we find," said one tribunal official, looking on as a colleague made measured plunges into the soft earth with a long iron rod.
"See that guy, he's got the worst job," said the official. "He sticks that in the ground, then pulls it out and smells for flesh. Then we mark the spot."
Most of the victims at Karakaj were young men of fighting age who had tried to flee into the woods after Srebrenica's fall. But at least 300 were old men and women too crippled or scared to run, according to three survivors of the executions.
When investigators arrived, they found extensive evidence of grave site tampering. In some sections the earth had been upturned, and previously reported items such as canes, piles of identification cards and heaps of jackets were gone.
Officials said the missing evidence probably won't hamper efforts to gain war-crimes convictions against the perpetrators and reputed masterminds--indicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic. But any missing evidence would make their mission tougher, the investigators said.
"We may find a lot less here than we thought. Judging from the digging here, they may have done a pretty good job of cleaning it up. Obviously, there has been a lot of tampering here over the last two weeks," said one tribunal investigator, eyeing the mounds of freshly tilled earth.
NATO forces and Western intelligence services have been monitoring by satellite at least six suspected grave sites in the Srebrenica area, including Karakaj, but no guards were posted. And as the investigators packed up to leave Wednesday, NATO field commanders said the American GIs in attendance--about 100--also would leave, and that no one would be at Karakaj to protect it from further tampering.
"I think there needs to be full accounting for what happened here and we are doing what we can," said Col. John Batiste, the NATO zone's U.S. commander. "But I have only so many forces to secure the military aspects of the Dayton accord.
"We are here to support the tribunal but guarding grave sites is not one of my missions," he added.
Officials plan to investigate 11 sites, which include areas where civilians were shelled and shot as they made their way through Bosnian Serb lines.
No other grave sites appeared to have been disturbed as much as Karakaj, which is significant because the three witnesses who survived the executions said they saw Mladic there. Two said he addressed the prisoners in a nearby school gym, telling them not to fear where they were going. The third survivor, who feigned death under the bodies of his dead comrades, said that Mladic also came to the execution site.
Hundreds of other Bosnian Muslims were killed trying to flee to Bosnian-controlled territory after Srebrenica's fall, and decaying evidence of their ill-fated run can be found along dirt roads outside the UN-declared "safe area."
In The Hague on Wednesday, the war crimes tribunal announced it will report Serbia to the United Nations for refusing to turn over three indicted Yugoslav army officers who allegedly masterminded the 1991 executions in Vukovar of 261 hospital patients, most of them Croatians.
Prosecutors have indicted 57 suspects, including Karadzic and Mladic. But only three are in tribunal custody.
In a separate hearing in The Hague, one of the three suspects in custody pleaded innocent to war crimes charges and was ordered confined to a heavily guarded apartment.
Gen. Tihomir Blaskic, former chief of staff of the Bosnian Croat army, was indicted in November for allegedly ordering troops to kill hundreds of Muslims in the Lasva Valley in 1992 and 1993.
He surrendered to the war crimes tribunal Monday.

Chicago Tribune

April 4, 1996 Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

BALKANS TRAGEDY KILLS BROWN, EXECS;
CLINTON PRAISES AIDE AS 'ONE OF THE BEST, ABLEST';
AIR FORCE PLANE IN WHICH COMMERCE SECRETARY AND BUSINESS EXECUTIVES WERE FLYING FROM TUZLA TO DUBROVNIK CRASHES IN BAD WEATHER AND 33 PEOPLE ARE KILLED.

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune. Tribune Washington correspondent Terry Atlas contributed to this report.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 1057 words

DATELINE: DUBROVNIK, Croatia

An Air Force jet carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 32 other people, including up to a dozen senior American business executives, crashed into a cloud-covered hilltop in stormy weather Wednesday during its final approach to the Dubrovnik airport.
In Washington, the State Department said the U.S. government formally presumed Brown was dead, and officials at the scene indicated no one had survived among the reported 27 passengers and six crew members. By Thursday morning, 10 bodies had been recovered.
Officials said there was no indication of hostile fire.
News of the crash stunned official Washington, where Brown has been a powerful political insider as well as high-profile Cabinet member, and it echoed through corporate suites across the nation in a day marked by confusion over exactly who was aboard the plane.
In a brief but emotional tribute, President Clinton called Brown, 54, the first African-American chairman of the Democratic Party, "one of the best advisers and ablest people I ever knew."
Brown was remembered as a polished dealmaker and trusted friend who received much of the credit for rebuilding a fractious Democratic Party that carried Clinton into the White House.
"Ron Brown walked and ran and flew through life, and he was a magnificent life force, and those of us who loved him will always be grateful for his friendship and his warmth," Clinton told tearful Commerce Department employees, pausing at the end of his remarks for a moment of silence.
Clinton's use of the past tense hours before the deaths of all aboard had been officially acknowledged set the tone for a mournful day. Vice President Al Gore, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and most of the Cabinet sat solemnly at the ceremony, most of them staring downward.
The Commerce Department said it was contacting the families of the people believed to be on the plane, but the U.S. government would not release the names of those on board until Thursday.
One official, however, confirmed that passengers included Charles Meissner, the assistant secretary of commerce for international economic policy, whose wife, Doris, is head of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Also traveling with Brown was a longtime aide, Bill Morton, and chief spokeswoman Carol Hamilton, both long-time Democratic activists. The New York Times said reporter Nathaniel Nash, the paper's Frankfurt bureau chief, also died in the crash.
Among the prominent business executives reportedly accompanying Brown on the Balkan reconstruction trade mission were John A. Scoville, chairman of Chicago-based Harza Engineering Co.; Leonard Pieroni, chairman and CEO of engineering giant Parsons Corp. of Pasadena, Calif., and Robert A. Whittaker, chairman and CEO of Foster Wheeler Energy International of Clinton, N.J.
The twin-engine Air Force jet, the military version of the popular Boeing 737, was flying through heavy rain with poor visibility when it apparently veered off course and slammed into the 2,300-foot St. John's hill, less than two miles from the southern end of the airport runway.
The Air Force VIP jet--which carried Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea during their visit to Turkey last week--was flying under instrument guidance on a bad-weather approach route that should have avoided the hill, according to Pentagon officials.
The stormy weather, and erroneous initial reports of aircraft debris in the sea, hindered efforts to locate and reach the crash site.
When the first Croatian special police reached the site, they reportedly found a woman survivor, who subsequently died. U.S. Special Forces soldiers, trained for search-and-rescue operations, were unable to land by helicopter at the site because of the weather and had to make their way up through rugged terrain in the darkness after landing at Dubrovnik airport.
Of the many questions surrounding the flight, particularly puzzling was how a U.S. Air Force jet carrying a senior Cabinet member through some of the most closely monitored airspace in the world could "go missing."
The first word of trouble to reach Clinton administration officials apparently came from the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, who was waiting with Croatian dignitaries at the airport and telephoned the State Department when Brown's plane failed to arrive.
Clinton canceled his planned events and later, with the first lady, made a 50-minute afternoon visit to console Brown's wife, Alma, and his children, Michael and Tracey.
Brown's trip to the Balkans was the latest of his high-profile overseas trips intended to boost American exports and to use American investment to help build the peace in trouble spots such as Northern Ireland, South Africa and Gaza and the West Bank in the Mideast.
Brown and his delegation were heading to Dubrovnik, a medieval walled city, to talk with Croatian leaders after visiting the Bosnian city of Tuzla, where he met with local officials and had a meal with American peacekeeping troops, bringing them McDonald's hamburgers and sports videotapes, including tapes of the recently concluded NCAA basketball tournament.
"Our desire is to have American companies fully engaged in the reconstruction of this region," he said at a meeting with management of Tuzla's thermo-electric plant. ". . . We have chief executive officers from 15 American companies accompanying me on this mission who wish to take part in the reconstruction phase after the peacekeeping phase."
But tragedy intervened in what should have been a routine 45-minute flight to the Adriatic coast.
The aircraft disappeared from the airport's radar screens at 6:52 a.m. Chicago time as it approached the runway over Zupski Bay. The plane had also been in contact until that point with NATO air traffic controllers in Italy, which monitors airspace over the Balkans.
The plane apparently crashed into the hill as it crossed over land on the south side of the bay. The airport, 10 miles from Dubrovnik, lies just over the hill. Visibility was only 3,300 feet and the cloud ceiling was just 300 feet.
A senior defense official said in Washington that the U.S. and NATO have the entire region covered with aerial surveillance and detected no hostile action against the plane nor explosion onboard.

Chicago Tribune

April 3, 1996 Wednesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

INVESTIGATION INTO BOSNIA'S MASS SLAUGHTER;
TILLED EARTH SUGGESTS GRAVE TAMPERING;
ELEVEN SUSPECTED MASS GRAVE SITES AROUND SREBRENICA MAY PROVIDE CRUCIAL EVIDENCE AGAINST BOSNIAN SERB SOLDIERS IN RELATION TO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF 8,000 MUSLIMS.

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune. Tribune news services contributed to this report.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 877 words

DATELINE: VLASENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

War crimes investigators arrived Tuesday in eastern Bosnia to begin an official inquiry into the disappearance of up to 8,000 Muslims who fled invading Serb forces around Srebrenica.
The investigators will begin searching for clues in 11 suspected mass grave sites Wednesday, under the protection of American NATO troops. They plan to spend two weeks gathering evidence of what witnesses described as a well-orchestrated mass slaughter conducted by Serb forces who captured the UN-declared safe area last July.
Their findings could provide crucial evidence against Bosnian Serb soldiers and the leaders who allegedly ordered the killings. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic have been indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague for their alleged part in the massacre, but have not been arrested.
Some evidence at the suspected graves may already have been destroyed.
Journalists who recently visited one of the most important sites, in Karakaj, where at least 1,000 bodies are said to be buried, reported that at least 40 percent of the two mass graves there were tampered with, showing large rows of tilled earth.
The New York Times reported in its Wednesday editions that someone appeared to have interfered with another suspected mass grave near the town of Lazete, leaving dirt freshly dug and re-spread with heavy equipment. But the report said it was unclear how deeply the ground was disturbed or whether any bodies were removed.
American soldiers who recently toured other sites with Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, also reported that an area south of Janja had been disturbed, according to U.S. officials.
"There are rumors, but nothing concrete," said one Western diplomat. He said there were lapses in the monitoring of the sites, which have been under surveillance by U.S. satellites, as well as NATO planes and drive-by patrols.
"Of course, how much can you really get with reconnaissance? It's not 24-hour monitoring; there are no sentries," he said.
NATO officers have repeatedly said over the last two days that their surveillance methods are adequate and that they have no evidence of graves being disturbed.
That view was reiterated Tuesday in Vlasenica, site of the U.S. military camp, by Col. John Batiste, its U.S. commander. He added that no special attention would be paid to the sites now that investigators had arrived, but that the tribunal's personnel would be protected.
"We're going to provide area security as we do all across Bosnia," Batiste said. "That will include quick reaction forces--not close to the teams but in a ready position if necessary. And we will have quick attack helicopters available."
Ironically, the war-crimes investigators also will be escorted in their work by five soldiers from the Bosnian Serb army's Drina Corps--the very units that were involved in the fighting at Srebrenica.
While it is unlikely that any recent excavations attempted by the Bosnian Serbs would be extensive enough to harm the tribunal's case, the removal of any bones from the sites would make identification of victims more difficult.
According to published reports, three survivors of the Karakaj executions claim that at least 300 men and women who fled Srebrenica to a nearby Dutch UN base in Potocari or to the woods around the "safe area" were packed into the town's school gym and then driven in groups of 20 to the execution site a half-mile away.
The three survivors escaped by crawling out from under the bodies and running to safety when guards left to get other prisoners or weren't paying attention to the grave. One survivor, Hurem Suljic, 55, claims to have seen Mladic come to survey the bodies at the execution site.
Karakaj is important due to the number of survivors and the fact that Mladic is placed at the scene of the crime. Tribunal investigators plan on going there first and spending five days sifting for clues.
Tribunal spokesman Christian Chartier said that any bodies recovered would serve mainly to corroborate the testimony of survivors and eyewitnesses. Any tampering with the grave sites, he added, could be used as further evidence of wrongdoing by those indicted.
Not everyone is happy about the arrival of war crimes investigators, and Bosnian Serbs nearby had few good words to say. Most refused to believe that mass graves are in the area; others said Muslim war criminals should be arrested first.
Their explanations for the missing Muslims ran the gamut from claiming that they all died of venereal diseases to speculating that they decided to shoot their way out of Srebrenica after feigning a surrender.
Bogoljub Lulic, 50, was among the more moderate. "I don't judge the investigators for coming here, but they need to be realistic and treat both sides equally," he said, as others nearby screamed insults about Westerners.
"They have recognized Republika Srpska as a legitimate state and then accused its leaders of crimes just because they tried to protect it.
"I don't think that's right. When (Bosnian president) Alia Izetbegovic is made responsible for his crimes, then they can accuse Karadzic of the same."

The New York Times

April 2, 1996, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Bosnians Are on Trail Of Missing Kin's Graves

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 8; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 788 words

DATELINE: HADZICI, Bosnia and Herzegovina, March 30

He walked the trail of his father, past the snowy hills outside Sarajevo that once hid Serbian snipers and through the torn masonry of the village where his family once lived.
In the spring thaw, Armin Fahrija hoped that he would find some evidence of the man who disappeared nearly four years ago when the Bosnian Serbs captured the village.
His search took him to suspected grave sites with a former neighbor, Nermin Hasanovic, but they found little to help them.
The exposed skull of of one victim, who had been shattered into silence by a single bullet to the head, was not his kin, said Mr. Fahrija, who pointed out that the shoes that remained were not his father's.
"We came here to find him, just to see if we could recognize something here, but it's hard after so many years," said Mr. Fahrija, 26. "Maybe someone else will recall these shoes."
Ten possible grave sites have been marked in Hadzici by the Muslim-Croat Federation police, who now patrol the former Serbian-held territory.
Excavations, expected to begin on Tuesday, are the first step in finding some of the 180 people who went missing after the Bosnian Serbs surrounded the town in May 1992 and began killing those who tried to flee.
To the Bosnian Government, these 180 are a handful of more than 27,000 men, women and children who disappeared during the war.
Mr. Fahrija and other Muslims like him now wander these sites, looking for the end to the story of their relatives' disappearance. Some can recount the history leading up to a father's attempted escape, or a parting moment between mother and son. But what follows is a blank.
"The most important thing is to find out the destiny of my father," Mr. Fahrija said. "What is important is to know if he is dead or not, so that my mother will no longer hope for his return."
His father, a locksmith who was 49 at the time, sent his family away to safety as the Bosnian Serbs approached their village. He stayed to protect his home. The family and others who fled Hadzici have not returned to live in their village.
"It is less important to find his killer, for one, because this was war and that will be impossible," Mr. Fahrija added. "We just want to give him a proper burial."
A total of 20 bodies are thought to be scattered among the five sites already visited by the federation police and the United Nations monitoring force. A similar number may rest in the other five.
The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has been informed of all known sites, but it investigates only those graves holding five or more bodies, the United Nations monitoring task force said.
Smaller sites are left to federation investigators. And in preparation for the task ahead, many now sit in their offices talking to the trail of families who come to fill out a sheet with the details of a loved one's life.
"They come to write down who these people were, what they looked like and what they were wearing at the last moment," said Edin Sinanovic, from his desk inside Hadzici's new federation police building. "We always assumed we would find bodies here, and the rain has begun to wash up the graves. But who knows what really lies in the ground."
Outside, men and boys who have returned stand about the small thatches and pits where rumor, second-hand observers or evidence of bones indicate the dead might be. The groups grow as others are attracted by the presence of the few.
They talk about who may be buried underfoot as they pick at the earth with sticks and pass around cigarettes. "This is where Mehmed Covic is buried," said Saban Sehobic, pointing to a briar patch of twigs covering a deep gash in the earth, then looking at the tall, frail son Mr. Covic has left behind.
Walking to a nearby building, Mr. Sehobic touched what appeared to be blood on the wall and described the events pieced together from snatches of information brought by other refugees. When the Serbs came, Mr. Covic and a small group of other elderly men were cut off from the tiny escape route through town. They took shelter among the walls, holding hunting rifles and hoping that they would not be found.
"They thought this would be safe," Mr. Sehobic said, "but the Serbs shot them here. There were no prisoners in Hadzici, because everyone left was killed."
Mr. Covic's son, Amir, 16, rocked silently on his heels, his quiet eyes staring at the grave while others pointed to a soiled black jacket that had been pulled to the surface. They said it was proof that his father lay beneath, but Amir was not able to make such assumptions.
"I don't know," he said, his head bowed into a shrug. "To know, we will have to dig up the bones. Only then can we be sure this is where he lies."

The New York Times

March 24, 1996, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

In Sarajevo Suburb, a New Border Stirs Tensions

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 12; Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 965 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, March 23

The line separating Bosnia's former warring parties snakes through a drainage ditch and down the middle of a street, bisecting apartment buildings and houses with equal indifference.
Stakes in the ground show its path, a thin charter of earth over which Serbs and Muslims now threaten to fight.
Looking at her apartment building, half of which now falls under the jurisdiction of the Muslim-Croat federation, Angelko, a 42-year-old Serb, said, "We're not going to allow this sort of thing."
"This is the fault of the Turks," she continued, referring to the Muslims, "because they made a line that jeopardizes Serbs. But they aren't going to divide my building and if they try to take the whole thing, it's going to be war."
Under the terms of the peace accord reached last fall in Dayton, Ohio, Bosnia is to be divided into two entities -- one Serbian and the other Muslim-Croat -- joined by a weak central government. But the line separating these entities left Dobrinja, a western suburb of Sarajevo, and more than 400 other points on the map divided.
During the last few days, as representatives of the two sides have attempted to repair the boundary under international mediation, at least one car has been blown up on the Serbian side in Dobrinja, killing its occupant, and four Muslims have been wounded by what the federation called a suspiciously placed mine.
Bosnian Serb police have also arrested two Muslims who wandered across the street into their side, and the international police force patrolling the area reported local rumors that the Serbs are smuggling guns into their part of the neighborhood.
"Dobrijna has the potential for becoming a flash point now, particularly if these people decide not to abide by whatever decision is reached about the demarcation line," said Jim Landale, a spokesman for the international police force, "NATO has beefed up patrols in the area and we now have 48 monitors going around 24 hours a day. So far, there is nothing new, but the tensions remain high."
The Sarajevo suburb was built to house athletes during the 1984 winter Olympics and afterward became the home of a large mix of Serbs, Muslims and Croats working in the city center. But little of that integration survived Bosnia's 43-month war. Today, Dobrijna is little more than an ethnically divided ghetto full of destroyed apartments and land mines.
Along one block, where the line runs down the middle of an island on a boulevard, parents walk their children or go to market telling tales of distrust that exactly mirror the stories told by their adversaries..
Muslims complain that Serbs can walk freely among them, but that Muslims who venture across the street are arrested and beaten. Serbs say the same thing.
"Everything's fine over here," said Bolban, a 41-year-old policeman of the Muslim-Croat federation who like most others here would give no more than a first name. "But over there is another country," he added as he watched the Serbs walking less than 50 feet away.
About the only place where Serbs and Muslims meet in Dobrijna is the point where this street butts up against a French armored personnel carrier, which has been parked there most days and nights, keeping an eye on a key section along one of Sarajevo's main routes to the airport.
There, young men crowd together, bartering for goods that cost more on their respective sides. The elderly try to work out deals on swapping apartments, so that each can be on his faction's side.
Federation police were to begin patrolling the demarcation line last Wednesday, a move that would have allowed hundreds of Muslim and Croat refugees to return to their homes in Dobrinja. But the complications of the existing border have put that on hold. Few refugees would chance returning at this point and the Serbs have said they fully intend to keep them away.
With a final settlement on the boundary line perhaps months away, and with their homes still securely under Serbian guard, some Serbs have found their predicament a source of amusement. They joke about how the new boundary has left their apartment entrance in the Serb republic but their living room under Muslim-Croat control.
"I live in the Republika Srpska but my dishes are in the federation," laughed Neven, as his twin sons stood on each side of an iron stake driven into the earth to remind people of the new boundary. "But it's pretty ridiculous and I don't see how it can work."
"I know that the international community is working to get people together but it's just impossible," he added. "Too much has happened here for that."
Other Serbs refuse to believe that their homes could possibly be in jeopardy if the line is confirmed where it is now drawn, pressuring them to leave to avoid coming under federation control.
"It will never happen because we will fight," shouted a 38-year-old Serbian woman named Rajka in front of her building on a boulevard named in honor of the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, as other Serbs crowded around to complain.
Said another, "This is our suburb because we won it during the war."
Rajka added that the name of the street, which dated to the Yugoslav era, would soon be changed, at least on the Serbian-controlled section.
"We liked Gandhi and she used to be a friend of ours," said Rajka, noting that the Muslims who expected to take over half the street would not be consulted about the name change.
"But we have our own heroes now -- our Serb heroes who gave their lives for the republic. We will change the street to Mladic or Karadzic or something better like that," she said, referring to the Bosnian Serb military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic and the political leader, Radovan Karadzic. "We don't care what the Turks think because they're not moving in."

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 1996

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The boundary between the Serbian and Muslim-Croat areas of Bosnia runs through Dobrinja, where Neven, a Serbian resident, watched his twin sons take opposing sides of the line, marked by a stake. (Kit R. Roane for The New York Times)

Map of Bosnia and Herzegovina highlighting Dobrinja: Dobrinja has the potential for becoming a new flashpoint.

Chicago Tribune

March 20, 1996 Wednesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

SERB REFUGEES STAKING CLAIM TO CONTESTED CITY

BYLINE: By Tom Hundley, Tribune Staff Writer. Tribune special correspondent Kit R. Roane contributed to this report from Sarajevo.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 1083 words

DATELINE: BRCKO, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Thousands of Serbs fleeing Sarajevo are being directed to this battered border city, setting the stage for yet another crisis in the peace process before the year's end.
The status of Brcko was the only issue left unresolved by the Dayton negotiators, who agreed the city's fate would be decided by a panel of international arbitrators within one year.
On a day when world attention was focused on the reunification of Sarajevo after four years of war, the new flood of refugees created a timebomb in a sector now under control of the U.S. military. American officials estimate that some 3,000 to 5,000 refugees have arrived in Brcko over the last two weeks. Serb officials put the figure at 10,000.
Whichever figures are more accurate, there is general agreement that the numbers will increase significantly as the Serb leadership in Pale tries to gain a demographic advantage before the arbitration process even gets under way.
Brcko is the key city in the four-mile-wide neck of Serb-held territory known as the Posavina corridor. The corridor is critical because it is the only link between the two large chunks of Bosnian Serb territory that comprise the so-called Republika Srpska.
Serbs want the corridor widened; the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government wants Brcko back. Before the war, the city was predominantly Muslim with a population of 43,000. Serbs took control in a brutal campaign of "ethnic cleansing," but paid dearly when the city was pounded by Croat and Muslim artillery last autumn.
U.S. troops now control Brcko, but there is little they can do but watch as ethnic Serbs fleeing Muslim rule in Sarajevo take over abandoned Muslim houses in Brcko.
On Tuesday, as the Muslim-Croat Federation took control of Grbavica, the last Serb-held neighborhood in Sarajevo, scores of Serb refugees were crowding into Brcko's dingy municipal building, clutching their documents, hoping that some official would offer a scrap of hope.
Mladen Milic and his family abandoned their apartment in Grbavica two days ago. They were taken to Brcko in a convoy of buses and spent Monday night in an unheated two-room flat with another refugee family--10 people in all.
"Basically, I was told to go to Brcko. I was on a list," said Milic. "If you go some place and you're not on the list, you can't stay, you can't get a job, you can't get any privileges."
Under the Dayton agreement, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is barred from all political activity because he is under indictment for war crimes. Nonetheless, the new Serb influx into Brcko is widely seen as his handiwork.
"The Pale leadership is behind this," fumed one Western diplomat.
"Trying to build up the Serb population is very counter-productive to the arbitration process. All it shows is that Dr. Karadzic remains a potent political force, and that if he's going to be calling the shots, we're going to have one tough time building a peace process."
Nenad Bajic, a former municipal official from one of the abandoned Sarajevo suburbs, said the Pale government is directing the Sarajevo refugees to four locations: Brcko, Srebrenica, Zvornik and Milici.
But Bajic, who was organizing housing for the newly arrived refugees, denied suggestions that officials in Pale had pressured Serbs to abandon Sarajevo or forced them to relocate in politically sensitive places such as Brcko and Srebrenica.
Outside in the crowded hall, Zora Trivic, 60, wept bitterly at the thought of her abandoned house outside Sarajevo.
"I tried to stay, but the Muslims stole my cow and kicked me out. I tried to talk to them. I told them I was just an old lady, but they had no mercy."
She also blamed Serb leaders for her predicament. "What have they done for us?" she demanded. "Why did we come to this terrible place? We left behind a much better life."
Her remarks drew a sharp rebuke from the other refugees, who told her not to say such things to Western journalists.
The flood of refugees into Brcko is a humanitarian disaster in the making. The city is without electricity every other day. It has running water only a few hours a day. And the housing, most of it owned by former Muslim residents, was destroyed in the early days of the war.
"It is inhumane to ask people to live 10 to a room," admitted Bajic, the former municipal official. "But anything is better than living with Muslims."
Few of the Sarajevo refugees were aware of Brcko's uncertain future under the terms of the Dayton accord.
The arbitration that will decide the city's fate has not yet begun--a delay caused by the slow implementation of the civilian aspects of Dayton--but Western officials have been trying to bring together Brkco's Serb mayor and its Muslim mayor in exile.
In Sarajevo on Tuesday, residents were preoccupied with celebrating the transfer of Grbavica to the Muslim-Croat Federation. The handover ended any chance that Serbs could resume the siege of the Bosnian capital. Moreover, it set the final line that partitions Bosnia into two uneasy and disgruntled republics.
"It is finished now, we have been liberated," said Jasminka Dedovic, a 40-year-old Muslim who lived through four years of threats, harassment and war in the Serb-dominated section of a partitioned Sarajevo.
Grbavica's pockmarked apartment buildings and sniper nests attest to its front-line status in the siege of Sarajevo.
On Tuesday it became a scene of happy reunions and bittersweet tears.
Long lines of Bosnian Muslims from the capital trekked up what was once known as "sniper alley" to the Brotherhood and Unity Bridge. There they lined up for hours waiting to be let into the suburb.
Hoping to avert the looting and intimidation that marked the transfer of other Serb-held suburbs, the 125 Muslim-Croat Federation police patrolling the area and their counterparts from the International Police Task Force kept a tight cordon around entrances to Grbavica.
"I think we have learned from our past mistakes here. We know we need a strong presence here and must limit the sightseeing," said Bob Wasserman, the American spokesman for the international police force in Sarajevo.
It was too late for some Grbavica residents.
"This is my birthplace," said an old man whose house was set afire by Serb thugs before they departed late Monday. "And my own did this to me. Why do they hurt their own people who have nowhere else to go? It is all so tragic, but I hope soon it will be over."

The Houston Chronicle

March 18, 1996, Monday, 3 STAR Edition

Gangs of Serbs ravage suburb near Sarajevo;
Desolate stretch scheduled to return to Muslim control

BYLINE: Houston Chronicle News Services

SECTION: a; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1122 words

DATELINE: GRBAVICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

GRBAVICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Smoke spiraled from the last
Serb-held area of Sarajevo Sunday night as gangs of Serb
toughs set buildings ablaze, raped old women and ransacked
apartments in a final spasm of violence before this desolate
stretch of battered high-rises returns to Muslim control
Tuesday.
While NATO soldiers, who are supposed to have secured the
area, carried out individual acts of heroism, U.N.officials
were vicious in their criticism of the NATO operation as a
whole in Grbavica, the last of five Serb-held suburbs to be
transferred to the mostly Muslim Bosnian government.
NATO spokesmen had said that they would increase their
presence in the area after similar destruction in the other
suburbs.
Grbavica's war chief, known only as The Duke, had vowed to
make the district ""burn brighter than Atlanta during the
American Civil War,'' before the Muslim takeover.
And by 9 a.m. Sunday, his people were doing their best to make
the prophesy come true.
At one burning apartment building, an elderly woman on the
second floor filled up buckets of water and handed them out to
task force monitors who rushed up the stairs to throw the
contents on the flames.
""It's very bad here right now,'' she said, patting her heart.
""This is the fifth fire we have had here and we have two days
to go. '' After the fire was put out, she walked down to the
front door of the complex and strained on the lock. ""From now
on, we're going to keep this thing shut. ''
Another woman later set about burning books outside her
apartment building, saying she wanted to get rid of them so
that others would not use the material to set her apartment on
fire.
Western officials say that the terror here is part of a plan
by ultranationalist Serbs to force as many Serbs as possible
to leave Sarajevo. The scheme, carried out by Serb gangs tied
to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, aims at proving that
Serbs, Muslims and Croats cannot coexist, thereby bringing
into question the image of a multiethnic Bosnia envisaged
under the Dayton peace accord.
Muslim officials have also done little to encourage the Serbs
to stay. While until recently they had dispatched government
fire trucks into Grbavica to extinguish blazes, several days
ago they stopped, arguing that NATO had failed to offer the
firefighters adequate protection.
The real reason, Western officials argued, was that the
Sarajevo government was willing to let the fires burn if that
meant the Serbs would go.
Of an estimated 70,000 people who were living in the five
Serb-held suburbs, about 10 percent are staying, less than
half the number the United Nations initially had projected.
Problems in implementing the Dayton peace agreement prompted
the United States to call a meeting for today in Geneva of the
leaders of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher is to go on from there
to Moscow to meet with the other members of the international
contact group for the Balkans - Russia, Germany, France and
Britain.
Western officials cite the failure of Muslim police to stop
intimidation of Serbs, the near exclusion of Serbs and Croats
from Sarajevo's new government, and the continued domination
of all three sides by hard-line nationalists.
""We're seeing a multiethnic Bosnia being flushed down the
toilet here,'' said Kris Janowski, the spokesman for the U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees in Sarajevo.
Western sources said British forces had volunteered two
companies of soldiers to secure Grbavica but were rebuffed by
French commanders, who are responsible for the NATO operation
in Sarajevo.
British Lt. Gen. Michael Walker, the commander of NATO ground
forces in Bosnia, denied that such an offer had been made.
Last week NATO's commander, Adm. Leighton Smith, spoke of his
desire to bring in firefighting equipment but none of the NATO
soldiers Sunday night was outfitted with equipment or
protective clothing.
Italian soldiers arrested up to 10 Serb men involved in
breaking and entering and possible arson. Hands raised above
their heads, the men were marched to a nearby Serb police
station. Within an hour, however, they were set free.
NATO officers said they had to rely on ""local authorities'' to
deal with thugs. The Serb police are widely cited as being
responsible for much of the trouble.
""I can't quite understand what (the international force) is
doing,'' said Morgan Morris, a protection officer with the U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees in the area. ""The situation
here has indeed gotten worse. ''
Although NATO officers had promised to dispatch Italian troops
to stand guard at a U.N. ""safe house,'' set up for frightened
people in the area, for example, no such protection
materialized Sunday.
U.N.police were also supposed to be stationed there but an
assigned Indonesian officer vanished Sunday afternoon.
Only 14 people had come to the safe house Sunday evening, most
fearing that once they leave their apartments, gangs will
burst in.
""The international community again has failed to realize that
the road to eliminating systematic human rights abuses in
Bosnia, including the harassment and forced expulsion of
civilians wishing to remain in the Serb-held suburbs of
Sarajevo, cannot be (cleared) by merely monitoring the
lawlessness which unfolds daily,'' said Ivo Lupis, an
investigator for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based
organization.
Morris said that Sunday she counted 17 fires, including five
in high-rise apartment buildings. On Saturday, her team
recorded 15. ""We're expecting a lot more,'' she said.
Among the buildings burned Sunday was a warehouse used by the
refugee agency.
At the U.N. safe house Sunday, two elderly women were carried
into a first-floor waiting room by a U.N. protection officer
and U.N. police. A Serb thug had broken into the apartment of
one of them and beat and raped the first woman before setting
fire to her flat, a U.N. official said. A neighbor had come to
the rescue of the first woman but the Serb tough beat and
raped her, too, the official said.
""Of course, we can't blame NATO for this but they are sending
signals that they will do nothing to stop this,'' said a U.N.
official. ""If they had been tougher, things would be different
today. ''
Over the last few weeks, NATO spokesmen have issued statements
telling the Serbs that they ""have the right to burn their own
houses'' and that the international force ""is not a police
force and will not undertake police duties. ''
Such a position has been interpreted by Serb gangs to mean a
green light to terrorize the local population, U.N. officials say.

Chicago Tribune

March 17, 1996 Sunday, CHICAGOLAND FINAL EDITION

PEACE PACT FAILING TO MAKE BOSNIA WHOLE AGAIN

BYLINE: By Tom Hundley, Tribune Staff Writer. Tribune special correspondent Kit R. Roane contributed to this report.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4; ZONE: C

LENGTH: 788 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina

The ethnic wars of Yugoslavia have left Zoran Zakula, a Serb, stranded in Muslim-controlled Sarajevo while his wife Aida, a Muslim, waits in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia.
For them, the Dayton agreement is a hollow promise that has stopped the shooting but reinforced the borders carved out by the ethnic warlords.
At the onset of fighting in Sarajevo, Zakula, a travel agent, sent his wife and two sons to live with his brother in Belgrade. When he tried to escape a few weeks later, it was too late--nobody could get out of Sarajevo.
Like all men of military age, Zakula was mobilized by the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government. He spent the war in a police officer's uniform, until he was seriously wounded by a Serb sniper.
Now that the Dayton agreement has ended the fighting and supposedly guaranteed freedom of movement, Zakula and his wife should be free to reunite. But Belgrade authorities won't recognize his Bosnian passport, nor will they grant his Sarajevan-born wife the travel documents to return home.
Straightening out this sort of problem is not NATO's line of work. So under the Dayton accord, a civilian Office of the High Representative was created to handled non-military aspects of the peace agreement--human rights, economic reconstruction, free elections and helping people like the Zakulas get their lives back in order.
Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt was designated the high representative, but four months after the agreement was signed, his operation is barely up and running.
Donor nations have been slow to come through with promised money and manpower, and as a result Bildt's office hasn't been able to mobilize quickly enough to keep pace with events.
The tragic exodus of Serbs from Sarajevo suburbs over the last two weeks is one example. The high representative was supposed to coordinate an international police force to assure a smooth transfer of authority to the Muslim-Croat federation, but most of the police force has yet to arrive, and most of the Serb residents already have fled in panic.
"We are not patting our backs saying what a great job we've done," admitted Duncan Bullivant, a high representative spokesman. "Everybody here is deeply depressed by what's going on."
The real problem facing Bildt, however, is the apparent lack of will on the part of the former warring factions to build a genuine peace.
Serbian, Croatian and Muslim leaders were more or less happy to have NATO step between them and stop the fighting. They are less interested in the aspects of the peace accord that talk about rebuilding a multi-ethnic Bosnia.
Last week, Adm. Leighton Smith, commander of NATO forces in Bosnia, took local leaders to task for their foot-dragging.
"Amnesty agreements should have been passed a long time ago, and people should have been on the street making this thing work," he said. "If the civilian side of this goes belly up, no amount of military will keep this thing alive."
At the same time, Smith has been reluctant to commit the considerable resources of NATO to the "civilian side." That, according to Smith and everyone else in an American uniform, would be what's called "mission creep.
In theory, the Office of the High Representative, which controls the purse strings to a large chunk of the $5 billion reconstruction package, should serve as the carrot to NATO's stick.
"That would be a nice concept if there was money to give out, but very little of it is there at the moment," he said.
Of the money that has been made available, the emphasis is on rebuilding infrastructure.
Up until last week, the rival factions had been insisting on separate electrical grids. But when Bildt's office made clear it wasn't going to happen, the political leadership finally agreed on a shared grid--a breakthrough that Bildt's office has hailed as a major achievement.
Another sign of progress along these lines was an agreement earlier this month to re-establish telephone links between Bosnia and Yugoslavia.
At the moment, phone calls can go only one way--from Bosnia to Yugoslavia--and only during certain hours. They also have to be booked days in advance.
But it was welcome news for Zoran Zakula, who now can at least hear his wife's voice, if even for only a few minutes.
On the appointed morning last week, he planted himself by the phone an hour before his scheduled call, going over the mental list of all that needed to be said. The six-minute call cost $13--about half the monthly disability pay he gets from the police department.
When he hung up, tears welled in his eyes. "At Dayton, I wish they should have left one republic for people who want normal lives," he said.

The New York Times

March 17, 1996, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Night Brings Terror and Arson to Sarajevo Suburb

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 10; Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 994 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, March 16

They are out in the night, boozy young men with temper and purpose. They threaten with guns, knives and gasoline, beating old men in their homes and setting apartment buildings on fire.
"When the sun goes down in Grbavica, it's like being in a bad alley in the Bronx," said Joseph Byrnes, a United Nations doctor who patrols what in four days will be the final Serbian enclave in the Sarajevo area to come under Muslim-Croat rule.
"These guys see anyone who wants to stay here after the transfer as a traitor to the Serb cause," he said. "And it's the old people, the ones who have nothing to do with this war, who are paying the price. They take the brunt because they have no place to go."
A few thousand people are all that are left in this bastion of Serbian nationalism, where rusted tanks sit among the hills, their turrets still pointed at the Bosnian capital below.
Most have already fled, like their counterparts in Vogosca, Ilijas, Hadzici and Ilidza, the other towns transferred to the federation under the Dayton peace accord.
The elderly and the frail sat tight in their apartments, afraid to even venture across the street, while men in camouflage uniforms and long beards mill about outside waiting for cans of gasoline or stealing what they can. Others had knapsacks bulging with guns and makeshift weapons, including clubs fashioned from umbrella handles. Some of these discharged soldiers loitered in front of a "safe house" established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees -- a place only one or two people a night dare to enter -- eyeing all those who come. Others move stealthily through the sniper shields and tightly packed apartment complexes, setting fires and threatening old people.
"It's getting worse," said one of the 95 international police monitors patrolling the city, as he stood outside a burning building on Friday. "This is the second one already today. At first, it's this apartment, then it's that apartment. It's just unbelievable and we can't understand it. Bosnia is just a different world."
By dusk, the radio frequencies used by the monitors and IFOR, the NATO force, were abuzz with confusion as Vogosca comes alive with licking flames. As the cycle of fire and intimidation restarted, monitors and French troops rush off to combat damage already done.
"Do you have any knowledge of a high school burning?" the radio crackled. "Over . . . No, have other building. Two families inside. Over."
At 5:45, three fires burned simultaneously in different parts of the city. The Snoopy Cafe, a wartime hangout for soldiers that was gutted several days ago, has been lit again; across the street stands an often-seen Serbian nationalist in a Waylon Jennings-style cowboy hat and beard, smiling. Nearby, another apartment burns for a second time in a day. And on the hill in back of town, a sixth-floor fire threatens to engulf everything below.
"They came yesterday and pistol-whipped my husband," cried one woman, as her husband and three children were dragged from the smoke-filled building by French soldiers. "They said we have to leave. Now they have burned down our apartment and we have nowhere to go. We asked the Serb police to come but they said it wasn't any of their business."
Other monitors scurried to the center of town, where Mr. Byrnes is calling urgently for more help at the "safe house." The night before, it had been closed after residents overheard thugs talking about firebombing it. On Friday, some men pulled a truck up to the entrance and looted one of the apartments above.
Nearby, a middle-aged Serbian woman sat scribbling English phrases on scraps and smoking the few remaining cigarettes in her apartment. Smoking kept her calm. The phrases were there to rattle off when NATO staff members respond to the attack she fears will come.
"I am afraid . . . I have a husband and two kids," she wrote. "Please take care of us . . . We want to stay here."
On Thursday she had pleaded with a visitor. "Will you come every day? I don't speak good English but I know to say that I am afraid. I fear the Serbs who are leaving and the federation that is coming. Will you protect me?"
There are many in the same situation, said Mr. Byrnes, as he went through the day's events over a stiff drink before returning to Sarajevo.
"I just saw a man who was too far gone physically for help in these conditions. He'll be body-bagged and hauled in the next couple of weeks. And I visited two old women with minor ailments who were basically just scared to death, get out little to none, and wanted to talk," said the doctor. "Then, we've got this Duke of Grbavica character who appears at every fire and just walks away right under IFOR's nose. And there are three Serb policemen sitting outside our office as the building is being looted."
"If this was happening in America, we'd be under martial law by now," he said. "It's got to stop."
The violence intensified today, when four fires brewed simultaneously by noon. Gunshots could be heard near the old front line, as flames ignited ammunition. Monitors and French soldiers stood about helplessly, unable to even get a fire truck from Sarajevo to cross the divide and put the blazes out.
Little but the old residents stand in the way of the devastation. Over the last several days, as their apartment buildings have been set afire and young Serbs have harassed them, stalwarts have banded together to try to curb the violence and save their neighbors' homes. Old men have been seen trudging up stairs to deliver buckets of water to burning apartments that are not their own, while the elderly who are capable of walking often brave the streets to deliver supplies to those so infirm that they cannot move.
"I am staying," said one disabled man as he climbed six flights to toss water on a fire and complain about "bad neighbors."
He said: "We are good people. We are all staying. They can't make us leave."

GRAPHIC: Photo: In Grbavica, Bosnia, the last Sarajevo-area Serbian enclave to be turned over to Muslim-Croat control, Serbian nationalists violently oppose the transfer. Serbs carried an Orthodox cross out of the town yesterday. (Kit R. Roane for The New York Times)

Chicago Tribune

March 14, 1996 Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

LOOTERS STRIKE SARAJEVO SUBURB;
WITH MUSLIM-CROAT FEDERATION IN CHARGE, THUGS PUSH SERBS TO LEAVE

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 18; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 630 words

DATELINE: ILIDZA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

The ordeal began at 9 a.m. in the morning and didn't end until more than 50 had come and gone. They walked around Lena Srkvenjas' house, surveying the property that had been in her husband's family for more than 300 years.
Then they kicked at the door, looked at the couple's belongings, and said it was time the pair started packing to leave.
"It is very difficult because they are trying to scare us and we are so old," said the 61-year-old pensioner, adding that two Muslim families had already taken over her brother-in-law's house next door.
"We had three who wanted to occupy our house and spend the night here. I had to cook them lunch and dinner. What could I do? It's not pleasant but we have to survive," she said. "Where can we go if we leave?"
Ilidza was turned over to the Muslim-Croat federation Tuesday and quickly became a rough-and-tumble Wild West town, with gangs of young thugs wandering the streets and intimidating the 3,000 or so Serbs who have refused to leave.
Some are being threatened with guns and knives, others with grenades. And the 90 federation police officers--or their International Police Task Force (IPTF) monitors--who now walk the streets have been powerless to stop the anarchy.
Only three arrests were made Tuesday, leaving hundreds of thieves and muggers free to roam on Wednesday. They have shown no hint of abating their activities.
As Srkvenjas spoke, her street was full of young Muslim men with sacks of plunder taken from vacant homes. Some drove trucks into what has always been a predominantly Serb neighborhood, so they could cart away big items such as water heaters, toilets and doors.
A Bosnian flag recently had been hung on a home nearby. Others put signs on vacant houses saying "occupied by a witness to the faith," a Muslim phrase noting the scribe's deep religious conviction.
The three men who earlier had abused Srkvenjas' hospitality came walking down with bags of things they had found during the past 24 hours. In one bag, the men pointed out, rested her radio.
"She was a nice old lady," one said. "She offered us this stuff and said she will trade her house for one in Srebrenica. We will come back later."
The police monitors said Wednesday that the situation in Ilidza had reached a critical phase and would support the introduction of more federation officers, even if that meant sending in additional Muslim police officers from Sarajevo. This would skew the percentages of Muslims, Croats and Serbs in the force, which is supposed to mimic the 1990 population.
Before the transfer Tuesday, Serbs had been terrorized by their own. Serb police stood by as departing citizens burned their homes and apartments or looted factories and office buildings.
In Grbavica, the last Serb-held territory around Sarajevo to be transferred, such incidents are already on the rise. At least two Muslim women have been raped there in the past week, while other attacks against Serbs are common. Apartment buildings go up in flames every night and violence is the rule.
NATO soldiers, who have beefed up patrols in the area, now urge journalists not to leave the main road, saying that mines are everywhere and carjackings are common.
The Serb police have already "opted out," added IPTF spokesman Alex Ivanko, giving lawlessness a six-day reign before federation officers take over the area next Tuesday.
There is little certainty that things will be better once they arrive.
"Unless there is a radical change in the way things are going, there will not be a Serb left in Sarajevo," said Dusan Sehovac, the interim Serb mayor of Ilidza, whose term ends on the date of Grbavica's handover. "Soon there will be only Muslim people in Sarajevo and this will be Muslim land."

The New York Times

March 14, 1996, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

As a Sarajevo Suburb Changes Hands, Muslim Scavengers Reign

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 5; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 585 words

DATELINE: ILIDZA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, March 13

They knocked on the door and tried to kick it in, a constant swarm of suitors sizing up the homestead and furniture. They threatened and cajoled, unhindered by the international police monitors living next door or by the pleadings of the owner, a 65-year-old Bosnian Serb who gave his name only as Aco.
They said they would be back.
"I feel a kind of sickness inside, all these hooligans riding around, these uncultured people," Aco said from his front yard. "My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were born on this property, and I didn't participate in this war. It is very unpleasant to be harassed like this."
Hundreds of Muslim thugs have been wandering Ilidza since it was turned over to the Muslim-Croat federation on Tuesday. With guns, knives and grenades, the gangs swagger through the streets, intimidating the 3,000 or so Serbs, most elderly or ill, still left in this Sarajevo suburb. They hang signs of ownership on homes they never saw before and cart off people's belongings while the owners are out shopping for eggs.
The only hint of embarrassment came when whole families of looters were confronted dragging large items like water heaters through newly smashed doors.
The anarchy officials feared from the transfer of Serb-held suburbs has come true here.
NATO forces and the international police monitors have beefed up their presence, but both now support what just days ago seemed a drastic measure: bringing in more Muslim officers from the federation police, even though this would skew the careful ethnic balance between Croats, Serbs and Muslims.
"The few Serbs that were willing to stay are now informing the United Nations that they have no choice but to leave -- another blow to the multi-ethnic character of Sarajevo, thanks to the thugs of Sarajevo," said Alexander Ivanko, a police monitor spokesman. "It is a shame, really a shame, that some of the people who have come from Sarajevo are behaving in the same appalling and outrageous manner as some of the Serbs were before they left."
Aco was also considering drastic measures as young Muslim men walked his street with sacks of loot, eyeing his home: he has prepared a room to offer police monitors at no charge. "I'll even fry them eggs if they come," he said.
Dusan Sehovac, the interim Serbian Mayor of Ilidza, who has a few more days in office, said, "There is not a single pensioner who stayed and has not had a problem. When we are saying we are happy because no one has been killed yet, you understand the situation we are in."
Before the transfer of Ilidza, Bosnian Serbs had been pressing their people to leave. The Serbs who stayed were terrorized by their own. Departing residents burned apartment buildings and looted factories, thus destroying the idea of harmonious suburbs where Serbs, Croats and Muslims could live together.
As Aco spoke of how the new looting seemed to complement the destruction left by his people, his neighbor, Lena Srkvenjas, 61, was shooing out last night's interlopers. More than 50 people had come to her door, wanting to take over her home.
"We had three who wanted to occupy our house," she said. "I had to cook them lunch and dinner. What could I do? It's not pleasant, but we have to survive."
One of the men who was looking at another house said, "She was a nice old lady." His bag held Mrs. Srkvenjas's radio.
"She offered us this stuff," he said, "and said she will trade her house for one in Srebrenica. We will come back later."

Chicago Tribune

March 7, 1996 Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

CROAT POLICE GIVE UP ATTEMPT TO UNDERMINE FEDERATION WITH MUSLIMS;
UNIT HAD JOINED TOWN'S SERB OFFICERS

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane, Special to the Tribune. Tribune wires contributed to this account.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 22; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 772 words

DATELINE: HADZICI, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Threatened by NATO troops with forcible eviction, a crew of ethnic Croatian police left this former Serb suburb Wednesday, abandoning their attempt to undermine the Muslim-Croat federation.
Eighteen Bosnian Croat police officers wearing homemade "federation" patches had entered Hadzici late Tuesday as buildings deserted by the fleeing Serbs still burned after the Serbs had set them ablaze. They joined the town's remaining Serb police, reinforcing fears of joint Serb-Croat strategy against the Muslim-led Bosnian government.
"I told them to leave peacefully but that if they didn't we were prepared to call NATO and were not afraid to use force," said Peter Fitzgerald, commander of the international police force in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
NATO troops were summoned, and soon about 100 French soldiers and 20 armored personnel carriers rumbled into Hadzici.
After a tense standoff, the 18 Croats left at 8:30 a.m. -- just half an hour before Hadzici officially passed to federation control.
Members of the intruding unit said they had been authorized to enter Hadzici by the Muslim-Croat federation's Croat deputy interior minister. The gambit was interpreted as a Bosnian Croat attempt to gain outright some of the land being transferred to the federation, which was formed in 1994 under U.S. pressure.
The challenge clearly threatened a fragile peace: If the federation cannot function, Bosnia is likely to disintegrate, with Serb sectors merging with Serbia, Croat lands uniting with Croatia, and a small Muslim state struggling to survive between them.
The Bosnian Croats are particularly interested in Ilidza, a Serb-held Sarajevo suburb scheduled to come under federation control on Tuesday.
"They . . . want more control there and want it under the Croat purview," said one UN official.
Another United Nations official viewed Wednesday's incident as ominous, noting that the suburb lies on a route between Sarajevo and Croatia's Adriatic coast.
The federation partners initially formed their alliance under Western pressure after a bitter 10-month conflict in 1993. Since then, they have maintained a shaky relationship.
Violence still erupts on a regular basis in Mostar, the divided town near Bosnia's border with Croatia. Riots and shootings there have been common.
Only recently has the European Union forced the two sides to begin joint policing exercises and lift barricades separating their populations.
Aside from the unauthorized Croat incursion, there was little to distinguish the transfer of Hadzici from that of two other suburbs that came under federation control over the last two weeks. As in Vogosca and Ilijas, most Serbs already had fled and Hadzici's streets were filled with hundreds of jubilant Bosnians from Sarajevo eager to see the show.
Seventy federation officers--50 Muslims, 5 Croats and 15 Serbs--entered the town shortly after 10 a.m. Wednesday, walking the perimeter of a smoldering government building as the federation's interior minister, Avdo Hebib, spoke of victory.
The oration came after a bit of excitement, when Bosnian explosives experts blew up a bomb wired to a police station door.
"This is not unusual, we have found such devices in all the town stations entered so far," said one police official.
Nearby, Sarajevans milled about, greeting the few elderly Croats and Muslims who had stayed in town during the four years it was a Serb-run community. Hugs and tears were the order of the day.
Thousands fled Hadzici or were expelled when the Serbs took it in 1992. They clogged the main road into the suburb Wednesday, eager to see even the hulks of their homes. Most houses had been stripped by departing Serbs loath to leave anything valuable behind. Some still smoldered after being set ablaze overnight.
"I was a refugee for four years, my father was killed and my home here burned down," said watery-eyed Suada Omerivic, 29, who had just returned to her birthplace. "I can't explain how much this means to me, to all of us here."
The federation takeover wasn't a delight for all, however. As young people ran through the streets with Bosnian flags and others yelled from trucks, Kosia Lujanica, 45, readied himself for another trek out of harm's way. A survivor of the Bosnian government's infamous Tarcin prison camp, just 10 miles up the road, he had only recently been released. And he was not about to trust his future to the federation.
"I spent nearly four years in a concentration camp, and I don't think things have changed that much since then," he said. "There is no way I am going to test it."

Chicago Tribune

February 29, 1996 Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

BOSNIAN REFUGEES RETURN TO SHELLS OF FORMER LIFE;
WAR VICTIMS FIND HOMES STRIPPED OF BELONGINGS, IN RUINS

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 527 words

DATELINE: VOGOSCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

As 35-year-old Mirsada Sabiz trudged the 6 miles to her former home, she was filled with anticipation. It had been 43 months since she had seen the lovingly built structure on a hill.
But when she arrived, the house was in ruins. All the family's belongings were lost. Sabiz wept, aware she was facing a future differing little from the present. Life will remain bleak, and she will remain a refugee in her own country.
"Where we live now there are no windows and it is bitter cold," she said, clutching her 7-year-old son, Adiz, by his hand. "I used to tell him about this house but he never believed it existed. Now it doesn't. The only thing left was one of his caps."
Such pilgrimages are commonplace in Vogosca, the first Serb area to revert to Muslim-Croat federation control. Hundreds of Sarajevans are returning in search of old homesteads, arriving just as the last Serbs flee town.
On Thursday, the federation also takes control of Ilijas, one of the four remaining Sarajevo suburbs scheduled to change ownership by March 19 under the Dayton peace accord. What the returnees find, however, generally isn't what they hoped to see.
Like Sabiz, many have come upon only a patch of burnt earth or a home lost to shelling during the 3 1/2-year war. Others have found their homes emptied, even of window panes; everything of value carted out by the vacating Serbs.
"I came here to see what was left of my house, but there was nothing," said Muwamir Tiric, 22, who returned from Sarajevo.
"I don't mean it is destroyed; there's just nothing left in there."
About the only thing still intact are friendships. Vogosca's boulevards are devoid of commerce and its shops are empty, but Sarajevo-plated cars often can be seen braking for acquaintances on the main thoroughfare. Often they are elderly Serbs, a few of whom decided not to leave with the rest of their kin. But sometimes the reunion is between Muslims--one who escaped to Sarajevo, the other who waited too long.
Arman Merdanovic, 21, happened upon five old school chums from Sarajevo on Tuesday after spending most of the last four years digging trenches for the Serb army and sweeping Vogosca's streets. He is a Muslim whose mother had been too ill to move at the beginning of the war. He stayed, trying to keep a low profile in a town that had little sympathy for his kind.
"The Chetniks wouldn't let me leave because they needed workers," he said.
Nearby, fellow trench digger Milan Jagar was embracing Denad Piknjac, who had just returned from Sarajevo. Piknjac came upon a Serb family moving out of his apartment with most of his belongings.
Everything he once knew was going out the door. Beds, sinks, curtains and the stove were loaded on a truck provided by the Bosnian Serb government in Pale.
"It was a little strange," he said. "I mean, I knew their family . . . In the end I let them have it because they said where they were going there would be nothing."
As Piknjac related his tale, the truck carrying his belongings rounded the bend and began to inch down the road. They honked. He moved his car out of the way. They waved gratefully.

The New York Times

February 28, 1996, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Near Sarajevo, a Quest To Heal War's Hatred

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 8; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 893 words

DATELINE: VOGOSCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Feb. 27

Every evening, after walking his beat in this suburb newly transferred from rebel Serbian control, Radovan Zidovic, a police officer for the Bosnian-Croat Federation, drives to a hospital in Sarajevo. He weeps at the bedsides of his daughter and father, who were gravely injured by a Bosnian Serb grenade, and wonders why he spends his days cheerfully greeting his former enemies, offering them his hand and the reassurance that they should stay in their homes.
"That is what I do, but sometimes I think that I really want them to leave because of what they have done to my family, what they have done to my country," said Mr. Zidovic, scratching at his mustache and pointing to some of the few apartments still occupied by Serbian residents.
"I feel for the old people who are left here and have nothing," he said. "And I know they are innocent of the crimes that have been perpetrated over the last four years. But my heart still bleeds for my own."
He added: "It is especially hard for me. I am a Serb. I am here to be a symbol that the Federation wants them to stay."
Convincing the thousand or so elderly Serbs stuck in Vogosca that they will not be killed in their sleep or harassed during the day has become one of the main tasks for the Federation police officers now making their rounds here. It is a difficult job, because many of the officers find it hard to offer condolences.
Many of them have watched loved ones killed during their country's 43-month war. Nearly all have lost friends or seen the deadly aftermath of a hit by a Serbian shell. And as they walk among their former enemies, it is sometimes a challenge to hold back from swinging a billy club out of anger or uttering words of retribution.
"At first I wondered if I had the nerves to do this job," said a fellow officer, Bojan Marjanovic, who is also a Serb, one of the minority who remained on the Government side during the war.
"We just have to keep in mind that these are people too," he said. "These are not the war criminals who tried to destroy us."
Mr. Marjanovic added that he is looking forward to the "liberation" of the suburban town of Grbavica, his former home and where his mother lives. The last of the five Sarajevo towns scheduled for transfer under the Dayton peace agreement, Grbavica is to come under Federation control on March 19.
So far, the Federation officers patrolling Vogosca have offered forgiveness and taught the necessity of inclusion. And they have done their job with a professionalism that has surprised not only the foreign journalists who watch their every move, but also the few Serbs who found themselves trapped in the town.
"When I found out that the Federation was coming on Friday, I started to shake with fear," said Dragan Knezevic, 72, a Serb who immediately began packing up his small apartment into neatly arranged boxes. "But no one would help me move without money and I figured that I could only go if I left all my things. I was on my last box when I decided to stay and give this new time a try."
He added: "I am not afraid of the Federation anymore. Some of these officers came to my home yesterday and gave me bread. Then they asked that I stay and this freed my mind."
Eighty-five Federation policemen, including 30 Serbs and 8 Croats, now patrol the town. All of the officers have at least eight years previous experience, were screened and are monitored by the International Police Task Force.
Though the new officers were culled from the Bosnian police force and a Bosnian flag hangs outside the new police station, they are called Federation officers in preparation for the new Muslim-Croat republic envisioned in the Dayton accord.
The shaky alliance between the two groups was preceded by their own bitter 10-month war that ended in February 1994 and has so far been put to little practice.
The town is populated mainly by former residents making day trips from Sarajevo to gawk at the scenery or see if their old homes are still standing.
The officers admonish the visitors to watch out for booby-traps and mines, though none have been found.
Often, they have little work other than directing traffic.
"Really the cold is the only problem here," Mr. Marjanovic said. "And of course there are no coffee shops. We cops really like to sit and drink coffee."
Nearby, a fellow officer ran through a book of traffic signs. "Just brushing up while I've got the time," he said.
They expected much worse. Upon arriving last Friday, they clustered around the police building, fingering their pistols and darting their eyes suspiciously over the few Serbs turning up for bus service to Pale, the Bosnian Serb regional headquarters. At first, they made only token efforts at patrols, preferring instead to set up checkpoints in front of the police station. It was all a no-man's land, mysterious ruins that could hold snipers and mines. And no one wanted to be killed on the first day on the job.
"For me it was like I had just joined the force," said Sakilo Omeragic, Mr. Zidovic's Muslim partner. "I was so excited, I couldn't sleep. I don't know what I expected, but I thought it would be more damaged and dangerous."
He added: "Now that we're here, its great. You don't know what it's like to return to a place like this after four years of war. This is the happiest day of our lives."

Chicago Tribune

February 27, 1996 Tuesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

A FEW HOPEFUL SERBS REMAIN;
PROPAGANDA FAILS TO SWAY THE DETERMINED

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 656 words

DATELINE: VOGOSCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

As fellow Serbs continued their trek out of town Monday, 72-year-old Dragan Knezevic walked outdoors to greet Muslim-Croat federation police, whose arrival was the reason for the panicky exodus of his neighbors.
Knezevic is staying, and he felt it proper to say hello to those who now are responsible for protecting him from robbers, murderers and the region's ubiquitous bad drivers.
"I am not afraid of the federation anymore," he said, straightening his ragged herringbone jacket after dodging a speeding car.
"Some of these officers came to my home yesterday and gave me bread. They asked that I stay, and this freed my mind."
Knezevic had planned to move out, and indeed had dismantled most of his furniture and packed his belongings. But when his own Bosnian Serb government failed to deliver promised trucks to move him out, he was stranded.
"This has been very, very hard for me. And when I found out the federation was coming, I started to shake with fear," he said.
"But no one would help me move . . . and I figured that I could go only if I left all my things. I decided to stay and give this new time a try.
"I cannot live my life fearing those who will be animals. If they kill me, they kill me."
Eighty-five federation police officers now patrol this northern suburb of Sarajevo, including 30 Serb officers culled from federation ranks.
They are monitored by nearly twice as many international officers, as well as journalists who wander behind them as they walk the town.
Four more Serb suburbs are to revert to federation control by March 19. And, though only about 1,500 of the 12,000 Serbs who lived in Vogosca during the war remained Monday, those who did said they hadn't been harassed.
Several federation police officers have promised Knezevic protection from any Muslim or Croat extremists who might bang on his door. And both the officers and members of the NATO-led patrol force have brought him food.
"One day I will walk to Sarajevo," said Knezevic, noting that he hadn't seen his brother in Sarajevo for 43 months. "But there is time for that. If things continue as they seem to be going, there will be plenty of time. Right now I am still a little scared."
Bosnia's fragile peace was put under more strain Monday when Hans Koschnick, the European Union administrator of the divided town of Mostar, announced his resignation after a two-year losing battle to achieve a reconciliation betwen local Muslims and Croats. Koschnick said he would remain on the job until a replacement is found, however.
Knezevic produced photographs of his brother and himself from before the war. Then he found a photo of his son who, like himself, had once been in the Yugoslav army.
Knezevic said his son fled service after the war began and was ordered to join the siege against Sarajevo. "Someday, I will again see him, too," he said, hopefully.
Knezevic longs for the good old days, when his family was together and friends weren't kept apart by nationalistic ideology. He remembers a Yugoslavia that lived as one.
This was a time when ethnicity mattered about as much as hair color, he said, paying homage to Marshal Tito, who preached inclusion and enforced it with an iron fist during his four decades of rule.
Civilization in the Balkans began to crumble after Tito's death, said Knezevic, a pensioner who produced machinery in a state-owned factory for 35 years and fought in Tito's resistance movement during World War II.
"Tito always said brotherhood was for everyone, but the nationalists robbed us of that idea and plotted war," he said.
"They were people against civilization and have given us something worse than we ever knew before. They have offered only a killing war, where brother was forced to kill brother.

"Now we are left in the 20th Century and instead of going forward, we have reverted to the Stone Age," he said, brushing away a tear.

Chicago Tribune

February 24, 1996 Saturday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

NEW BOSNIAN POLICE TAKE OVER;
FEW SERBS LEFT IN TOWN ARE WARY AS MULTIETHNIC FORCE MOVES IN

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane, Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 873 words

DATELINE: VOGOSCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

With no hesitation or spite in his heart, Bosnian-Croat Federation police officer Alija Babic entered his new job Friday as a guardian of his former enemies, the Bosnian Serbs.
And he was ready to walk the beat--decked out in a new gray uniform, surrounded by international police monitors, and confident that he could be the benevolent hand of justice in a trying time.
"I feel good, actually excellent," he said, straightening his uniform and securing his cap in the bitter cold.
"This is a mixed police force, full of not only Muslims, but of Croats and Serbs as well," he added. "It's just like in Sarajevo. We here are men of all nations. That's what we will show to the Serbs."
Not many Serbs are left, however, having spent the last several weeks getting out of dreary Vogosca before it came under the control of federation police at dawn. Only 2,000 remained of the 12,000 who populated the area during the war.
And when Babic showed up with his fellow officers, for what amounts to a test case that will be repeated in other Serb suburbs, there was little to do but play traffic cop to the horde of foreign journalists who had come to oversee his first day on the job.
The only Serbs on main street were lining up to get on a bus to Pale, and some of these cried as they watched the federation force enter their town. Few of them had gotten the leaflets printed by NATO, which urged them to remain, with quotes like "Don't believe the rumors! You can stay in your homes." Of those who did, even fewer had believed them.
Their Serb police force left in the night, wrecking their offices and leaving liquor bottles and grenades strewn about on the floor. And their former mayor's decision to appear before them only under international police protection did little to calm their anxiety or suspicion. And as he urged them to "go without panic," most just stared in disbelief.
"It's such a pity," said the mayor, Rajko Koprivica, as he thought of heading out of town. "Only yesterday, people were carrying babies on foot, because there was no transportation. We have no homes here anymore, no life. By tomorrow I fear all of them will be gone."
The transfer of the suburbs is one of the biggest tests for the Dayton peace agreement and the international community, which forced it upon the Bosnian Serbs. It was feared that Serbs would flee all the areas, which has happened, and that the federation might persecute those who remained.
Thirty officers for Vogosca were strenuously screened by the International Police Task Force and are assigned two international monitors, who watch over them during their shifts.
But by mid-afternoon, it was clear that some of the officers were not being monitored, and others had set up a checkpoint on the main road in and out of town. These officers were checking identification cards and obstructing free movement, which is against the Dayton mandate.
Still, the most irritating events of the day--by Bosnian Serb standards--were the hoisting of a Bosnian flag over the police station, and cocky celebrations after the man who will be the new Muslim mayor helped the force take down the Serb police station sign. Federation police also were blamed after the mayor's office was trashed.
Bosnian Interior Minister Avdo Hebib, who had arrived from Sarajevo for the festivities, used the forum to send a signal of moderation and tolerance. "We planned everything in order to have a normal transition and a normal life here," he said. "To all those who want to stay, and we saw that there are such people, I guarantee they will not be harmed."
Nearly half of the officers are former residents of Vogosca, and 12 are Serbs, all meant to instill a sense of security among the few citizens still wandering about the town. This clearly had a beneficial effect on some of those waiting for buses to leave. A few saw old friends in the force and shook their hands.
And though in the background, smoke billowed from a apartment building and factory complex--apparently set ablaze by disgruntled Serbs leaving town--and roads remained clogged with others fleeing, there appeared to be a great thaw: Serbs holding suitcases talking about a peaceful return.
"I think these guys may be OK because they were here from before," said Milenko Simika, 54, after seeing his friend Neso among the officers. "My wife is going to stay and look after the house. We have been here for 22 years, so I have decided only to leave for the crisis, then I will be back."
"What is happening now is fate," he added. "Only time will tell the future."
Serb Jovo Bojic 45, stood nearby nodding. A federation police officer who spent the war in Sarajevo, he said he had one great mission now that he was back in Vogosca, to bring home the message of unity and peace.
"Many of them are scared. But I am a Serb, and I am here to show my brethren that their fear is unfounded," said Bojic, adding that he would first spread the message to old friends in the area--if they were still around.
"I hope they are still here, or will come back," he said. "We have to show them that we were not sent here to infringe on their will. We will build understanding."

The New York Times

February 24, 1996, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Karadzic Dreams of a New Capital for Bosnian Serbs

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 4; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 695 words

DATELINE: PALE, Bosnia and Herzegovina

After his forces spent most of the last four years destroying ancient mosques and shelling the Austro-Hungarian landmarks that once dotted Sarajevo's horizon, the Bosnian Serb political leader, Radovan Karadzic, is now talking about building, not destroying.
These are not the best of times for Dr. Karadzic, a former psychiatrist, who is facing an indictment by the International War Crimes Tribunal, stiff competition from political rivals and flagging popularity. But far from hiding out, Dr. Karadzic has again established himself as a fixture in the Serbian media, pitching his dream of a new multibillion-dollar Bosnian Serb capital in interviews on state-run television and thumping across the republic in his armored Mercedes.
The plan for the city, which would stretch from here to Lukavica, a Serb-held suburb of Sarajevo, is the centerpiece of his effort to be elected the Bosnian Serb president this fall, despite the fact that the Bosnia peace accord bars him from seeking office.
In Banja Luka recently he detailed the platform to his constituents in the Serb Democratic Party, and spoke of it at every opportunity for a ribbon-cutting. But his primary forum is the television program "Ask the President."
Sandwiched between laments about his constituency now fleeing Serb-held suburbs around Sarajevo and warnings that conflict could be renewed in Bosnia, Dr. Karadzic easily moves into architecture, often projecting an artist's rendition of his town, one replete with culture, taste, and shopping space.
The project comes in at a cost of approximately $10 billion and is meant to rival Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. He calls it a "Serb Sarajevo" and says it will also provide the homes for Bosnian Serbs from territories that will fall under the Muslim-Croat federation in March.
And if artistic embellishment is to be believed, the metropolis snaking out from his bunker in Pale will be finer digs than most people left, with world-class universities, a huge sports stadium and a gold-topped Orthodox church to memorialize the war dead.
A separate crypt would hold the bones of famous nationalists. And for those constituents angered by the peace agreement, he promises thousands of apartments and lots of jobs.
"The new Serb Sarajevo will be something to lean on for the Serbs, and those Serbs will be able to lean on the Republika Srpska," he said during one interview last month, opening his arms to the camera. "Here they will have all rights and options."
"I think we will also attract many Serbs living in Sarajevo because that kind of living together with the Muslims is not what we want," he added.
Dr. Karadzic, once beloved by his people, is now roundly hated in most corners. Other politicians regularly attack his policies, and when he ventures out, bodyguards surround him. His latest plan is in many ways a last ditch effort to regain political footing, showing angry Serbs that he is ready to build them homes even if he cannot keep the Croats and Muslims out of their old apartments.
"It is a different situation when you see our people leaving everything because they don't have a solution to a normal life," he said. "My heart bleeds when I see somebody hauling his couch and paying some ugly deutsche mark to a guy to haul it away. Why is this necessary?"
Inherent is also a threat to the Western allies, who he says should give Serbs more time before the transfer of land.
"We have requested from the international community to get clear very quickly on whether our understanding of Serb rights is correct or not," he said. "If they are not, we have already told them to give us 45,000 tents and 45,000 containers, and we will get our people on the move from Sarajevo immediately."
Even if the NATO force gave Dr. Karadzic an extension on the transfer date, there is some confusion about where the money will come from to build the future dream city. And though during the unveiling of the project he was pressed by his interviewer on the source of funds, his answer was far from clear.
"Factories will build the housing and people will build the town," Dr. Karadzic said, citing an old Communist mantra.

Chicago Tribune

February 22, 1996 Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

BOSNIAN SERB NOW REFUGEE IN HIS OWN LAND;
50,000 FLEEING NEW FEDERATION OF MUSLIMS, CROATS

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane, Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 777 words

DATELINE: VOGOSCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

After waiting in vain for help from his government in Pale, Mirko Simeulovic packed up his family Wednesday and joined the columns of Serbs fleeing the Sarajevo area.
Simeulovic's family had lived in Vogosca, an ethnic Serb suburb north of the Bosnian capital, for nearly 300 years. Over the last half-century, they continued farming despite three wars that consumed the Balkans.
But fear and uncertainty finally have taken their toll, and Simeulovic, 58, opted to become a refugee in his own country.
"We cannot wait any longer because they said on the television that when Muslims come here, they will start killing us," he said while trying to start his old car.
"I have no guarantee that if we do not leave now, we will ever get out. And I don't know where I will go. All I know is, I certainly cannot stay."
Like 50,000 other Bosnian Serbs in areas about to come under the authority of Bosnia's new Muslim-Croat federation, Simeulovic was pressured by his ethnic kin to flee. Serb leaders are running a media campaign to instill fear and spur an exodus fit for TV. Local thugs are threatening neighbors who wish to stay.
Bosnia's government, meanwhile, continues its efforts to preserve an ethnic mix. A government radio broadcast Wednesday repeatedly urged ethnic Serbs to stay put:
"Serbs of Sarajevo: Don't leave," said the broadcast. "All those staying . . . are safe."
Meanwhile, understaffed international police assigned to monitor the changeover have received only a few of the promised leaflets designed to persuade the area's longtime residents to remain.
"If anyone could guarantee my safety--guarantee that I would not be killed--I would stay," said Simeulovic's friend, 59-year-old Danilo. "But I am scared to death about what will come.
"We don't trust anyone anymore. (Bosnian Serb leaders) said they would provide us trucks so we could move but they just lied. And according to our media, the federation police already are arresting Serbs in Sarajevo.
"IFOR (the NATO-led implementation force) is here, but we already saw how little they did when they were the UN. I am not a war criminal, but how can I stay?"
Moments later, a Serb in army fatigues drove up, and intimated with a glare that living in town past Friday was not a smart idea. At that point, Danilo asked that his surname not be used in any news article.
Such incidents are common in Vogosca. Residents who express hopes of waiting to see how things go once federation police arrive are publicly chastised by neighbors. Others are afraid even to register with the international monitors--a necessary first step in keeping their homes--citing a fear that someone would see them walk in the office or read their name on the list.
Despite such intimidation, several hundred Bosnian Serbs have registered to stay. Most are elderly with nowhere else to go.
"You can look at these lists in two ways," said an international police monitor. "You can say, 'Great, people are staying.' But . . . most people already have moved and I think what we will have left in the suburbs when this process ends on March 19 will resemble only a ghost town."
Under the terms of the transfer, 85 Bosnian federation police will begin patrolling Vogosca on Friday, observed by about 40 international monitors.
Four other Serb-held districts will be phased into federation control through mid-March, with similar international monitoring.
All federation police will be required to wear uniforms and identification cards, and are authorized to carry only revolvers.
Monitors will be at every checkpoint and police station to report wrongdoing or harassment. But they can do little more, and some monitors say they already have found a few bad apples in the federation force. Most seem willing to treat the Serbs with respect, they said, but several have talked of retribution.
Serb police have been invited to join the federation force and have been told they would be put on street patrols within 48 hours of acceptance.
But only a handful have inquired about joining, and none has followed up. And as the Friday transfer in Vogosca looms, it is doubtful anyone will be around to greet federation police arriving from Sarajevo.
"They aren't going to find any Serb police here when they come," said Vogosca's Serb police chief, Jovan Maunaga, 38. "Why would they stay? If we wanted to live together, we wouldn't have fought this war.
"I hear they have already picked my replacement--haven't met him because we have been shooting at each other for most of the past few years--but he will not sit in my chair," he added. "I'm taking it."

Chicago Tribune

February 21, 1996 Wednesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

YEARS OF ANIMOSITY KEEP MOSTAR'S CROATS, MUSLIMS SEPARATED

BYLINE: Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune..

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 794 words

DATELINE: MOSTAR, Bosnia-Herzegovina

The first fragile steps toward Mostar's unification Tuesday were met with jeers, brawls and gunfire in the streets.
At noon, the time agreed upon for dropping the barriers between Muslim and Croatian sections, two carloads of Croats quickly cut off a vehicle attempting to cross into Croat territory.
The vehicle carried three Muslim youths testing the pledge of free travel made at meetings last weekend in Rome. But as their Volkswagen passed through a Croatian checkpoint and then turned back toward the Muslim side of Mostar, several Croats jumped from their cars, fired a gun and then beat the Muslim youths, according to Western witnesses.
Croat police didn't intervene during the melee.
Later, after a couple of hundred Muslims crossed the line, the police briefly arrested the Muslim youths -- along with another Muslim and one Croat -- for lacking proper identification.
The day held other bad news for international mediators. In Sarajevo, scores of ethnic Serbs moved out of their homes in suburbs scheduled to fall under the authority of the Muslim-Croat federation by March 19. NATO plans to begin the gradual transfer Friday.
The expected exodus was fomented by Bosnian Serb leaders in nearby Pale who pledged buses, fuel and food. The United Nations and other relief agencies refused to assist in their departures, however, and heavy snow dampened the mass flight. Moreover, there was scant evidence of the promised aid.
Tens of thousands of Serbs already have left Sarajevo's suburbs, but almost 50,000 remain, according to estimates by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Many want to leave. Others have indicated a desire to stay put despite efforts by Serb leaders and some local nationalists to force them out.
"This is all part of a campaign of manipulation to get the people out, to create a psychosis," said UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski.
Prospects for beleaguered Mostar appear equally bleak, with little movement toward unification after 10 months of intra-Muslim and Croat fighting and nearly two years of a shaky peace.
Joint Muslim-Croat police units were to begin patrolling Mostar's central district and citizens from each side were told they could pass unhindered beginning at noon under a deal worked out during talks in Rome between the Muslim and Croat mayors of the divided city. But it was only partly implemented.
Bosnian Croat police arrived late for their joint patrol with Muslim police, saying they lacked appropriate orders. Meanwhile, they maintained checkpoints along the city's dividing line, stopping cars and demanding identification papers. Cars with foreign plates and those containing journalists accredited by NATO were searched.
"I can't go to the other side and see my former home," said Senad Maric, a 35-year-old engineer, as he watched the Croat police from across the great divide.
"I tried to go across, but it was impossible. . . . The Croat police are criminals," he said.
European Union administrator Hans Koschnick said later at a news conference that all issues appeared to be resolved and that the agreement was being implemented. However, the only indication of any improvement was the belated presence of a joint Muslim-Croat patrol, accompanied by EU guides.
"I think it's OK for now," said Pandza Pero, a 26-year-old Bosnian Croat policeman from west Mostar. Asked whether the patrols should continue, he added: "Why not? I agree with this and hope everything will be OK. Things should be far better and move faster now."
But at nightfall, barriers were still in place in Croat sectors and non-uniformed officers could be seen stopping cars.
Many toted AK-47 assault rifles, ignoring the Rome mandate to carry only handguns.
"We've been getting the usual runaround," said one Western monitor. "There should be no checkpoints or random stops of cars. These police are only supposed to have normal police duties . . ."
According to the Rome agreement, Mostar is to be divided into seven districts. Three hold a Muslim majority; three others would have a preponderance of Croats. The seventh would be a central district administered by the EU and a city council comprising 16 Bosnian Muslims, 16 Croats and 7 ethnic Serbs.
Violence followed the announcement of the original plan two weeks ago after Croats expressed displeasure over the size of the central district. The weekend compromise between Mostar's two mayors shrank its size.
Muslims and Croats were to have full freedom of movement last December, after a similar deal was worked out and then dashed.
"We are doing what we can to establish some security here," said the EU's Koschnick. "But, after such a war, you cannot expect people to forget what happened.

Chicago Tribune

February 17, 1996 Saturday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

BOSNIA 'TERRORIST' CAMP NEW TEST OF DAYTON PACT

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 990 words

DATELINE: PLANARISKI DOM, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Up past the sleepy village of Dusina and the silver-topped mosque that calls the minions to prayer rests a hiker's shack with a satellite dish powerful enough to get the word straight from Tehran and, before Friday, enough weapons and explosives to bring the message home.
But Thursday night, the Iranians and Bosnian soldiers who were using this remote compound as a base found two platoons of NATO soldiers and a ring of tanks at their doorstep. The visitors had one request: Come out with your hands up.
The operation marks the first time NATO troops have gone searching for foreign forces in Bosnia, whose presence in the region violates the Dayton peace agreement. And what they found was fertile ground for any espionage novel.
The house, 15 miles west of Sarajevo, was littered with weapons, had one special makeup room dedicated to the art of changing one's appearance and another with mockups of installations and buildings across Bosnia.
In other rooms, NATO soldiers found more than 60 AK-47 machine guns, silenced submachine guns and sniper rifles. There was a box of grenades and two artillery rounds, while distinguishing marks were scraped off some ammunition to thwart detection.
Most disturbing was a cache of ingenious bombs, some made out of children's toys.
"It doesn't take a genius to figure out what we found here is an abomination--clearly terrorist training activities," said U.S. Adm. Leighton Smith, commander of NATO forces in Bosnia, as he toured the area. "No one can escape the obvious, that there is terrorist training activity going on in this building and it has direct association with people in the (Bosnian) government."
The makeup room showed charts instructing how to change eye color using contact lenses, peroxide bottles to alter hair color, and beards or mustaches to hide appearance. In classrooms, instructors had laid out mockups of installations, some detailed to include little figures walking in and out of doorways. Notebooks detailed the daily lives of possible targets, and manuals showed how to build bombs out of trinkets and toys.
"There is no military value to these types of devices; rigging toys is an act of terror," said Col. Brian Hoey, a NATO spokesman. Another spokesman, Col. John T. Kirkwood, added: "I never saw John Wayne rip the head off a plastic dog and throw it."
The raid came just before a scheduled weekend meeting in Rome where the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia are to discuss a host of fissures that have developed in the Dayton peace accords.
Prisoners of war are still being held by the Bosnian government, in violation of the accords, and the Muslim-Croat federation has been splintering in Mostar.
Until Friday, the Bosnian Serbs had continued to snub both NATO and the federation, after several of their military officers were detained by the Bosnian government. Two of them, high-ranking officers, were flown to the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague for investigation of war crimes. Despite that, the Bosnian Serbs on Friday restored some of the contacts.
Thursday's raid on the suspected Islamic terrorist cell solved two of NATO's chief problems, placating Serb officials who see the peacekeeping force as pro-Muslim and giving NATO a weapon to get the Bosnian government to comply with all aspects of the Dayton accords.
NATO said it was turning over all the suspects to the Bosnian government for further investigation, adding that it is not a court.
"We are only authorized to detain, investigate and then turn over to appropriate authorities," said Col. Hoey. "We have no prisons, no courts, no judges and no juries for these individuals. The Bosnian government has the clear obligation to deal with these people within their own system of justice and in fact has given assurances that they will do so."
But this change of jurisdiction could create problems. So far, the Bosnian government has denied that the camp was anything other than an anti-terrorist training ground, meant to keep subversive Serbs from wreaking havoc across the country. Bosnian officials say that the camp has been around since before the war and that the Iranian instructors--all of which, they say, have diplomatic status as employees of the Iranian Embassy in Sarajevo--are specialists in their field.
"What hurts me a lot is that these guys say this is terrorism, but look at the Bosnian government's record," complained Mirza Hajdzic, a Bosnian Foreign Ministry official. "We have never been accused of any form of terrorism. We have been known throughout the world as a victim of it, not one who organizes it.
"This is very damaging," he added. "A day before the Rome summit we have this raid which could have happened a month ago or days ago. If they know every grave in Srebrenica, they must have known about this high-priority intelligence building and what is happening there. There was a clear political intention to make a political stir."
But the Bosnian government's explanation of why Iranians were teaching anti-terrorist methods, or why they would be using a large and unique supply of home-made explosives in their curriculum, seemed curious to most defense experts.
"I would expect them to have a black museum of things, with all the nasties around," said Paul Beaver, a senior analyst with Jane's Defense Information Group in London. "But this smacks to me of a terrorist organization."
NATO also has found the logic somewhat sketchy, saying that the Bosnian government should limit its anti-terrorist activities to standard methods and not hire Iranians to instruct, given the perceived threat seen from Islamic extremists in the country.
Pointing to an airline ticket belonging to one of the instructors, one American intelligence officer at the scene said, "One of these guys caught here still has an open ticket to get him back to Tehran."

The New York Times

February 17, 1996, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

NATO Links Bosnia Government To Training Center for Terrorists

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1135 words

DATELINE: DUSINA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Feb. 16

Angry NATO officers said today that a building near Sarajevo that they raided on Thursday had been a terrorist training center, run with the connivance of the Bosnian Government.
The NATO forces, who were from from France, arrested 10 men, including 3 Iranians, in the raid.
The three-story chalet, 20 miles west of Sarajevo, had been rented by the Bosnian Government and used by Interior Ministry forces, at least until recently.
Inside the NATO troops found 60 weapons, explosives, instructions for laying mines and an array of booby-trapped objects, including toys and household items.
It had a special makeup room for disguises and another with mock-ups of installations and buildings, some showing little figures going in and out of doors.
Notebooks laid out the daily timetables of possible targets, while others showed students' grades for planning well done.
There was no immediate evidence linking the house to any particular terrorist attacks, on Bosnian Serb or other targets. But the nature of the materials discovered and the presence of foreigners -- possibly illegal under the peace agreement -- caused what may be the biggest rift so far between the Muslim-dominated Government of Bosnia and the NATO forces sent here to enforce the peace.
The Bosnian Government vigorously denied that the camp was used by Islamic fighters, saying NATO has misunderstood what is an anti-terrorist operation being conducted by the Bosnian Army with the help of foreign experts.
President Alija Izetbegovic told reporters today that three of the men detained had diplomatic status, suggesting that they might be employed by the Iranian Embassy in Sarajevo.
And a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mirza Hajric, added that the center had existed since before the Bosnian war.
"What hurts me a lot is that these guys say this is terrorism, but look at the Bosnian Government's record," he complained. "We have never been accused of any form of terrorism. We have been known throughout the world as a victim of it, not one who organizes it.
"This is very damaging. There was a clear political intention to make a political stir."
But Adm. Leighton W. Smith Jr., the American commander of NATO forces in Bosnia, said as he toured the area: "It doesn't take a genius to figure out what we found here is an abomination. No one can escape the obvious, that there is terrorist training activity going on in this building and it has direct association with people in the Government."
The raid comes just before an emergency meeting this weekend in Rome, called by the United States and its NATO allies, with the Presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. The meeting is intended to improve compliance with the Dayton accords amid signs that the elaborate military and political settlement is fraying.
In the most recent threat to the accords, senior Serbian officers stopped communicating with NATO last week after several of their soldiers were detained by the Bosnian Government. Two were flown to the custody of the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague on suspicion of war crimes.
Despite the new friction with the Sarajevo Government, Thursday's raid helps solve at least one problem for NATO: It may reduce the perception on the part of the Serbs that NATO has not been even-handed in enforcing the agreement.
If the center was training terrorists, NATO officials were providing scanty details about what they were learning about possible targets.
While earlier intelligence reports had warned that Iranian-influenced fighters might make terrorist attacks on NATO forces in Bosnia, there was no indication today that NATO or American installations were singled out as targets in the materials found in the house.
NATO has called the Government's explanation disingenuous, saying that the Bosnian Ministry of Interior has every right to keep an intelligence force in its country but that it should draw the line at hiring Iranians to instruct them in building terrorist-type bombs, given the perceived threat from Islamic extremists in the country and the fact that doing so violates the peace accord.
"What is bothersome is the presence of Iranians on the ground," said an American intelligence officer at the site.
"There is no complaint that an intelligence school was run, but methods of terrorism and kidnapping which obviously violate international accords are our great concerns. And it appears that all the students were Bosnians and the instructors were Iranians, judging by the material on hand."
Pointing to a airline ticket on one of the tables, he added: "One of these guys caught here still has an open ticket to get him back to Teheran."
Picking up a thick folder, he added, "The name of this document is the special operations project to kidnap the Serbian officer for liaison at the P.T.T. engineering building in Sarajevo." The Post and Telegraphs building is a former United Nations building, now occupied by NATO officials.
Another American officer leafed through a sketchbook of bombs and how they are set off. One picture showed a home-made mine with a child's sneaker placed to trip the firing pin.
"The terrorists obviously didn't get any classes on the Geneva convention," the officer said. "But as this picture illustrates, they did find out how to show a new and useful way to blow a child's sneakered foot off."
Nearby sat a "Manual for Terrorism," a photocopy of a document written in Persian and published only last December. A picture of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian revolutionary leader, hung on one wall, vying for prominence with several of President Izetbegovic. And a book titled "The Mission of Teheran" sat prominently on a bookshelf littered with Middle Eastern and Bosnian newspapers.
In a darkroom, pictures testing depth of field were pasted to a large plate of glass, while fake beards and mustaches, makeup and charts for changing eye color with contact lenses were pinned to the wall or left on the dressing table.
In other rooms, NATO soldiers found submachine guns with silencers, ammunition that had been alered to thwart detection, soft-nosed ammunition (which violates the Geneva Conventions), detonators and various types of explosives.
Booby-traps were being made out of household items and children's toys with radio-controlled detonators. These including a wired plastic ice-cream cone, a detergent bottle, homemade wooden pressure mines and a fruit jar filled with beans that would expand and set off a detonator when water was added.
"There is no military value to these types of devices," said Col. Brian Hoey, a NATO spokesman. "Rigging toys is an act of terror,"
Col. John T. Kirkwood, another American officer here, added, "I never saw John Wayne rip the head off a plastic dog and throw it."

Chicago Tribune

February 10, 1996 Saturday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

BOSNIAN WAR TURNED BOY INTO BUSINESSMAN

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 1002 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina

For 15-year-old Safet Somo, life is measured in chocolate, cigarettes, potato chips and the proximity of dreams.
He is a hawker on the black market in this war-ravaged city, one of a growing cast of child workers whose parents and older siblings have either been taken away by war or been rendered incapable of holding a job.
Some of the youths, usually in their early teens, support entire families from what they earn as translators for foreign journalists or as sellers on the black market--or through stealing and begging.
"The roles have been reversed in Bosnia," said Kris Janowski, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. "These were kids whose parents used to buy them cars and apartments. Now, even the most spoiled daughter has found herself supporting her daddy. These children have become the breadwinners of their family."
These days, Safet stands along Sarajevo's pedestrian walkway, hawking cigarettes and anything else he can lay his hands on to Western soldiers and aid workers flocking to the Bosnian capital. But, where once the young businessman thought only of survival, he now dreams of owning a store with proper credentials and is saving for the future.
"Peace has come, so I want to be a somebody," he said. "And I will be a somebody. I will have a nice store, be nicely dressed, have a nice car and find a beautiful, clever and honest wife who loves me for who I am, not how rich I have become."
In many ways, Safet has returned to his condition before the war. In 1992, he was the sort to fit in any Norman Rockwell painting. A small bundle of energy with a ready smile, Safet could be seen riding his bicycle around town, pulling pranks on girls or playing soccer with his friends.
Then shells started raining on Sarajevo, and Safet tucked away his childhood to become a man. Those who didn't follow suit didn't last, he said.
"The war changed our lives," he said. "One day barricades went up and the stores were emptied of food. There were policemen telling everyone to take it all because there wouldn't be any more. In one moment, everything was destroyed.
"We had to grow up in order to survive," he added. "I sold my last bicycle in 1993 because I knew that riding it around would increase my chances of getting shot. My family couldn't afford that."
In the beginning, Safet and his friends would hitch rides on the back of UN armored personnel carriers to the United Nations bases and cadge food from peacekeepers. But by the time Safet parted with his last bicycle for five gallons of milk, he had reached a new level of graft and charm.
For months, he had been deriving profit from goods taken from the UN PX or delivered through a tunnel that runs beneath Sarajevo. Sugar and other staples sometimes sold for close to $80 a pound. Safet bartered his precious five gallons of milk for cigarettes, which even today are given out as change in many shops. The deal put food on Safet's table for a week.
While UNICEF has found that a disturbing number of children in Bosnia have resorted to theft and panhandling to get by--usually because of separation or the death of older family members--many of these youngsters, like Safet, have grown into savvy businessmen with considerable tenacity.
It was a lesson brought about by necessity, and a show of resilience that is now being put to good use in peacetime.
Safet said his father was an alcoholic: "My mother got rid of him (when Safet was two) after he began selling the furniture out of the apartment."
After the war began, in April 1992, his mother could not get work. That forced Safet to grow up quickly. He is now the caretaker for eight family members, including his grandmother and several other elderly relatives.
He also is the man of the house, responsible for keeping seven different illegal electricity lines connected to the family apartment, just in case the allotted power supply is cut off again. A ready supply of canned food is stocked in the closet, he added, in case there's another siege of the city.
Sitting at the table, counting out his earnings after a day of school and selling, Safet noted that austerity measures had to be applied at his house early in the war. The explanation was an attempt to discourage a foreign journalist from offering American cigarettes to the boy's relatives.
"I used to bring home Marlboros for my mother," he said, adding that he doesn't smoke because it's bad for the health. "But I had to wean her off them and get her smoking our Drina cigarettes. I just couldn't afford the imported ones anymore. I don't want her to start missing them again."
Profit is important in Safet's life and high points are clocked in monetary percentages. Like a baseball player remembering his best games, Safet can spend hours recalling good buys and busy days of selling--measured one chocolate bar, or cigarette pack, at a time.
His most memorable day, he added, was last Christmas when the 10 p.m. curfew wasn't enforced and he sold 300 chocolate bars in the cold night air to strolling lovers--for a profit of nearly $300.
"I don't have so many problems," he said, easing back in a rickety kitchen chair that dwarfed his small size. "It's not so difficult to support my family because I have learned this life."
But other sellers and even police are a constant threat. Only the generous cops turn a blind eye to black-marketeers, or accept a few chocolate bars as a bribe. There have been many days when Safet has lost it all and spent the night in jail. He already has hatched plans for a postwar job that would be a little more secure. One thousand dollars will get him in the door of a building in the town center, he explained. There he will open a mixed shop with a grill and start his legitimate conquest of Sarajevo real estate.
"I want out of the black market because it's full of bad people, scavengers without morals," he said. "I don't want to end up like that."

Chicago Tribune

February 9, 1996 Friday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

WITH BOSNIA PEACE AT RISK, U.S. TRIES SOME JAWBONING

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune. Tribune wires contributed to this report.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 825 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Alarmed that the Bosnia peace accord may be in danger, the U.S. dispatched its chief mediator back to the Balkans Thursday as American officials warned that further moves against suspected war criminals in Bosnia could derail cooperation between the warring factions.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher sent Richard Holbrooke to talk to the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia about the most serious stumbling block to emerge so far in the Balkan peace process--the recent arrest by Muslim authorities of top Serb military commanders on charges of participating in genocide.
In retaliation for the arrests, Bosnian Serbs on Thursday broke off cooperation with NATO-led military forces attempting to enforce the Dayton peace accord. They also blocked civilians from moving freely through the areas they control, a key tenet of the peace agreement, and threatened to detain Muslims or Croats crossing into Serb territory.
Christopher acted after talking to Presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia from his plane on a flight to Helsinki from the Middle East. On landing, he also talked to Croatian President Franjo Tudjman.
"This problem is rather important that he would call all three leaders," State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said. "The United States is sending a strong signal to all the parties that the United States wants the Dayton accords fully implemented."
Burns said the disposition of the Serbian prisoners should be decided by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Those not suspected of war crimes should be released, he said.
But he added, "We believe it is important to follow up on all cases of possible atrocities."
Besides the tension over the war-crimes issue, the peace process has been threatened this week by violent protests in Mostar against efforts to reunite Croat and Muslim parts of the city.
One American adviser said the international community must tread carefully in pursuing suspected war criminals.
"We have to look at the larger context of what we are trying to do here," he said. "Our approach should be to let the democratic process take over and hope that these bottom-feeders float out of power.
"We know that (they) went out and personally targeted and shelled civilians, but we should be attempting to implement a militarily stable environment that will lead to democratic reformation."
The Serbs, angered by losses of territory under the Dayton plan and suspecting that NATO is biased against them, have curtailed their meetings with both civilian and military negotiators from the international community, who are attempting to work out the issues yet to be resolved--chiefly the orderly return of Serb-held land around Sarajevo to the Muslim-Croat federation and the peaceful reunification of Mostar.
NATO's Implementation Force (IFOR) generally has been wary of capturing indicted war criminals, such as Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic or his army commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, for fear that doing so would expand the military's role beyond its original mission and complicate the demilitarization of Bosnia.
For the same reason, IFOR has been slow to guard sites of possible mass graves in the Serb republic. Some of these sites have been tampered with in the months since the peace accord was signed in December.
"Going out now to search out war criminals is simply not an efficient use of resources, and it causes problems for the greater goal," said the American adviser. "Let the democratic process take over here, then let the government go out and get the bad guys."
Indictments of Bosnian Croat war criminals caused similar friction late last year, with federation officials maintaining that prosecution would again turn Muslims and Croats against one another. The two sides fought a 10-month war in 1993 in which many atrocities were reported.
Some of the Croats charged by the war crimes tribunal, such as Dario Kordic, former president of the Croat party in Bosnia, and Gen. Tihomir Blaskic, former commander of the Bosnian Croat forces and now an inspector in neighboring Croatia's army, remain politically powerful in the Croat-held sections of Bosnia and are friends with the nationalist Croat regime ruling west Mostar.
These forces have violently protested a European Union plan that would have called for them to share power with Muslims in a unified city. The Croat government in Mostar this week broke off all ties with EU chief arbitrator Hans Koschnick.
"None of this looks good for the peace,"said Paul Beaver, a senior analyst with Jane's Defense Information Group in London, referring to the war-crimes and reunification disputes.
"No one is denying that these crusades for criminals is the righteous thing to do, but at the end of the day, you have to look at what you have: Is it going to achieve the peace or put blocks in the way?"

Chicago Tribune

February 4, 1996 Sunday, CHICAGOLAND EDITION

SURVIVORS OF SREBRENICA PROTEST;
THEY PRESS OFFICIALS TO HELP FIND MISSING RELATIVES

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 9; ZONE: C

LENGTH: 741 words

DATELINE: TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

As Srebrenica fell to invading Serbs, 42-year-old Neza said goodby to her son, a 27-year-old Bosnian soldier heading for the woods. Then she prayed that they would one day meet again.
"He told me not to worry," she said, wiping her eyes "He told me that we would see each other safely in Tuzla, and then he rushed into the trees. But I have not seen him since, and I fear now he is dead."
Neza and hundreds of other irate refugees staged a series of protests in Tuzla last week, hoping to draw attention to the more than 8,000 missing men from Srebrenica.
They have stormed the local offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, held silent vigils on the streets and thrown rocks at the offices of their government, who they see as partly to blame for Srebrenica's fall and as unresponsive.
Their wish is that someone go to their former home, tag the dead and find the missing.
"I saw hundreds killed when our town fell. The Serbs threw the bodies into the river and hauled them into body bags," said Kadeja Husic, 51, who is also missing her son. "But we know there are prison camps there still. My only hope is that my boy is in one. I must go to Srebrenica to get him out."
Some refugees who escaped the enclave have reported seeing labor camps where their countrymen were forced to work in mines or sweep local streets.
Although the Red Cross has no evidence of Srebrenica Muslims being kept in such conditions, the existence of these camps has become a slim dream for the refugees to hold, leading some on Friday to travel to the Bosnian capital Sarajevo to pressure Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic to go search for the missing.
Others, like Neza, chose a more confrontational approach in Tuzla, throwing rocks and loud voices at the local government building. "We throw rocks because we are angry and unhappy that they won't speak to us," said Azemina Smajic, a 24-year-old refugee. "We are asking for our human rights. We want this situation resolved as soon as possible."
Demonstrators on Friday turned violent after the canton president tried to avoid the protest. When he refused to talk to the protesters, most moved into the streets, banging on cars and throwing debris. Some police responded with clubs.
"We did some bad things today, no one should have been hit," said one police officer. "But this has gone on for four days, and we have no real orders to tell us how to control them. I feel for what pains them, but I must do my duty here. I just wish they would stop."
The protesters say they will continue their vigil until all those who vanished from Srebrenica are accounted for, either dead or alive. Their one obsession now is the fall of their town and the relatives who they fear have died.
"I fought my way through the front lines to make it to freedom," said one 35-year-old soldier nicknamed Concrete for his strength. "But my two brothers did not make it. I am free but for what. I have no family anymore.
"We sat on our lines for eight days without food or sleep, digging trenches and waiting for our government to send us ammunition. We did not need much, but they failed us like the international community did," he added. "No one has ever cared about the people of Srebrenica."
Mass graves are believed to be all over Bosnia. NATO's top commander there, U.S. Adm. Leighton Smith, has estimated there are up to 300, and reporters and war crimes investigators often happen upon freshly-tilled earth containing bones and tattered clothing.
Excavation began Friday on one of those possible sites in the northern Bosnian town of Jajce. A team led by United Nations war crimes investigator Manfred Nowak went to the Croat-held town after recent flooding uncovered three graves thought to contain the bodies of 46 Bosnian Croats killed by the Serbs. The first five bodies were exhumed from a nearby ditch Friday.
It is the likely fate of most Srebrenica men, who were either rounded up in Bosnian Serb prison camps or chased through the dense brush that surrounds the enclave.
"I have to believe some are still alive," said 22-year-old Sabahudin, who escaped through the woods. "But I know that of the thousands that fled with me, most were killed along the way. Survival was all luck.
"More than 10,000 fled like me but only a few thousand came out after being hunted. I cannot say what happened to all, but I know what happened to most."

The New York Times

February 3, 1996, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

THE BOSNIA ACCORD: IN TUZLA;
Women Demand News of Srebrenica's Men

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 6; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 869 words

DATELINE: TUZLA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Feb. 2

As rocks whistled by and the police clubbed her friends, 40-year-old Hasija stood silently in a corner today, huddled in the bitter cold. The other women threw stones and released their anger in painful screams, while she thought only about Medin, her 14-year-old son, and the day Bosnian Serb soldiers ripped him from her arms.
"He had clung to me so tightly after they invaded Srebrenica," she said of her tall, frail boy. "But I was afraid to say anything when they took him, and they didn't talk. I can remember his face as I boarded the bus to get away. Little Medin had started to cry. I haven't seen him since."
During the last few days, the weeping women, who were driven out of Srebrenica in July, have demonstrated by the hundreds in front of relief organizations and government buildings, hoping to draw attention to the plight of more than 8,000 men missing after the Bosnian Serbs overran Srebrenica.
Some of the women have sacked the local offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and thrown rocks at the Muslim-Croatian Federation building nearby. Others have shown up only to wait for a sign that someone cares.
"This is our wound," said a fellow protester, Naza, 52, who fears her son, 12 cousins and 47 neighbors are dead. "That is why we are here. The war has ended and we want to see our fathers and brothers again. We must find out what happened to them. We must know if they are dead or alive." Like Hasija, she would not give her last name for fear that any surviving relatives might be killed.
There is evidence that thousands of the missing men were killed by Bosnian Serb forces while fleeing Srebrenica through the woods. But the refugees say believe that some are still alive in Serbian prison camps, a hope that has added urgency to their pleas and sometimes led to conflict with the authorities.
Then there is the specter of the mass graves. The first suspected gravesite to be exhumed was opened today in Jajce, and it gave up five bodies.
Today's demonstration turned violent after the local canton president, Izet Hodzic, drove his black limousine erratically across the pavement in an attempt to subvert the angry crowd. Protesters ran after his car, blocked the street and began throwing debris at traffic and at the local government building. Some of the protesters began arguing with the police, who cordoned off the building, and several small melees resulted. A few police officers also tried to push journalists out of the area, much to the chagrin of protesters.
"We will tell him our story, and you and your clubs can't stop us," shouted one elderly protester as she stood between a burly officer and a reporter. "What gives you the right to keep us down?"
One policeman admitted that he felt frustrated. These were his people, after all, and their men had fought for the country, he said. Now he was being asked to keep them from their Government.
"We did some bad things today," he said. "No one should have been hit. But this has gone on for more than four days, and we have no real orders to tell us how to control them. I feel for what pains them, but I must do my duty here. I just wish they would stop." Like the women, he would not give his name.
The protesters have promised to continue their vigils until all those who vanished after the fall of Srebrenica are accounted for. Fifty protesters set out in a bus provided by Tuzla officials today for Sarajevo to force a meeting with the Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegovic. They have threatened to drive all the way to Srebrenica to search the area themselves.
Evidence of atrocities has continued to mount since the NATO-led peacekeeping force deployed across Bosnia. Following the forces to territory they have secured, war crimes investigators and others have happened upon strangely altered fields around the Serbian-held town of Brcko, where many killings are said to have taken place, as well as similar sites in the Srebrenica pocket.
NATO's top commander in Bosnia, Adm. Leighton Smith of the United States, said last week that he believed that between 200 and 300 mass graves are scattered across Bosnia, mainly in Serbian territory.
Sometimes searchers have found torn snatches of clothing, crutches or identity cards. Others have identified skulls and femurs sticking from the soggy earth.
And today, when the first official excavation began in the Croatian-held town of Jajce, Manfred Nowak, a war crimes investigator, oversaw the exhumation of the five bodies from a ditch that is believed to hold at least 40 more.
That is a small number compared with the thousands in the prayers of the women in Tuzla. Although the Red Cross has no evidence of Srebrenica Muslims being kept in forced labor, refugees who escaped the enclave -- many after hiding for months -- have said such camps exist. And women like Hasija cling to that thin strand of hope.
"I cry all the time now," said Hasija, her hazel eyes deadened after months of not knowing. "He will be 15 years old on May 26, but I don't know where he is, and no one will help me find him. That is why I am here, why we are all here: Our men and children are missing. And they must be found."

The New York Times

February 3, 1996, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

THE BOSNIA ACCORD: IN SARAJEVO;
Across a Balkan Bridge, the Barriers of Hate and Suspicion Linger

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 6; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1134 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Feb. 1

Guarding his post on the Brotherhood and Unity bridge, Sinisa Jovic, a Bosnian Serb policeman, had a message for his best friend, a Muslim in the part of the city the Bosnian Serbs had shelled and besieged.
"Go tell him that if he comes here I will guarantee that no one will touch one hair on his head," said the 31-year-old former soldier. "And ask him if it will be safe for me to come there, so we can again drink coffee together and talk about the old times that were. He is my friend and I have no other."
Where once armed Serbs sat stony-faced, 60 feet from their enemies in the Bosnian capital, they now drink toasts to the end of the war and daydream about the cosmopolitan city they fled.
It is a reflection of the change they see across the Miljacka River, in the Government-controlled center of town. From their perches over the last two months, they have watched Sarajevo come alive with the bustle of people and the rush of trams. They have heard the distant thumping of discos and have seen empty buildings turned into shiny coffee bars.
Their neighborhood, Grbavica, sits in stark contrast to this economic regeneration. On the southern edge of the city, it remains a chilly grouping of damaged high-rises and former sniper nests, where all streets are marked by rows of protective shields. Under the terms of the Dayton peace agreement, even this dismal sanctuary will soon be lost, formally coming under Government control next month.
The peace accord guarantees the rights and property of Serbs who remain in Grbavica, but few say they will risk staying. Where to go remains a problem.
Most of the Bosnian Serb republic is composed of villages, where foreign languages and university education are not prized, where the main export is wood, not art, music or education. And for the men on the bridge -- like many residents of Sarajevo's suburbs, well educated and accustomed to urban society -- a sadness has crept from the peace, a longing for the eclectic trappings of the city they tried to kill.
"Before the war, I had a country," said another Bosnian Serb policeman, 28-year-old Risto Bebarovic. "Now I have nothing. Over there, they have cars, apartments, culture and a country. I have the Bosnian Serb republic but I have no heart for this place.
"During New Year's Eve, I could see the tram moving in the night picking up people in what was once my neighborhood and I began to cry. Sometimes I regret crossing the bridge."
Mr. Bebarovic grew up in Sarajevo, learned English, became an electrical engineer, and fell in love with a young Muslim girl. He never planned on leaving. But in 1992, as war broke out, he and his Serbian friends said they were pushed to chose sides.
Some Bosnian Serbs took up arms and sowed terror in their own city. Others just left, overcome by worry that they might become victims of Muslims. They now have a wasteland to ponder.
Shaking his head at his dismal prospects, Mr. Bebarovic recalled the day he slipped away across the bridge into Grbavica.
"I had gone down to the coffee bar, 20 feet from my home," he said clenching his jaw. "But when I asked for a brandy, the waiter told me he had none. I tried to get a beer, then a coffee. He had none for Serbs. After that I stayed awake all night, worried that they would come for me. Finally, by the morning, I had crossed to the other side and lost everything."
Mr. Jovic and Mr. Bebarovic are now trying to rekindle their connections in the city, hoping that old friends will guide them back into the lives they once had. But their return is fraught with difficulties. The Bosnian Government has yet to offer amnesty to its former enemies. It also keeps records on all Serbs who left Sarajevo and has put together lists of complaints against those who might have committed crimes.
The war has left old friendships tattered and vague, more things of suspicion than cherished memories. And there is plenty of hate to go around.
Mr. Jovic's friend, 31-year-old Mevludin Kaljanac, now sits in the Dayton Cafe, covered with scars and hobbling to the cash register on an artificial leg, a replacement for the leg he lost in a battle for a hill near Sarajevo. Tapping his prosthetic limb under the dim fluorescent light, Mr. Kaljanac said he was once a soccer player and judo expert, sports he played with Mr. Jovic as a boy. But now, he said, people who left the city and then fired on its people are no longer welcome.
"I am not the President, so I can't decide who comes into the city," he said. "He can come if he wants. But I think it's better if he just stays away."
Where Mr. Jovic grew up, less than a mile from his post on the bridge, houses sit largely vacant due to shells and sniping from Grbavica, and his neighbors while away hours talking about close calls and the young dead. They recall Mr. Jovic as a good youth who one day abandoned them. They wonder if over the years he fired some of those deadly shots into their midst or committed crimes in Grbavica. If he didn't, they know his compatriots did.
"I have lost a lot in this war," Mr. Kaljanac said. "Look at me, I don't even have my leg. Sinisa was my best friend but I can't remember the good friendship anymore. All things are different now."

The New York Times

January 31, 1996, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Symbol of Inhumanity in Bosnia Now Says 'Not Me'

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 6; Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1078 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jan. 30

Thin and pale, Borislav Herak does not fit the picture of the rapist and killer he confessed to being nearly three years ago. He is quiet and subdued, an ex-store clerk residing in a 6-by-12 foot prison cell.
He shocked the world, after his arrest by Bosnian forces in early 1993, with his meticulous, deadpan accounts of systematic murder and rape, wielded by the Serbs as deliberate tactics of war.
Now, as he appeals the death penalty imposed on him after his conviction by the Bosnian Government for crimes against humanity, he has changed his tune.
"It was a mistake," he said simply, lighting a cigarette under the watchful gaze of a guard. "I was forced to speak against myself and my comrades in the Serb republic. But I didn't do anything."
"I saw other people killed but not by me," he added. "I was present when Serbs killed 150 civilians and buried them in a cemetery. And I heard of Serb soldiers raping. But I didn't do anything."
His case, and that of an accomplice, 35-year-old Sretko Damjanovic, transfixed Bosnia and horrified the world in March 1993, as both men became symbols of a Serb-orchestrated genocide against Muslims.
At the time of the trial, Mr. Herak described himself as a foot-soldier in a march to a greater Serbia, a man trained to kill by repeatedly slitting the throats of pigs and taught to hate through the ingestion of videotapes his commanders said showed Muslims butchering his people.
Dozens of journalists made pilgrimages to the regional jail in Sarajevo to hear his grisly accounts of abducting women from Serb-run prison camps near Sarajevo, raping them, then dumping their lifeless bodies along nearby hills. Other times, he recalled the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslim villages, where his commanders encouraged him to rob and then kill the inhabitants.
At least some of those interviews were out of earshot of Bosnian guards, and his accounts -- which effectively indicted Bosnian Serb leaders for pushing their troops to commit terrible acts -- were widely seen as credible.
"They said the rapes would be good for the Serbian fighters' morale," Mr. Herak explained at his trial. The killing of young women, he said, "was being done to take revenge on Muslims, who had done the same thing in World War II to Serbian women."
Now Mr. Herak protests his innocence, saying that the tales of conquest and monotone recollections of brutality were a result of beatings and threats by his prison guards. They were looking for a scapegoat to the ills that had befallen their nascent country, he says, and knew that Mr. Herak, who is slightly retarded, would provide the vessel.
"I was tortured, forced to confess," he explained, hunching over his bunk. "I was given 60 pages to learn by heart and recite. I was afraid for my father, afraid they might kill him because of me."
"I said what I did to survive," he added. "Otherwise he and I would have been dead in a day. But I talked and here I am still alive."
The Bosnian Government has no witnesses to the killings and has recovered no bodies. But Mr. Herak and Mr. Damjanovic were seen at several detention camps by inmates who were later traded in prisoner exchanges, and at least one man testified that the pair had tried to kill him before he escaped.
Both Mr. Herak and Mr. Damjanovic were convicted of crimes against humanity that included killing more than 20 Muslim civilians in Ahatovici, six miles northwest of Sarajevo, and raping and shooting 10 Muslim women held captive outside the town of Vogosca. Both men were sentenced to death; their cases are still on appeal.
The Bosnian Government, which captured the pair after Mr. Herak took a wrong turn near Sarajevo and ran into a Government roadblock, has been slow to press forward on the death penalty, hoping that international war crimes investigators will find enough evidence to charge the two men separately in The Hague, a Government official said. The international war crimes tribunal would not comment on the case.
Mr. Damjanovic also confessed before his trial, and also retracted the confession. And, as Mr. Herak is now doing, he also complained of being beaten and stabbed by guards.
But Mr. Damjanovic is not rallying to Mr. Herak's side. Like his former friend, who now says that it was the other "bad" Serbs who did the killing, Mr. Damjanovic professes his own innocence, yet can seem a font of information about Mr. Herak's crimes.
"Let Herak talk if he wants, but it's all lies," said Mr. Damjanovic, his bald head peeking out from under a gray knit prison cap. "Now he says he didn't do anything. Well, that is a guy that I know pretty well. He's not really clean, if you know what I mean. He never was. He's an animal. They never should have given him a gun."
"Now take a look at me," he said. "I'm someone who's clean. I never hurt anybody in my life. I want them to send me to The Hague to prove it."
Esad Osmanbegovic, the prison warden, said that it was possible the two were mistreated in the moments following their capture, but that they have received the utmost courtesy while incarcerated.
Mr. Osmanbegovic said he had no doubt that Mr. Herak and his accomplice were guilty. And he was not surprised by the defendant's new story, saying that Mr. Herak had reworked his tale several times during the past year. Echoing Mr. Damjanovic, he also called Mr. Herak a "psychopath" who could not be trusted in any civilized population.
"He used to have nightmares about all the horrible things he had done, and the confessions proved therapeutic," said the warden from his office below the prison. "It stabilized him mentally and we were even able to take him off medication."
Outside Mr. Herak's prison cell, children now play in the streets he once walked and cars leisurely waltz along what was for most of the past four years known as "Sniper Alley." By comparison, Mr. Herak sits in a dimly lit cell where his only form of entertainment is sticking on his wall pictures of Barbie dolls taken from gum wrappers. The peace filters through his window, giving Mr. Herak a hankering for a new life.
"I didn't say anything then because of the way things were," he said, noting that the prison now has civilian guards. "I never thought I would get out of jail.
"Now the war has ended," he continued, "and we have democracy. The circumstances are different and I want my case heard."
He added: "If I go to The Hague, I'll tell them I'm 100 percent innocent."


GRAPHIC: Photo: Borislav Herak, whose confession to murder and rape in Bosnia focused world attention on "ethnic cleansing," now says he is innocent. (Kit R. Roane for The New York Times)

The New York Times

January 30, 1996, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Bosnia P.O.W. Releases Gain, Slowly

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 4; Column 4; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1017 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jan. 29

Bosnia's warring factions inched closer today to meeting their agreements to exchange prisoners of war, although they are more than a week behind the schedule contained in the Dayton peace accord and have yet to free at least 112 prisoners known to be held.
During the last 10 days, more than 500 prisoners have been released by all sides, including more than 160 people freed yesterday and today, among them a 16-month-old girl born in a Serbian jail. The prisoner exchanges came after a slow and tenuous start that stumbled on mutual accusations of bad faith and the Bosnian Government's declared intention to link any exchanges to an accounting of several thousand missing civilians from Srebrenica.
While officers from the NATO-led implementation force known as IFOR, which monitors compliance with the Dayton accords, praised the latest releases, they added that some prisoners were still being held, including some who have been accused of war crimes. The International Committee of the Red Cross has also been denied access to the Bosnian Government's military prison in Tuzla, where many of soldiers are thought to be incarcerated.
"They are certainly catching up with the terms of the Dayton agreement, " Lieut. Col Brian Hoey, a spokesman for the NATO-led force, said today in Sarajevo. "However, they still remain in a state of noncompliance as long as one single prisoner remains in their jails."
According to the Red Cross, the Bosnian Serbs are known to be holding 25 Bosnian soldiers, including 3 under investigation for war crimes. Of the 54 people being held by Croatian forces, 50 are under investigation, while the fate of 10 Croats and Serbs hinges on the outcome of an investigation the Bosnian Government. Due to their inability to visit the Tuzla prison, Red Cross officials cannot find out the exact number of prisoners being held by the Bosnian Government.
The Bosnian Government also charges, without providing evidence, that the Serbs are holding thousands more civilians and soldiers in labor camps and other kinds of detention. Outside officials have been skeptical of those allegations.
The Dayton agreement allows for the detention of suspected war criminals for "a period of time sufficient to permit appropriate consultation with tribunal authorities." But the thinly worded section gives no further guidance as to what period of time is sufficient.
An aid worker acknowledged that there was growing concern that the loophole might allow the parties to detain innocent men as a way to keep leverage on their former enemies. "Although it is up to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague to look into this, if the period of time begins to get excessive, pressure may have to be exerted to correct the problem," he said.
The Red Cross is also worried about the exchanges of civilians that have continued at a feverish clip around the Bosnian Government-controlled town of Sanski Most and the Serb military capital of Banja Luka. Scores of Serbian and Muslim refugees crossed the confrontation lines in those areas on Saturday; most of them were elderly or infirm. In interviews with aid workers, many refugees complained that they had been pressured to leave.
Continued frustration over the fate of more than 8,000 Muslims missing from Srebrenica turned into angry protest today in Tuzla, where American forces are based. Several hundred women supported by club-wielding men broke into the Red Cross office in the eastern Bosnia town and threatened the delegation there as the Bosnian police stood by.
"It has been 200 days since the fall of Srebrenica and they found 200 men -- one per day," said Fatima Huseinovic, one of the leaders of the protest, as other women hoisted banners reading, "Give us back our fathers, sons and husbands," and "Where are the 3,000 missing from Potocari?"
She added, "We will have to wait 30 years for all to be accounted for."
Srebrenica, once protected by the United Nations as a so-called safe area, was overrun by Serb forces in July, causing thousands of Muslim men, women and children to flee into the nearby woods. At least 3,000 were captured and are thought to have been executed at a prison camp in Potocari. Some 5,000 others who tried to cross the Serbian-held mountains into Government-controlled territory vanished.
Although the Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica allowed war crimes investigators to tour the area after being pressured by President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, the Serbian police there have continued to tightly cordon the town and regularly turn away journalists.
Such checkpoints are in violation of the Dayton agreement, which forces all parties to allow freedom of movement. But the NATO force has been loath to challenge such obstructions.
The NATO force has also turned a blind eye toward growing harassment of Muslim and Croatian civilians in the Serb-held suburb, which like most of Serbian Sarajevo will fall under Muslim and Croatian control in March. "Our role is to provide a secure military environment, not become civilian police," said Lieut. Col. Kevin Arnold, a NATO spokesman. "Our presence will help overall security but military policing is different from civilian policing."
The United Nations has 300 unarmed civilian police officers monitoring conditions in Bosnia, a job that was estimated to require 1,700 officers, according to a United Nations spokesman, Alexander Ivanko. So far, they have been able to do little about the mistreatment of civilians and they have complained about being harassed themselves in the Banja Luka region.
In what some aid workers worried may be a trend, Kris Janowski, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said he has confirmed cases of elderly Croats and Muslims in Grbavica being verbally abused and robbed.
"Sometimes thugs are going into houses and telling the occupants not even to think about staying in Grbavica and then proceed to take stuff," he said. "Unfortunately, we don't know if this is widespread. It could be just the tip of the iceberg because people are afraid to talk."

Chicago Tribune

January 22, 1996 Monday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

SUSPECTED GRAVESITES INSPECTED;
U.S. OFFICIAL URGES NATO TO GUARD AREAS

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 884 words

DATELINE: GLOGOVA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

As Bosnian Serb police stood by and fumed, war crimes investigators on Sunday took their first steps to verify the murders of thousands of innocents in the fields, stadiums and factories surrounding Serb-held Srebrenica.
John Shattuck, U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights, and two investigators from the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague toured four sites where witnesses say thousands of Muslim civilians were slaughtered last summer.
"We have seen overwhelming evidence of horrible crimes against humanity," said Shattuck, standing on the soggy black earth of one site. "This has been an opportunity to see at first hand evidence of eyewitness accounts. The factory, the gymnasium, the soccer stadium--those remain just as described by witnesses of mass executions.
"We believe that up to 7,000 people are missing," he said. "I'm afraid their fate could well be very clear from the mass graves and mass executions we've heard about in the area."
Sunday was the first time that war crimes investigators have been allowed to visit alleged mass grave sites near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica to document evidence against suspected war criminals. Saying investigators would return soon to begin exhumations, Shattuck called for NATO forces to protect the sites until then.
Bosnian Serbs reportedly have tried to destroy evidence at Srebrenica and other sites, including in the Prijedor area. The areas toured by Shattuck on Sunday were relatively untouched, the past still visible on blood-splattered walls and under the snow-covered earth.
At a warehouse near the town of Glogova, 10 miles northwest of Srebrenica, Shattuck reported seeing large holes and specks of blood on walls, both consistent with eyewitness reports that Muslims were herded into the building and then annihilated by machine-guns and grenades.
According to witnesses, Bosnian Serb forces lured Muslims from the surrounding hills by donning uniforms stolen from United Nations peacekeepers and telling their intended victims that the International Red Cross was awaiting their arrival.
"The best we know is that 2,000 people were herded into this warehouse during the course of several hours on July 13 or 14," said Shattuck. "There was firing, hand grenades were tossed in. Anyone who came out was shaot.
"This is a terrible, terrible monument to those many civilians who lost their lives in this conflict and were victims of war crimes and genocide."
Shattuck emphasized that NATO should protect the sites. "Security will be needed for grave investigations, and IFOR (NATO's Implementation Force) has a duty under Dayton to provide assistance to war crimes investigators," he said, referring to autumn's Dayton agreement that authorizes NATO to enforce the Bosnia peace accord.
"That task will be taken up as soon as the primary task of the international force to separate (local) forces is completed, and that should be in the very, very near future," Shattuck continued.
"Ultimately justice and long-term peace must go together. That is a fundamental element of the Dayton agreement. We cannot hope to see an end to this terrible conflict until the facts are known about what occurred and justice is done.. . . That's the moral imperative."
It was unclear Sunday exactly how Shattuck would effect such a change-of-orders for NATO troops. IFOR commanders in the field have said repeatedly that they won't search for mass grave sites or protect known sites from being tampered with.
This view was reiterated in a statement issued over the weekend by NATO commander Adm. Leighton Smith saying IFOR troops would only "conduct airborne reconnaissance of some grave sites" in order to help map areas that may fall under IFOR's military control in the future.
"NATO is not, I repeat NATO is not, going to provide specific security, or in other words guarantee security, for teams investigating these grave sites," Smith said in his statement.
"This is an emotional issue. We are not insensitive to this problem. We will provide whatever support we can, but we won't make promises that we cannot fulfill."
Shattuck also inspected a soccer field where 2,000 Muslims reportedly were detained outside the town of Novakasaba, as well as other detention centers in a school and gymnasium in the town of Karakaj, where Muslims reportedly were kept before being executed.
As Bosnian Serb police watched, Shattuck's team toured the areas it wanted to without interference. The police did not extend the same privilege to the media.
In the town of Glogova, Shattuck assembled reporters in a field near several burned out buildings to talk of the obligations all sides in the Bosnian conflict have to follow through with the Dayton peace accord. He then praised his Bosnian Serb guides, saying he was "pleased with the cooperation."
But as Shattuck left for his day's final destination, Srebrenica, these armed policemen parked a large tractor in the middle of the road to block reporters from following.
"I will take full responsibility for blocking you," said one officer after being told that doing so violated a section of the Dayton agreement calling for freedom of movement. "I'm the boss, and you have five minutes to turn around."

Chicago Tribune

January 11, 1996 Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

BOSNIA ATROCITY REPORT GROWS;
WITNESSES SAY UP TO 8,000 MUSLIMS AND CROATS ARE BURIED IN MINE

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane, Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 1515 words

DATELINE: LJUBIJA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Stashed under floorboards and stuffed into basements, corpses littered this Bosnian Serb stronghold when British soldiers arrived two weeks ago as the vanguard of the American-led NATO force sent to keep the peace in Bosnia.
Then human rights investigators began to hear credible witness reports that thousands of Muslim and Croat war victims may lie mangled and buried in a huge iron mine just outside the town. If the reports prove true, the mass grave site could constitute the most grisly discovery yet in the 3 1/2-year Bosnian war.
But the British troops, camped just a mile from the suspect mine, decline to venture near, insisting that uncovering evidence of war atrocities is not the job they have been sent into the region to perform.
"Our job is to separate forces, not look for mass graves," said Lt. Col. Benjamin Berry, the British commander of the 800 soldiers in the Second Battalion of Light Infantry. "I don't have the resources to go looking for them and it would be a diversion of soldiers from our main goal to do so."
The reports of mass slaughter confront the British with a profound moral, political and military dilemma--one that American forces in Bosnia no doubt soon will encounter in the the formerly closed sectors they are beginning to pry open: What are they to do as explosive war-crime evidence is uncovered literally beneath their feet?
Pursuing such evidence, said the British commander, could deepen the animosity between the warring sides and heighten the potential for retribution, endangering the fragile Bosnian peace agreement reached recently between Serbs, Muslims and Croats in Dayton.
Nor is it clear whether NATO forces on the ground or United Nations war crimes investigators are primarily responsible for investigating such evidence. And no one is sure how the uncovering of war atrocities would affect the mission and morale of the international peacekeepers who are supposed to remain strictly neutral.
The complex situation further underscores the underlying tension in the Dayton accord between NATO's priority of keeping the peace and international demands to bring war criminals to justice.
But no matter how the NATO commanders choose to resolve these delicate issues, the Ljubija situation already may be beyond finessing.
"We think there may be as many as 8,000 bodies in the mine now," said Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, director of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights task group assigned to investigate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
"We have eyewitness testimony from people who saw the bodies. On top of the bodies they dumped lime," Cicak said.
Cicak said witnesses he interviewed saw hundreds of bodies stacked like cordwood in the mine. The grave, he added, "could be the largest in Serb-held Bosnia."
If the estimates prove correct, the number of victims buried in Ljubija may dwarf those interred after killings in Srebrenica, according to human rights investigators. The dead in this strip mine reportedly come from the thousands of residents missing from the Prijedor region after Bosnian Serb forces laid siege to ethnic villages south of Banja Luka in 1992.
Many of those killed had spent months in the nearby camps of Omarska, Manjaca, Keraterm, and Trnopolje, where they were starved, beaten or raped, then finally killed, investigators say.
According to residents living near the iron mine, hundreds of others were bused in and machine-gunned on the wide circular ridges of the strip mine, then bulldozed into the abyss.
Uncovering large gravesites such as Ljubija and showing that they represent a deliberate pattern of genocide will be vital in bringing to justice the leaders who orchestrated these killings, according to war crimes investigators.
Understanding this, joint forces of the Bosnian-Croat federation attempted to reach such sites during their recent offensive into Bosnian Serb territory, and came close to taking Prijedor. Their failure left it in Bosnian Serb hands until the NATO forces now fanning out across Bosnia entered the region.
Bosnian Serb forces continue to seal off areas around Srebrenica from journalists and human rights workers, and NATO troops have not been deployed there. Bosnian Serbs also still guard the Ljubija mine, where two reporters who tried to walk through a gate were promptly arrested, detained for a day and then deported from the Bosnian Serb republic.
According to war crimes investigators at The Hague, there is evidence that bodies are being dug up around Prijedor and dropped in the Ljubija strip mine. In December, the investigators allege, Serb soldiers churned bodies through ore-crushing machines or disfigured them with acid. The soldiers then dynamited the remains into dust, investigators said.
British troops in the Prijedor area also reported finding numerous bodies during patrols, bodies that disappeared before the troops returned to collect them. Torn-up floors and freshly dug earth led them to believe that other remains had been exhumed from houses now occupied by their forces.
Some of these bodies likely were left by Serbian paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as Arkan, when his forces began to push the few remaining ethnic minorities from the region last autumn. But the most decomposed bodies seem to be chilling remnants from the war's beginning, when Muslims and Croats were slaughtered like cattle by neighbors, armed thugs and out-of-town soldiers sent to kill them.
"There are bodies all over this place. We go in and find ripped floorboards and holes in the basement," said one senior British commander who asked to remain unidentified. "They are working very hard. Everyone seems to be in a hurry to cover up their killings."
Graham Blewitt, the deputy prosecutor for war crimes at The Hague, said in a telephone interview that he had amassed evidence of killings at various camps in the Prijedor area, as well as the death or burial of thousands at the Ljubija iron mine.
He added that, while investigators had taken sworn testimony from witnesses to many killings, visiting the sites would be imperative for making cases against those accused of crimes against humanity.
"This has been one of our desires--to get into Prijedor," he said. "We have never had access to the area. We are hoping we will have access to the area to identify the mass graves, wherever they may be, including any mines."
Speaking on condition of anonymity, residents living near the pit told the grotesque details of how their quaint mining town had become a busy thoroughfare of death as the ethnic war took shape in their country.
In the summer of 1992, Serb forces entered the town and began to disarm the local militia, residents say. At first, non-Serbs were merely harassed and threatened, forced from their jobs or made to take pledges of allegiance to the Bosnian Serb state that was taking shape.
But as the weeks progressed, the Serbs set up a military base in the town and began to separate minorities into nearby concentration camps. And by June 1992, the town had taken on a ghostly air.
People did not walk the streets for fear of being arrested. Neighbors refused to talk to Muslims or Croats they had known as children. Residents began to disappear daily. Within weeks, witnesses said, buses full of people from outside the village started to arrive--and the smell of decaying flesh began to waft from the mine.
"The buses would go in day and night," said one eyewitness. "They were filled with people but they always came back from the mine empty. We heard shooting day and night. At first we heard single shots; then we began to hear lots of automatic fire. This went on for over two months."
In early 1993, after news reports had forced the closing of most concentration camps in the area, the Bosnian Serb army again began to visit the pit, according to Croats who lived nearby. For nearly a month, residents were told to stay locked in their homes. They were threatened with death if they strayed.
"We were told not to even look out our windows," said a 66-year-old retired Croat miner. "We heard the sounds of many heavy trucks on the road to the pit. When we were finally allowed back outside, the pit looked different. It was full of dirt. There were barricades around the pit.
"They told us that the trucks were bringing waste from factories but none of the factories were working at the time," the miner added. "We all assumed they were bringing more of the dead."
According to war crimes investigators, Serb soldiers again began to work the mine after the peace agreement was reached in Dayton. Ore machines were fired up and detonations were again heard in the mine.
Residents said that of the 1,500 Muslim families that once lived in the town, only four or five remain. The rest, like nearly 40,000 other minorities in the Prijedor region, were killed or expelled, residents said. They added that Muslims and Croats who joined the Bosnian Serb forces during the war, did so to survive.

Chicago Tribune

January 4, 1996 Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

BOSNIAN SERB LEADER FALLS ON HARD TIMES;
LOSSES IN PEACE TALKS, ECONOMY CRIPPLE KARADZIC

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 943 words

DATELINE: BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Under heavy criticism, his party splintered and political rivals lined up at his doorstep, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has begun to find himself reduced to a footnote in the land he led to war and "ethnic purity."
He rarely ventures into public, and when he does walk the streets, bodyguards surround him. Among the people who once adored him, there are calls for his resignation, and in certain territories, threats against his life.
"Many of his supporters have abandoned him, and he now surrounds himself with only criminals who are afraid that if he loses power, they will lose their money and possibly their heads," said Dragutin Ilic, president of the Belgrade-backed Socialist Party of the Bosnia Serb republic.
"Our people are bitter about him. Karadzic can't even go to church without bodygaurds and is afraid to go to the Serb-held suburbs (of Sarajevo). Karadzic has realized that he is finished," Ilic said.
After riding to power on a surge of Serb nationalism and a promise of conquest, Karadzic has seen his popularity beaten down by territorial losses at the peace table in Dayton, a near total lack of support from his one-time ally, Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic, and his republic's crumbling economy.
A significant number of the 1 million Bosnian Serbs who once followed him with unquestioning loyalty have turned their backs on the war leader and have begun to vent their anger. Only a few months ago, voicing opposition to the war or the Bosnian Serb leadership invited jeers or threats. But such comments have begun to be heard with increasing regularity since the Dayton accords were signed last month.
Taxi drivers, soldiers and students deride Karadzic over coffee and in restaurants. In vendors' kiosks, newly formed opposition magazines criticize his policies, while commentators on the military-controlled Bosnian Serb radio station shoot a steady stream of barbs at their leader.
Sitting beneath one of several pictures of Milosevic that adorn his office, Ilic said that "while Karadzic is still trying to manipulate people through the media, he makes few public appearances. And, when he comes on, people are just turning off the TV."
Bosian Serbs have watched their republic's economy slowly die. Factories are working at only 20 percent of capacity, with much of that being expended in support of the war machine. Salaries have tumbled. Most Bosnian Serbs survive on humanitarian assistance and less than $20-a-month pay.
They are banking on a new image and influx of capital from Western countries to pull them out of bankruptcy.
They know that this will not happen as long as Karadzic remains a force in their government, said Mladen Ivanic, a Serb who served on the Bosnia presidential council before the war.
"This has become a battle between a small political clique led by Karadzic and backed by the Serbian Orthodox Church and the majority of Bosnian Serbs who want to build a Western democratic state based on human rights and free enterprise," Ivanic said.
Some of Karadzic's political opponents are calling for him to face war crimes charges before an international tribunal in The Hague or in a Bosnian Serb court. They see this as the only way to remove the stain of blood from the Serb people and correct the damage done to their image in the West.
"Unless we find those responsible for the war crimes in our country, like President Karadzic, and take them to justice in the eyes of the world, we (as a people) will bear the guilt for the atrocities they committed," said Miodrag Zivanovic, leader of the opposition Liberal Party. He said the trials should come after internationally monitored elections, which are planned for spring.
"I want Karadzic to be allowed to run in the elections regardless of The Hague, so that he can lose," Zivanovic said. "My fear is that if they forbid him to run, Karadzic could gain in popularity again and likely become a national hero."
The U.S. government first refused to join the NATO-led mission unless Karadzic and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, were removed from office. That did not happen, but Western diplomats say that they have received assurances from Milosevic that the two indicted men will vanish from the poliltical scene by the elections.
It appears Milosevic will have little trouble forcing the pair into retirement. Much of the Bosnia Serb leadership's political capital was expended in the defense of Serb-controlled areas around Sarajevo.
From the beginning of the war in 1992, many Bosnian Serbs questioned the logic of using money and manpower to besiege the historically Muslim-dominated capital city when more important Serb-controlled areas in western Bosnia were allowed to fall to the Bosnian army.
Such criticism turned into defiance after the shelling of Sarejevo brought crippling NATO airstrikes last summer. The Bosnian Serbs lost 20 percent of their territory to a Muslim-Croat offensive after the bombings, leading mourners over Bosnian Serb graves to start cursing Karadzic for their misery instead of blaming Bosnia's Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic.
After the Dayton agreement, political parties began to blossom. Ten new parties have opened offices in Banja Luka and plan to field candidates against Karadzic's Serbian Democratic Party.
The Serb leader's unpopularity may not translate into a loss for his party, however. Though candidates from several radical groups may split the nationalist vote, the Serbian Democratic Party still has a tight grip on the state media and likely will remain a strong force in the elections.

Chicago Tribune

January 2, 1996 Tuesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

CHURCH IN RUINS, 27 CROATS INVOKE THE SPIRIT OF 6,000;
SERBS SAID TO TARGET CATHOLICS

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 908 words

DATELINE: BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina

They came to what remained of their church, taking communion off a rickety card table and confessing their sins under a graffiti scrawl of those who would kill them.
Twenty-seven Roman Catholic parishioners remaining from a congregation of 6,000 huddled from the cold in one of the few rooms left partly intact after Bosnian Serb thugs sent their sanctuary into rubble. There, they prayed in the ashes, asking for a return of their homes and the restoration of their fellow Catholics to what has become a land of Orthodoxy and exclusion.
"God gives, and God takes away," said Mirko, a 47-year-old house painter, standing near a pile of burnt hymnals and catechism books. "For now we must live like this. But some day I hope we will startnew."
The Dayton peace accord has given them such a prospect, but it is hardly firm. The Bosnian Serb motto--"Only unity will save the Serbs"--drips in black letters from their church walls, while outside, radiating through one of the rooms blown-out windows, "Death to the Croats" has been painted in a deep green on another crumbling edifice.
"We had an earthquake in 1969 but we rebuilt a very beautiful building," said Ilija Maric, his 69-year-old face weathered by lines of war. "Then one night I heard an explosion. When the police finally allowed us back, this is what we found."
Of the 91 churches that once dotted the landscape in the Banja Luka region, 45 have been destroyed by Bosnian Serb paramilitary groups or citizens, and only six remain untouched. Priests and nuns have been killed, while at least 700 other Croat civilians are missing and thought to be dead.
"I once asked some leaders why they were destroying all of our churches," said Bishop Franjo Komarica, who has just been released from 231 days of house arrest. "They replied, 'We know that you Catholics are very fond of your churches. If we destroy your heart, we destroy your community.' "
He added that when Catholics still refused to leave, "they started killing our priests."
More than 200,000 other Croats have fled or been expelled from their homes, often at the request of their town leaders and carried out by their own police and military, sometimes by the same neighbors who once made small talk over the fence and came over for coffee.
"My neighbor showed up at my home one day and just told me to get out," said Ilija Mihic, 68, who now lives with his son-in-law, a Serb. "I have lived there for 50 years and pleaded to be given just one room so I could stay. They said those who stay will be killed.
"I knew them as children, and they seemed to be good people until the last day. But their politics is like that. They think only Serbs should be allowed to live," he concluded.
Although anti-minority sentiments have begun to thaw in Banja Luka since the Dayton agreement--with three minority families winning a court order allowing them back in their homes and Bishop Komarica now free to walk the streets--some Croats are still choosing to leave instead of risking a breakdown of the country's shaky peace.
Many of those who remain, like the parishioners in Petricevac Church, are forced to worship in buildings that remain only in the imagination, the vestiges of worship carted in and out like luggage for every service.
The death of Petricevac came as the Serbs found themselves in a reversal of fortune, their war luck in Croatia and Bosnia fraying. While Muslims had borne the brunt of killings and expulsions in Banja Luka before 1995, Croats became the focus of militant sentiment after the Bosnian Croat army joined forces with the Bosniam Muslims and regular Croat troops in Croatia began to overrun Serb-held lands in Western Slavonia and the Krajina.
Petricevac Church was dynamited May 7, as Croat troops recaptured land in Western Slavonia on the border with Bosnia. Masked uniformed men entered the church that dark morning, leaving one 81-year-old priest suffocated in his room, forcing the other priests and nuns out to the courtyard as the building blew up.
Increasingly Croats began to be fired from their jobs or thrown from their homes as Serb refugees streamed into town.
Mira, a 40-year-old music teacher, lost his job last month, but much earlier he had begun to receive anonymous threats in the mail. "You are eating our food and the food of our children. You are getting clothes on the names of our sons. You and your little Ustache (a term referring to Croatian persecutors of Serbs in World War II)," wrote one. "You will feel this war on your skin," said another.
After the Croats entered the war against the Serbs, Mira was forced to dig trenches and perform work details. Some of his fellow parishioners were placed in huts along the front line, used as bullet stoppers against approaching Croat and Muslim armies. Many were sent to work camps.
"For 53 days my family didn't know where I was after the soldiers came and took me away," said Nikola Gabelic, the head of the Croat political party in Banja Luka. "I was in a camp, and then later they used me as a human shield. I cannot tell you more."
"It will take a long time to recover here," said Anton Refic, 58, once the Croat vice president of Banja Luka's City Council. "There are only 3,500 of us left here. While we want people to come back, many won't. Most of their houses have been destroyed or robbed of everything of value. It is hard to be optimistic."

Chicago Tribune

December 26, 1995 Tuesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

GIS THANKFUL BOSNIAN GUNS REMAIN SILENT;
FIRST TASK: BUILD BRIDGEHEAD FOR TROOPS

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 971 words

DATELINE: ZUPANJA, Croatia

Against a backdrop of Navy SEALS diving for explosives in the Sava River and Army troops raking the banks, Capt. John Rossi set up a card table for communion and read a script for peace.
"For the first time in our lives we are getting to the meaning of Christmas, and you are lucky enough to be a part of it," the Army chaplain told a small group of soldiers over the steady growl of bulldozers and backhoes.
"The advertisements and stuff have been stripped away. There are no presents here. This is about peace, love and the breakdown of weapons. You are here to bring this."
The chaplain's service was about the only respite for soldiers, part of the 1,500 men and women stationed outside this small Croatian town near the Bosnian border. For more than a two weeks they have struggled to ready earth and water for a pontoon bridge that is to carry America's military might into this recent war zone.
It is no small task. Bad weather, bad roads and bad rails already have stalled the NATO-led operation, which is to bring more than 60,000 soldiers, including 20,000 from the U.S. into the region to enforce Bosnia's peace.
Weak rail lines kept American tanks and fighting vehicles from arriving at their staging areas last week, while heavy snows have slowed air transport.
Bad planning had also cramped progress on the bridge: A staging camp that was to be established on the Sava's banks had to be relocated several miles down the road to avoid being flooded. In addition, concerns over the winter have required recalculating how and when the bridge will be operational.
The commander of U.S. forces in Bosnia, Maj. Gen. William Nash, said during a tour of the bridge site Monday that it would be ready to ferry troops by the end of next week. And in an effort to assure this date, dozens of engineers as well as a team of Navy divers began testing the river-floor for mines and obstacles, measuring the river's depth, and gauging the flood plain which is active enough to warrant a 40-foot flood gauge. It was placed there by the Croat neighbors who sat watching the bustle of activity on their once quiet banks.
"I'm here to make sure that we are all looking at the same sheet of music," said Nash, alluding to the problems of harnessing his massive force.
"But so far things have gone splendidly. . . . Everyone is focused on their jobs, and I can hardly get them to complain."
Those that did gripe said they missed their families and regretted a lack of toilets on the construction site.
But even these soldiers said there was a lot to be thankful for, particularly in regard to the lack of shooting in the area.
Primed for a war, the soldiers were pleased on Christmas Eve when the only gunfire they heard was Croatian troops celebrating with bursts to the sky from a machine gun. There was also the popping of firecrackers.
"That shooting didn't bother me in the least," said Airman David Blackburn, 24. "I'm used to gunfire. I'm from Chicago. We expected things to be a lot worse."
Blackburn said that "surprisingly, everybody seems pretty happy to see us and people were nice."
Many soldiers attributed the friendliness of the warring factions to several Bradley fighting vehicles dug in along the river and attack helicopters hovering overhead.
Staff Sgt. Michael Treat from Shawnee, Okla., was on duty in a Bradley. "We been here for three days looking or snipers and anything we can see that doesn't look right," the 36-year-old said as he stared past the gun on his Bradley at a small spot on the other side of the Sava.
"We could see tracers last night, but they were shooting high. We're here to make sure they don't level em' out."
Zupanja, which sits in the eastern corner of Croatia and is near the Bosnian Croat-held town of Orasje on the other side of the river, will become a station for 2,500 U.S. troops after the bridge is completed.
Bosnian Serb positions are less than 10 miles downstream.
About 200 Navy Seabees were on their way to the town to begin setting up a city of 250 10-man tents, with medical facilities, lounges, toilets and showers for the force, as well as the multitude who will pass through on the way to the American contingent's base in Tuzla 50 miles south.
"This is the largest U.S. Navy land convoy since the Vietnam War," said Navy spokesman Bill Spann as he sifted his feet in a tractor-rut near the shore. "We're going to get these guys out of the mud."
The outpost originally had been planned for the banks of the river, but a study by engineers and some cajoling by the inhabitants showed that the site of the camp was foolish. It would likely be flooded.
Army command wouldn't say when the first U.S. troops will go over the bridge on their way to Tuzla. "We're in no rush to get into the Balkans. If the weather's not right, we won't cross the bridge, it's that simple." a spokesman said.
When these troops do come, many of them may have little idea how the conflict they are to police started or what psychology has led the three warring factions to fight for nearly four years, at the loss of more than 200,000 Bosnian lives.
"I don't know much about it," said Chicagoan Blackburn. "But I think it's just like in the city, with the Bloods and the Crips and the other gangs. A lot of those guys believe wholeheartedly in what they are doing, just like the fighters over here. I'm not saying it's right or wrong but that's just what it seems like to me."
But for most, the war's origins don't matter. NATO and the other allied troops being sent to the area have a job to do, they say, and policing the peace job does not require picking the brains of the combatants.
"My job is to try to enforce the peace," said Army Spec. Jason Gordon of Houston. "But it's up to them if they want to stop the war. You can't force people into peace."

The New York Times

December 9, 1995, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

For a Bosnian Schoolgirl, and Uneasy Homecoming

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 5; Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 871 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dec. 8

Amina Brka returned this week to a world she had only seen on television and read about in letters from home. This was her country, but it bore little resemblance to the one she had left nearly four years ago. Much of its beauty had been burned or mangled under the barrage of war, and when she rode into Sarajevo, she was surprised that anything was left at all.
"It's not as bad as I had pictured it," said Amina, 14, as she tussled with new school books on her first day of class here. "My visions were much worse. And from the pictures I saw on television, with all the grenades thrown from the mountains, I thought Sarajevo had been flattened."
Amina, who is Muslim, is one of more than 300 pupils returning after a long hiatus; peace is expected to bring many more. They enter a situation both familiar and strange to them. They are forced to pick up survival skills from others and cull the reality from the stories they hear on the streets.
Amina and her mother -- who had left together for safety soon after the war began, leaving behind her father, sister and brother -- arrived in the Bosnian capital six days ago, driving from their rented apartment in Germany, where the closest the war ever came was on the 7 o'clock news. It gave her a nightmare vision of Sarajevo, that of a place of unceasing bullets and the bodies everywhere. But when she arrived, no shells greeted her and the only death she found was in the remembrances of those who had lived through the siege.
"The rest of my family who stayed in Sarajevo didn't like to talk about the war," said Amina, auburn-haired and huddled in a Chicago Bulls jacket. "But I hear things now.
"So many children have lived very hard lives here," she added. "I don't know if I could have survived under these circumstances, losing my family and living without water and electricity. But I am here now, so I will make the best of it, even though things still aren't right."
There is much to cull from the ruins. In Amina's class, at Mufa Cazim Secondary School, children described famine. Their teachers recalled months when shelling was so heavy that children never left their basements, and the false moments of calm that always ended in massacre. On some of these days, teachers said, children watched their parents blown apart, then went out to play without shedding a tear in public.
"The shocking thing is their understanding of death," said Casar Jadranka, a general studies teacher. "Normal people are shocked by death. These kids take it lightly."
Spaho Sanin, 14, lounging in the back of a chilly chemistry class said: "It's just no big deal anymore. A girl in our class found a gun and blew her head off last week and an old woman hanged herself in her closet just a while ago."
"There have been a lot of people killed during the war and I believe there has been a suicide in every building in the city," he added. "People are just not normal anymore."
But Amina has few such jaded attitudes. The bent steel and broken concrete down the road are a curiosity to her, as are the flat images of grenades and land mines on a poster in the hall, or the placard nearby urging kids not to touch unexploded shells that may land in their homes.
Then she shrugged, collected her things and complained about the cold.
Gas only comes every other day and electricity is an on-and-off affair. The school Amina now attends has no heating and the roof leaks, forcing school officials to end classes at lunchtime and send the students home. Books are in short supply and chemistry is taught with household items -- electrons, neutrons and protons are demonstrated with the help of an ingenious contrivance of Play-Doh and toothpicks.
Amina readily admits that she is somewhat unprepared for her new life and has little in common with her classmates, for whom the cold is the least of their worries. Amina's original home in a Muslim village north of Sarajevo is untouched, and her father, sister and brother, who remained in Sarajevo for the duration of the war, are unharmed.
Some of Amina's classmates are also unprepared for her. While many boys crowded around her the first day, asking if she would be in their classes, others talked of how she should have stayed in her cushy life in Germany and left the spoils of Sarajevo's peace to those who had lived through the violence.
As Armin Osmanovic, a classmate, said: "I don't think I can be friends with someone who left here. It's not fair, their returning like nothing happened. They don't understand what we went through and they never will."
Armin was also displeased with Amina's attitude about the Serbs, one he thought underscored her lack of understanding about life in Sarajevo. Sitting in a classroom filled with Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, Amina said she had no interest in living with the latter, including those Serbs who had withstood the shelling of the city.
"Serbs are all the same," she said. "We can have a multiethnic community without them."
"That's what I mean," replied Armin. "She was not here and she doesn't know that Serbs also helped us. The ones in town are different from the ones on the hill. What she said is just stupid."
"I think she'll learn," he said.

Chicago Tribune

November 26, 1995 Sunday, CHICAGOLAND FINAL EDITION

PEACE DUTY MORE THAN WAR OF NERVES;
U.S. TROOPS FACE MINES, AMBIGUITY

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 14; ZONE: C

LENGTH: 1185 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina

American troops are about to embark on a cold winter in a fresh war zone, one full of land mines, armed paramilitary groups and irate citizens. Their mission: To turn a shaky peace agreement into reality on Bosnia's blood-soaked ground.
"We are going to go in there and lay down the law," said one American official in Bosnia. "Unlike the UN, we are not going to bend, be pulled, or punched. We are ready to use force."
But Western military analysts and UN officials said Friday that the 60,000-strong NATO force, which will include 20,000 Americans, is likely to see their overwhelming strength and rugged rules of engagement undermined by a combination of natural obstacles and manmade resistance. While given the tools to win a war, these troops may find it more difficult to enforce a peace.
Checkpoints will have to be torn down along hundreds of miles of roads and several million land mines cleared. Well-armed combatants will have to be separated and refugees allowed to return to areas where they were brutally expelled during 43 months of war.
And while the NATO mandate has a theoretical clarity that could slice through stone, the view from the ground will be one in which troops must secure peace village by village, and army unit by army unit. Then they will have to keep the peace.
Though NATO has agreed to enforce the Bosnian peace deal, it is not clear what portion of the mandate will fall under its jurisdiction, and what things will be left up to civil affairs and humanitarian aid organizations.
"We are in the process of making assumptions and plans," said NATO spokesman Lt. Mike Considine. "But we are not to the point where we can say this is what we are going to do. First, we need the mission statement, then we can get on with it."
American troops have been preparing for the worst during training exercises in Germany. They have fired rounds from their M1-A1 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, 155 mm artillery pieces and Apache attack helicopters at fixed targets in the dirt. And they have run through policing scenarios at an old Nazi Panzer training ground called "the box" in Hohenfels, Germany, with soldiers playing the part of refugee, sniper and citizen.
But all the training in the world will not prepare them for the complexity of Bosnia, military experts said. NATO troops have been taught to know who their enemy is and beat him down, they said, not how to deal with a smorgasbord of ill-defined situations in which the enemy is uncertain. And a couple of weeks learning how to establish law will not necessarily be the first thing on a soldier's mind when bullets start flying or mines begin to kill his comrades.
This may be especially true for the Americans, military experts said. Unlike the British, who have learned to police in Northern Ireland, or the French, who have experience governing volatile colonies, the Americans have a more concentrated specialty of winning wars.
"There is an enormous amount of responsibility in a situation like Bosnia, where even the lowest commander will be entrusted with knowing how much force will keep a conflict at bay without using so much that it blows up into a wider theater," said Jonathan Eyal, director of the Royal United Services Institute in London.
"The passions in this conflict are likely to flare up on the village level, and keeping the peace will require a lot of tact, finesse and knowledge of the big picture, even among the grunt soldier on the ground," he added. "The wrong decision can spread rapidly."
To allay local fears and send a peaceful message to the combatants, NATO forces plan an extensive public relations campaign that will include radio and television advertisements, as well as billboards, U.S. officials said. But leaflets will not reverse the years of division and ethnic hatred, nor will they defuse the conflict.
Ownership of Brcko, a Serb-held town along a thin strip of land linking Serb-held territory in east and west Bosnia, was one of the most heated questions during peace talks in Dayton and nearly caused them to fail. The solution, by Secretary of State Warren Christopher, was to decide the town's fate by international arbitration in one year.
The town and corridor will fall along a one-mile zone of separation among the three combatants, leaving NATO forces on the ground to assure free access to the corridor--a tinderbox issue sure to create tensions among the well-armed Bosnian Croat, Bosnian government and Serb troops in the area.
NATO commanders also will have to decide what sort of equipment will be allowed to pass. During the war, this corridor was a main military artery for Bosnian Serbs, but in peace it could also be swamped with refugees wishing to return home.
The corridor set to link Gorazde to Sarajevo could have similar implications, as the Serbs see commerce and armaments rolling through their territory to the Bosnian government's eastern enclave.
"Soldiers will have to make decisions in these areas without much political guidance," said Michael Clark, director for the Center for Defense Studies. "Firefights could break out between the combatants. Then these soldiers will have to decide who provoked it, and conclude whether to throw counter-battery fire at only one, all sides or just sit there and do nothing.
"The hope is that the sheer size and power of the NATO force will be enough to keep these things from happening," he added. "But if the bluff is called, it is difficult to see how NATO cannot act. And if they do, how they will not sustain some casualties."
There will also be a more general problem of moving combatants--some of whom are only loosely affiliated with regular armies--out of buffer zones and opening the way for refugees to return to their homes. Local conflicts could ignite throughout the region, as NATO attempts to tear down roadblocks, and areas of ethnic cleansing are again opened to those thrown out.
The UN was faced with a similar mandate in the Serb-held Krajina, before the region returned to Croatian control. Sent to assure the return of Croat refugees to the area and make sure that those there were not expelled, these troops found it impossible to keep the expulsions at bay--a task that would have required a 24-hour guard on every Croat in the region.
NATO may be no more successful. Already there is grumbling among Serb soldiers in Ilidza, a town to the west of Sarajevo that will return to Bosnian government control. These soldiers say they will not budge an inch, while Serb civilians there say that returning Muslims will not be welcomed.
"This will be a West Bank scenario, where people will have to be physically moved to allow others in," explained Clark. "This is not an easy mandate to apply in such a politically volatile situation."
A UN official put it another way: " Every syllable in the peace accord is a mine in a very large field. And you can't come in here thinking you are going to kick a. . . because a lot of the success of this will depend on small acts that have little to do with war. I am not so sure NATO has yet realized that."

The New York Times

November 23, 1995, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

BALKAN ACCORD: THE SERBS;
A Town Feels Betrayed by Milosevic and Talks of Fighting On

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 12; Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 643 words

DATELINE: ILIDZA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nov. 22

Just past a French checkpoint that straddles the front line outside Sarajevo, there is a grumbling that grows louder with every pass of the bottle and every mention of peace.
Ilidza, a Serb-held suburb, is set to return to the Bosnian fold. For the soldiers and civilians who crowd the checkpoints on the road into town, this provision of the peace agreement reached on Tuesday has brought nothing but pessimism and pain.
"We feel like losers," said Milenko Djukic, 46, a truck driver, as he passed a half-empty bottle of rakija, local brandy, to a friend. "The Muslims have gotten everything, and we have gotten nothing out of this agreement.
"The status of Sarajevo was the reason for this war, and we have a right to our piece," he added. "The city has to remain divided. The Muslims cannot come back to Ilidza."
The unification of Sarajevo under Bosnian Government control is a point of bitter contention among the Serbs who ring the city and have been indoctrinated with a well-worn belief that they cannot trust their former neighbors. Most of them do not believe that they will be allowed to remain in their homes if the deal is signed. Few of them want to.
And some of them talk about not giving up the fight, despite the peace agreement.
Mr. Djukic said he had lived in Sarajevo until the authorities there gave his apartment to some refugees. He said he had spent five days on the streets and that his escape had cost $350 and left him with only the clothes on his back.
He said that if the Muslims came knocking for entrance into his new sanctuary, he would certainly not stay. "They scare me," he said. "I would just pack my bags and leave."
The decision by President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia to sign the agreement on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs was met by protest from many in the Serbian-held portion of Bosnia.
Momcilo Krajisnik, the speaker of the Bosnian Serbs' self-proclaimed parliament, called Mr. Milosevic's decision to sign "an especially big mistake." He said Mr. Milosevic had been warned that "nobody has the right to sign that plan or accept those maps."
Today, people on the street mimicked the remarks Mr. Milosevic made at the peace talks in Dayton, Ohio. They intimated that he was satisfied with the lifting of economic sanctions against Serbia and not concerned with seeking a fair future for his brethren in Bosnia.
"We have been betrayed by Milosevic," said one Bosnian Serb soldier, propping up his black sunglasses. "He was not thinking about our people. He was thinking about his."
Another soldier added: "Everybody is against us. We have lost the war and will have to move away from here."
Muslims in Sarajevo have expressed a willingness to live with Serbs as they once did and said they were even looking forward to seeing their old Serbian neighbors and friends. But fear has gripped the Serbs.
Their political leader, Radovan Karadzic, and their military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, are about to lose their offices and face war crimes indictments in The Hague, a fate that many soldiers worry could be their own.
"Who will decide who was a war criminal and who wasn't?" asked one 26-year-old soldier. "I have lived in Ilidza my whole life and defended my home. For them, that makes me a criminal. They would not allow me to live a normal life."
These Serbs had nothing but complaints about the Ohio agreement, from the corridor that will link Sarajevo and Gorazde to the lifting of the arms embargo. That, they said, assures that Bosnia will become the flash point of World War III.
Only one hope remained: that what came to pass in America would falter on Bosnia's winter ground.
"Only a just agreement can carry peace," Mr. Djukic said, "and this is not justice. We are all sick of the war, but the Muslims have gotten too much. On the basis of this, we will fight to the end."

The New York Times

November 22, 1995, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

BALKAN ACCORD: IN SARAJEVO;
In Weary Bosnian Capital, Joy, and Tears for the Dead

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 10; Column 5; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 583 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nov. 21

For 20 days, Sarajevo had been waiting for this news. And while the terms of the agreement signed today did not satisfy everyone, it at least promised an end to the years of war.
Among the burnt-out cars and shell-holes of the besieged Bosnian capital, residents wept and talked of this respite from destruction and death.
"This means a rebirth," said Almasa Mulic, 67, as she sat in her battered apartment on the front line. "I have been crying ever since I found out. I am too happy for words. I wish everyone good luck and a long life."
Mrs. Mulic sat in her kitchen, inches from the balcony where her husband was killed by a shell in 1993, and only 20 yards from the Bosnian Serb gunners who took him from her. But she expressed little bitterness.
"I am ready to live with the Serbs again," she said. "Why shouldn't I?"
"We all just want peace and to be allowed out of the house to fetch our groceries without worrying about being shot," she added. "This has to end."
Most Sarajevans felt the same yearning for a conclusion to the fighting. In the front-line neighborhoods, shots could still be heard even in the days leading up to the agreement, and children still played behind walls.
Many city residents in the town had taken on a trance-like state, tuning in their radios to the hourly news and turning on their televisions to catch a glimpse of progress in the talks. As deadlines passed for the negotiators in Ohio, people here awaited the outcome with trepidation.
Not everyone could believe the news once it came. After so many scuttled negotiations and broken agreements, it was hard to accept the possibility of an end to the war that has consumed more than 250,000 Bosnian lives.
"Thank God," said Vahidin Pilav, a 19-year-old soldier, of the news as he walked his girlfriend home through the snow of another Sarajevo winter. "This means the war is over and I can live again. No more being afraid of a bullet finding me or freezing on the front line."
He looked at his sweetheart, Nihada Sabanovic, and squeezed her hand. "And no more being afraid that I won't come back," he added.
At the Piccadilly Cafe, a bar patronized mostly by taxi drivers and wounded soldiers, patrons complained that the agreement had not addressed the underlying causes of the conflict. The war would come again, and only NATO could prevent that, they said.
"But when NATO leaves, may the Lord help us," said Suad Jabucar, a 29-year-old soldier, as he sat drinking beer with his comrades.
"That's right," said Mohamed Niksic, 44. "The evil that befell Yugoslavia will resurrect itself again. The Serbs will attempt another genocide, because that is what is in their blood. Hopefully, I will be dead by then."
Sarajevo residents also complained that places where Muslims had been massacred and a suburb around Sarajevo would apparently remain in Serbian hands. They also were not pleased that the issue of a land corridor linking Serbian-held land in eastern and western Bosnia had yet to be resolved.
"It's not fair," said Dragana Zametica, 38, a dental technician, as she worked in her second job as a cook in a neighborhood cafe. "The Serbs have been given everything they wanted and in the end we will remain divided. I don't know why so many people had to die for an agreement like this."
Mrs. Zametica, a Serb married to a Muslim, added: "We fought to live together. That is what we were taught for 40 years. But that time is over and the dream has passed."

Chicago Tribune

November 22, 1995 Wednesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

SARAJEVANS TAKE THE NEWS WITH HOPE AND A GRAIN OF SALT;
CONFUSION, ANGER REMAIN IN CITY OF WALKING WOUNDED

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane. Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 8; ZONE: N; PEACE DEAL FOR BOSNIA.

LENGTH: 628 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina

The land of ceaseless pain moved toward healing Tuesday, with Sarajevo's war-weary veterans embracing the news of a peace agreement reached in Dayton, U.S.A.
"This is wonderful, the best news I have heard in four years," said Veda Sokolovic, a 53-year-old lawyer from her small apartment on the front line.
"For once, I will be able to sleep well."
The agreement comes after 43 months of bloodshed and fear, caused by a war that seemed destined to continue forever. While Tuesday's promise of an end to the suffering brought smiles to the city's residents, there an undertone of uncertainty lingered over the terms of the agreement.
"I don't know if this is what we fought for or not, I don't know," said Sokolovic, whose original home had been destroyed by a rain of tank fire.
"But the most important thing in the world right now is that people stop getting killed."
That sentiment was heartily seconded by most residents on Sarajevo's snow-covered streets and in the city's multitude of coffee bars.
"I am fed up with this war and all the death, blood and evil it has produced," said Suad Colir, a 25-year-old soldier. "The important thing is that the deal is signed. Let Sarajevo stay divided. I just want to live in peace."
Much of the desperation in the air could be attributed to the conflicting rumors spawned by the Dayton talks. Over the last few years, Sarajevans had watched deadlines approach and vanish with no resolution to the carnage. In the current negotiations, they had heard of in-fighting among their delegates, and on Monday night word leaked out that the talks were off, never to resume.
Such confusion had discouraged even the most hopeful among the tenacious radio listeners. Many of them, by the time the agreement was announced Tuesday night, had just decided to tune it out.
At the Kinema Cafe, the bartenders refused to turn off rock videos to enable patrons to watch the news conferences in Dayton, and customers preferred not to talk about anything that even bordered on the subject of war.
"No one here cares about politics," explained Elvin Rednzi, 27, reflecting on his three wounds as a soldier. "We know the future. What are they going to say that can convince us otherwise?"
Battered by years of watching their friends killed, relatives thrown from their homes in Serb-held areas, and promises from the West being broken, these young Bosnians had shut out the conflict.
"Ninety percent of the people in here have lost someone in the war or are invalids," Rednzi said. "We are all veterans. We are not interested in the war."
There was also cynicism about the agreement.
Though it gives the Muslim-Croatian federation control of 51 percent of Bosnia, some residents complained that the sites of Muslim massacres and one suburb around Sarajevo would remain in Serb hands. They also expressed anger that ownership of Brcko, part of a thin strand in Bosnia's corn belt that links Serb-held land in the east and west, remains unresolved.
"There will be no peace because there is no justice on any side," said Merhudin Dizdarevic, a 46-year-old taxi driver, as he listened to the news in a local bar. "I know there will be another war because nothing has been solved in this agreement."
The United Nations Security Council is not set to consider the lifting of the weapons embargo on Bosnia, and already there is talk among Sarajevo's bitter fighters that much will be done with such arms once they come. NATO will come and go, they say, but Bosnia's army will remain.
"The lifting of the embargo is the optimal thing," said 21-year-old Edin Mezit. "We cannot stop thinking about war until Bosnia is truly undivided and the evil has been destroyed."
"We will not respect an unjust peace made through pressure."
BALKANS: Sarajevans weep at news of accord; Residents just want normal life to resume

BYLINE: KIT R. ROANE; THE NEW YORK TIMES

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A8

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina

For 20 days, Sarajevo had been waiting for this news. And while the terms of the agreement signed Tuesday did not satisfy everyone, it at least promised an end to the years of war.
Among the burnt-out cars and shell-holes of the besieged Bosnian capital, residents wept and talked of this respite from destruction and death.
"This means a rebirth," said Almasa Mulic, 67, as she sat in her battered apartment on the front line. "I have been crying ever since I found out. I am too happy for words. I wish everyone good luck and a long life."
Mulic sat in her kitchen, close to the balcony where her husband was killed by a shell in 1993, and only metres from the Bosnian Serb gunners who took him from her. But she expressed little bitterness. "I am ready to live with the Serbs again. Why shouldn't I?"
"We all just want peace and to be allowed out of the house to fetch our groceries without worrying about being shot," she added. "This has to end."
Most Sarajevans felt the same yearning for a conclusion to the fighting. In the front-line neighborhoods, shots could still be heard even in the days leading up to the agreement, and children still played behind walls.
Many city residents in the town had taken on a trance-like state, tuning their radios to the hourly news and turning on their televisions to catch a glimpse of progress in the talks. As deadlines passed for the negotiators in Ohio, people here awaited the outcome with trepidation.
Not everyone could believe the news once it came. After so many scuttled negotiations and broken agreements, it was hard to accept the possibility of an end to the war that has consumed more than 250,000 Bosnian lives.
"Thank God," said Vahidin Pilav, a 19-year-old soldier, of the news as he walked his girlfriend home through the snow of another Sarajevo winter. "This means the war is over and I can live again. No more being afraid of a bullet finding me or freezing on the front line."
He looked at his sweetheart, Nihada Sabanovic, and squeezed her hand. "And no more being afraid that I won't come back," he added.
At the Piccadilly Cafe, a bar patronized mostly by taxi drivers and wounded soldiers, patrons complained that the agreement had not addressed the underlying causes of the conflict. The war would come again, and only NATO could prevent this, they said.
"But when NATO leaves, may the Lord help us," said Suad Jabucar, a 29-year-old soldier, as he sat drinking beer with his comrades.
Sarajevo residents also complained that places where Muslims had been massacred and a suburb around Sarajevo would apparently remain in Serbian hands. They also were not pleased that the issue of a land corridor linking Serbian-held land in eastern and western Bosnia had yet to be resolved.
"It's not fair," said Dragana Zametica, 38, a dental technician, as she worked in her second job as a cook in a neighborhood cafe. "The Serbs have been given everything they wanted and in the end we will remain divided. I don't know why so many people had to die for an agreement like this."
Mrs. Zametica, a Serb married to a Muslim, added: "We fought to live together. That is what we were taught for 40 years. But that time is over and the dream has passed."
Update
Timetable for implementing peace pact:
Nov. 21: Dayton agreement clears way for final NATO peacekeeping-force planning.
Late November: NATO's governing body approves the peace force plan.
Late November-early December: The UN issues a formal request to NATO to put the plan into action.
Late November-early December: U.S. peacekeeping forces move to staging area in southern Hungary.
Mid-December: NATO sends 2,000 troops in 'enabling' teams to the Balkans to prepare the way for full deployment.
Mid-December: Formal signing of peace agreement in Paris.
Mid-December: Full deployment of 60,000-member NATO peacekeeping force begins.

The New York Times

November 18, 1995, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Yugoslav Army Reported to Aid Bosnian Serbs Despite Promises

BYLINE: By STEPHEN ENGELBERG with KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1001 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 17

As President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia negotiates a peace settlement in Dayton, the army under his control is rebuilding the Bosnian Serb military in violation of Mr. Milosevic's own pledges, American and United Nations officials said today.
Yugoslav Army technicians have replaced the communications links blown up by NATO warplanes in air strikes two months ago and have repaired some of the air defense systems, the officials said.
The Yugoslav Army has also been routinely sending helicopters and transport planes loaded with supplies to the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka, United Nations officials said.
American officials, however, said NATO radar had not picked up any flights into that airfield by transport aircraft. The officials said they have spotted some helicopters, and assume that others are flying low enough to evade detection.
American officials said they believed that the resupply of the Bosnian Serbs was on a comparatively small scale. "While we don't like it, it's wrong, and it's illegal," one official said, "it's not enough to justify torpedoing the peace process."
Another official said: "It's happening. But we don't think they're bringing in the heavy stuff. We don't think they're bringing in more howitzers and tanks."
A confidential United Nations report dated Oct. 30 -- two days before the peace talks opened at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton -- says that United Nations military observers on the ground have spotted "regular flights of military transport aircraft and helicopters into Banja Luka at night." Those flights have continued into this month, a United Nations official in the region said.
The report said the Bosnian Serb army's communications systems "have been resurrected by the Yugoslav Army, whose personnel are involved."
The document, which was signed by a senior military officer serving with the United Nations, said the Yugoslav Army was supplying spare parts to maintain the Bosnian Serbs' small fleet of warplanes.
Yugoslav Army technicians, the report said, were working on the planes at the Banja Luka airfield.
While the United States vociferously protested the Yugoslav Army's efforts to help the Bosnian Serbs rebuild after the NATO bombing, the criticism has been muted since the peace talks began.
One senior official speculated that Mr. Milosevic was allowing some ties between the Yugoslav Army and Bosnian Serb Army to persist as a means of preserving his credentials with his own military while he makes significant concessions in the peace talks.
"He has to tolerate a certain amount of activity to maintain control," one official said. "He's got to watch his back."
Mr. Milosevic promised to end such assistance to the Bosnian Serbs earlier this year in exchange for the lifting of some economic sanctions against his country. But American officials with access to intelligence reports say that, while Mr. Milosevic did not keep his word, he has curtailed the flow of fuel and ammunition in recent months.
The Yugoslav Army's continuing supply of arms and expertise to the Bosnian Serb military raises questions about both Mr. Milosevic and the stability of any peace treaty.
American officials acknowledge that the ultimate success of their peace effort depends largely on whether Mr. Milosevic delivers on his latest assurances in ways he has not done in the past. American officials argue that there are several reasons to believe that he will do this, including the proposed presence of a 60,000 NATO troops in Bosnia to enforce any peace plan and his desire to end his isolation from other countries.
Still, it remains unclear how the peace agreement would address the issue. A senior American official said the proposed peace settlement would bar the Yugoslav Army from sending military supplies and assistance to the Bosnian Serbs.
But Pentagon officials have made it clear that the international force will not be involved in patrolling the international borders, disarming the combatants, or blocking arms shipments.
American officials said they have circulated proposals to the parties that would set numerical limits on various categories of weapons each side could keep in its arsenal, just as the United States and Russia have reduced their conventional forces in Europe. Monitoring these limits, however, would probably be left up to international organizations like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The United States is likely to be the nation to bring the sides to parity by training and arming the Bosnian Government. A Bosnian official said today the European nations were resisting this proposal.
Paradoxically, deployment of the 60,000-member international force might actually make it easier for the Yugoslav Army to move military supplies to the Bosnian Serbs.
A principal demand of the Bosnian Serbs has been for the widening and safeguarding of the narrow corridor of land across Northern Bosnia through which most of the fuel and supplies from Yugoslavia have been flown or trucked. Croat and Bosnian government forces consider this stretch of land to be one of the most strategic in Bosnia, and have shelled and attacked what is called the Posavina corridor for most of the war.
The United Nations put monitors at the narrowest point of the corridor on Nov. 7, and during three days reported seeing large convoys of fuel trucks that are believed to have originated in Serbia. The monitors, a United Nations official said, were removed a few days later at the request of the Bosnian Serb Army.
The United Nations official said military observers in the region have spotted two types of transport helicopters flying into Banja Luka and some flights by fixed wing aircraft.
"These guys are mainly flying at night," he said. "But some of them are bold enough to come in during the day. We don't understand why NATO says they don't see them, because they are plainly visible and carrying Yugoslav Army inventory."

Chicago Tribune

November 16, 1995 Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

SARAJEVO: A CAPITAL ISOLATED FROM THE WORLD;
PHONING RELATIVES IS NOT SIMPLE

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane, Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 18; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 621 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Two days ago, Suzana Basic received got a fax from a woman in Macedonia advising her to wait by the phone. She was about to receive a very special call from her father in Montenegro, whom she has seen only once in 5 1/2 years.
They had been separated first by a war in Croatia, where her father led convoys to Serbs in the Krajina region, then by the conflict in Bosnia, which finally cut their ties.
"He is in the Serbian army and we can't call over to there," said the 24-year-old Sarajevo aid worker. "But I get to talk to him now for a couple of minutes every two weeks, when he has saved enough to call me through an aid organization in Serbia. The call has to be routed through other places, and it is very expensive. But the whole family at least gets to say hello."
In Sarajevo, there is no such thing as a friends and family plan, collect calling, or--without an expensive land-line connected to a satellite dish--even talking to anyone outside the city.
In some besieged enclaves, including Sarajevo and Gorazde, families have been unable to see relatives or hear their voices for the entire 42 months of war. Those with family in Serbia, Montenegro and Serb-held areas of Bosnia cannot contact relatives even via an international phone line. Their only hope is to get a third party in another country to relay messages. Suzana Basic turned to one of her father's old friends, a woman who agreed to act as a fixer from her new home in Macedonia. The woman sends a fax to Basic's office several days before her father's call, setting up a time for everyone to wait by the phone.
Not long ago, Sarajevo boasted the best of everything in the former Yugoslavia. It was a city wired electrically, with trolleys, modern appliances and streets bustling with cars. Friends were just a phone call away--on either side of the Iron Curtain.
All that changed in 1992, when Serb forces surrounded Sarajevo, Gorazde and other Bosnian cities. Electricity, gas, water and phone lines were severed, leaving residents stranded in an unfriendly cocoon, unable to communicate with the outside world.
At the time, even the Bosnian government sometimes found itself unable to communicate outside of Sarajevo, and only a handful of news agencies had satellite phones--for which they were charging upwards of $75 a minute to use.
Prices dropped substantially when the Bosnian post office set up satellite connections and allowed people to buy into the system. But even this hasn't alleviated the plight of most Bosnians, who can't afford the $150 connection fee and user charges, which are around $6 a minute.
Even as the Bosnian capital enjoys its respite from shelling, local residents complain of the first hint of normalcy: They are receiving city bills for services, but wiithout the services to match.
"We got a $32 electric bill, and it's not even on all the time," lamented Marijana Askin, 24.
Without money, most Bosnians communicate through aid organizations, which deliver letters, or via friendly journalists who sometimes bring packages or jot down phone numbers of relatives in other areas. Letters can take six months to generate a reply, however, so there is a lot of incentive to surreptitiously navigate the phone system.
Having rigged illegal connections for gas and electricity in the worst days of the siege, a few residents have begun working on the phone system. The trick is finding one for a business that has an international line and closes at a reasonable hour.
"That is gold," said Nevan, a former soldier whose friend has rigged an illegal line. "The only problem is that my friend can't use the phone until after 5 p.m. and can call out only because he doesn't know the phone number."

Chicago Tribune

October 24, 1995 Tuesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

'HIGH LIVING' MEANS ARMY FIELD RATIONS;
ROUTE TO FAMISHED BOSNIAN CITY OPENS

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane, Special to the Tribune.

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 8; ZONE: N

LENGTH: 561 words

DATELINE: GORAZDE, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Gorazde is a place so bad off that it gets care packages from the downtrodden citizens of Sarajevo, and "high living" is on army survival rations.
Cut off from its government and long regarded as a bargaining chip in peace negotiations, this eastern enclave of the Bosnian government was resuscitated last week, thanks to the opening of a 68-mile road from Sarajevo through Serb-held territory which the United Nations hopes will bring food to its emaciated populace, and also take people out.
For 85-year-old Salman Haska, the news came in the form of a package filled with cigarettes, coffee, sweets and a letter from the son she hasn't seen since 1992.
Tears welled in her eyes as she retrieved family photographs from her apartment's non-working refrigerator and spoke of the hardship she had endured.
"I hid in the woods and ate grass for weeks after the Serbs forced me from my village," said Haska, sifting through the newly-arrived sustenance.
"Then when I got here, there were Serbs raining shells from the hills and there was no food in town.
"I lost 25 kilos (55 pounds) then and many people died of starvation. But now things are better," she said, holding up a pack of cigarettes from the box. "Life is good again. God is to thank for this."
All around Gorazde, there are inklings of civilization's return. Prices for staples-such as oil, sugar and flour-have dropped to $25 a pound from $75. Meat and vegetables are less scarce.
And relief organizations are using the reopened road to bring in tons of prepackaged meals and other essentials that hadn't reached the town's 57,000 residents since the war began in April 1992.
"Nails, shoes, candles, clothes, tents, sleeping bags, and even salt, these are all desperately needed items that we couldn't get through the Serb checkpoints," said Kris Janowski, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
"If things work out . . . this will be the first time we will be able to decide what to bring in based on Gorazde's needs, as opposed to what the Serbs say is allowable," Janowski said.
During 3 1/2 years of war, Gorazde has withstood a siege and shelling unrivaled even by Sarajevo standards. The international community turned a blind eye to its suffering and encouraged the Bosnian government to give it up during peace talks in exchange for Serb-held land around the Bosnian capital.
Propping up Gorazde's will requires more than an open route, however. The city has no natural gas or clean water. And electricity comes only to those ingenious enough to build generators out of water wheels they place in the Drina River.
There also is a shortage of doctors, with few of them qualified to re-rehabilitate the war-wounded.
The citizens of Gorazde in theory will soon be able to traverse the route to Sarajevo under UN escort.
"The Serbs are already trying to put conditions on who uses the route and it appears the United Nations is letting them," said one Western diplomat. "The problem is that unlike earlier agreements that followed the NATO bombing of the Serbs, this one has no teeth. NATO isn't going to retaliate if this road is again closed."
"Of all the wars I have been through, this is the worst," said Haska, who vividly remembers World War II.
"Sometimes I wish I had been killed running from my house, so I would not have to now see Bosnia's pain."

The New York Times

October 20, 1995, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Reopened Road Brings Hope To a Suffering Muslim Town

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 12; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 977 words

DATELINE: GORAZDE, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oct. 19

"It is nice now," Adila Prutina said after 60 miles of road between Sarajevo and this eastern Muslim enclave was reopened this week through Serbian-held territory. "The Serbs don't shoot us anymore and we have food to eat. I pray that it lasts and that the world will help us overcome what has happened here."
After three and a half years of war and isolation, and being held up as a possible bargaining chip by the Bosnian Serbs, many residents of Gorazde are optimistic that their town will again be permanently linked to the capital.
"Because of this route, I know our survival is certain," said Haris Halajibegovic, a Gorazde resident. "Our Government knows that if there is no Gorazde then there is no Bosnia. It is the heart of Bosnia."
Gorazde was once a main industrial center for Bosnia, with a thriving chemical and metal trade, as well as fertile agricultural soil. But little is produced in the enclave now other than vegetables and tobacco grown in pots on windowsills or on small plots of land near burned-out buildings.
The town has no natural gas or purified water and electricity comes only to those ingenious enough to build water wheels along the Drina river, or from cherished gasoline generators at the hospital and a few other buildings.
"We have been living like serfs," said Nurka Milic, 55, a refugee from the nearby village of Stjnice. "We once had a big house and two cars, with electricity and everything we needed. Now we live like people did 400 years ago."
The town's 57,000 residents have survived nearly entirely on relief shipments brought through Serbia, though much of their two-pound weekly ration of flour and beans was always skimmed by Serbs along the way and sometimes the trucks reached the town nearly empty.
Many survived by eating only grass for weeks after fleeing their nearby villages, then found things little better once they reached United Nations-designated "safe area."
"In the first six months of the war, many people died of starvation," said Dr. Husein Praso, a doctor at the often-shelled hospital, where an exploded 120-millimeter rocket still sticks out of the earth near the front entrance. "It was also the worst time for injuries because no one knew how to react to the shelling and they couldn't believe it was happening. Now they know to stay in the dark cellar, no matter how long it takes."
To the residents of Gorazde, the new route, backed by Western resolve and the warring parties' tenuous commitment to the peace, is the first sign that there is a wish to keep them alive. Aid workers say they will be able to bring in more than 1,000 tons of food a week, twice the amount they have trucked in previous years.
A small United Nations aid convoy tested the road on Tuesday, followed today by the United States Ambassador to Bosnia, John Menzies, and his well-armed entourage. Flying American flags from his armored truck, he barreled into town leaving mobs of tattered children waving and saluting in his wake. He brought a pledge to help resupply the city and the newfound will to do so.
"Today, we tested the principle that there will be free and unimpeded access to Gorazde," Mr. Menzies said, standing among his bodyguards in the town square. "This must be available not just to the United Nations and aid agencies but to all non-military traffic. This is just the first of many visits we will make to Gorazde."
The reopening of the route to civilian traffic under United Nations escort will allow Gorazde's residents to leave the enclave for the first time since the war began in 1992. But there is some trepidation about being the first to test this theoretical possibility, as few in Gorazde believe that the Serbs can be trusted to honor their pledge of unimpeded access.
Those fears were reinforced when Mr. Menzie's convoy, which had been cleared by the Bosnian Serb authorities, was held at one checkpoint for nearly 10 minutes as the Serbian guards tried to obtain identification cards from all on board.
None were given, and after a lengthy discussion with the French United Nations officers in the lead, all the vehicles were allowed to pass. But Gorazde's residents know that they will not have the luxury of diplomatic immunity or a bullet-proof car when they try pass the Serbian barriers and mines on the road.
"Even with a United Nations convoy, I think they would shoot," Mehmet Guso said about Bosnian Serb soldiers. "Only last month they sent a bomb that killed four children. They do not act on reason."

The New York Times

October 13, 1995, Friday, Late Edition - Final

In Sarajevo, a Benefit of Peace Brings Horror to Family Who Survived War

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 10; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 716 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Oct. 12

During the last three and a half years, the Brkonic family could look about and count their blessings. Not a child had been killed, and their apartment had survived the war without a scratch.
But 30 minutes after a cease-fire was called throughout the land, the flick of a switch brought their walls tumbling down and ended their uncommon streak of luck.
The cause was the very product of peace -- gas meant to heat their home during the winter months to come. They had been eagerly awaiting a return of utilities to Sarajevo and had connected their homemade gas stove just for the occasion. But in the middle of the night, as celebratory gunfire resounded in the distance, the smell of acid began to permeate the air. When 19-year-old Namic Brkonic turned on the light in the bathroom to investigate, he blew the place to bits.
"When he arrived in the hospital, I could only recognize him by his blue eyes," said Semira Viteskic, a nurse and Namic's childhood friend. Namic was burned over 60 percent of his body and has only a 50 percent chance of survival, doctors said. His parents and younger brother were also burned badly, though they are expected to recover.
And so on Wednesday the Brkonic family gained the dubious distinction of becoming Sarajevo's first burn casualties since utilities were restored as part of the cease-fire agreement. It was doubtful they would be the last. In 1994, when utilities were turned on briefly, the burn unit at the city's Kosevo Hospital overflowed with more than 200 such injuries; another 20 came in last January.
Most Sarajevans never used gas before the war, relying mainly on electricity for heating and cooking. And it has taken its citizens some time to get acquainted with the new volatile fuel, which during the course of the war has been turned on and off at the whim of Bosnian Serbs controlling the valves.
Though the Bosnian gas company and United Nations engineers have invested much time and money checking lines and educating residents about the pitfalls of misusing the fuel, jerry-built gas lines and appliances remain common. Heaters and stoves are often connected to the pipes with rotten rubber hoses and ventilated by wafting the fumes into the apartment above. Combined with the fact that the gas has rarely been odorized so that leaks could be detected, these homemade heaters produced deaths by gas explosions that in some months outnumbered deaths by shelling.
Stories of neighbors who chose the wrong time to light up their cigarettes or blew themselves up after forgetting to turn off the heater at night are common in Sarajevo. And some residents are so afraid of the fuel that they now refuse to use it.
"I will have none of it," said Remya Karalic, as she stood next to piles of broken concrete and tattered clothes that once filled out the Brkonic's living quarters. "I would rather freeze than have this bomb waiting for me when I came home."
The stove that did the damage is about the only thing left standing in the Brkonic family kitchen now. Table and chairs have become kindling, while the home's main walls no longer exist. Their protective cocoon is now open to the hills where until recently Bosnian Serb artillerymen and snipers plotted the city's demise.
For many of the Brkonic's neighbors, it was these Serbs who first came to mind after last night's explosion. The building trembled with such force and resonance that many of them scurried to their bathrooms or basement, thinking that the enemy had broken its word and was again mercilessly shelling the city.
"I was really afraid that the cease-fire had been broken at the very moment it was to start," said Nial Jasarovic, the Brkonic family's downstairs neighbor. "I was sure it was an aerial bomb and that the whole building was going to come crashing down."
From his bed in the hospital, Namic's 52-year-old father, Ibrahim, recalled how, like his neighbors, his family had gone to bed optimistic about a new future without war. Then he felt the explosion that brought "everything in the house crashing down."
"It's really hard for me to accept this happening to us on this special day," he said. "We had so many of these cease-fires before but for this one we had hope. Now, little of it matters. We are lost anyway."

The New York Times

October 12, 1995, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

BOSNIA CEASE-FIRE GOES INTO EFFECT AS PACT IS SIGNED

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 6; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1193 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Thursday, Oct. 12

After many fits and false starts, the warring parties in Bosnia finally declared a cease-fire today intended to end three-and-a-half years of bloodletting.
The Government and Bosnian Serb leaders signed a commitment Wednesday evening to stop fighting at a minute past midnight (7:01 P.M. Wednesday, New York time.)
As the moment passed, there was no immediate report on whether the cease-fire was being observed along the front lines in Western Bosnia, where Government forces have used two days of delays in signing the accord to recapture several towns.
Shortly after midnight in Sarajevo, in apparent celebration of the cease-fire, soldiers could be heard firing small-caliber weapons in the distance.
"It is my earnest hope that today we have witnessed a significant and possibly historic step along the road towards a peaceful settlement to the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina," the head of the United Nations mission, Antonio Pedauye, said here after obtaining the signatures just hours before the cease-fire went into effect.
Although the country has lived through more than 30 such agreements in the past, Western diplomats and United Nations officials said this cease-fire has the best chance of any for leading to a peaceful settlement in the region. Territory is now split roughly equally between the Government and the Bosnian Serbs.
The agreement came after hours of shuttle diplomacy by Mr. Pedauye, who scurried back and forth across Sarajevo's airport between Government and Bosnian Serb officials, both of whom refused to sit at the same table.
"The peace process can now start," said Johannes Preisinger, the German Ambassador to Bosnia. "The Bosnian Government has consolidated its recent gains and they are happy. And the Bosnian Serbs seem ready to talk."
Although fighting continued in northwestern Bosnia even as the cease-fire agreement was finally being signed, both the Government and Bosnian Serb leaders said they would honor their commitments.
President Alija Izetbegovic called for a general halt to military operations, "except defensive ones, as of midnight tonight."
The Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, said Bosnian Serb forces would respond to any cease-fire violations by retaliating against "vulnerable enemy targets."
The cease-fire, drawn up under the guidance of Assistant Secretary of State Richard C. Holbrooke, was first set for Monday at a minute after midnight, then delayed 24 hours. But the accord stalled when the Government refused to sign until utilities were fully restored to Sarajevo, the capital.
The sticking point was a damaged electrical line that decreased the level of power to the city, though all buildings had received gas and some electricity by Tuesday evening.
According to the terms of the 60-day agreement, utilities were to be restored fully before the cease-fire could go into effect, while a corridor from both Sarajevo and Belgrade to Gorazde, the eastern enclave that was designated a Muslim "safe area" by the United Nations, would be opened after the signing.
But United Nations officials and Western military analysts said it appeared that the Government's true aim was to shore up recent military gains in northwestern Bosnia before calling a halt to the fighting.
Government troops and their Croatian allies recaptured nearly 20 percent of the country in a lightning offensive over the last month, but some key towns were not secured until Wednesday.
Chief among the Bosnian Army's concerns was gaining control of the area around the town of Mrkonjic Grad. This would give the Government use of the main western highway and puts its forces on high ground in a position to shell a military road leading to Banja Luka, a Bosnian Serb stronghold, should peace talks break down.
The other and most recently captured town was Sanski Most, northwest of Mrkonjic Grad. Thousands of Bosnian refugees fled this traditionally Muslim town after the Bosnian Serbs took it in 1992 shortly after the war began. Many Muslims who stayed behind then left this month, bringing with them tales of mass killings and rapes by the Bosnian Serbs.
While recapturing the town is symbolically important to the Bosnian Army, Sanski Most also lies on a main highway and gives the army a vantage point to keep track of Bosnian Serb military movement in the Banja Luka area. Some Government forces were said to be continuing their attack late Wednesday in an attempt to capture Prijedor, another former Muslim town to the north.
Foreign military officers said Prijedor, about 35 miles from Banja Luka, could be within the Bosnian Army's reach in a day or two. Although many Bosnian Army officers say they want to capture Banja Luka from the Serbs, foreign military officers said they have been told by the Government that this is not a serious goal.
An important objective is a rail line that connects Bihac, the main Bosnian economic center in northwest Bosnia, to central Europe. The rail line crosses into Croatia near Bosanski Novi, and Government forces have been fighting to recapture the town. Foreign officers said it may have already fallen overnight.
The foreign officials said they doubted the Bosnian Army would comply with the cease-fire before it achieved the remainder of its military aims.
Though the Government has denied that it had held up the cease-fire for military reasons, officials said they were happy about the recent military gains and felt confident that the additional days of fighting had left them in a good position for peace talks, which are to begin on Oct. 25 in the United States. These discussions would be a prelude to an as yet unscheduled peace conference in Paris.
The Paris conference would further flesh out a blueprint drafted by the United States and agreed on by the warring parties in September. That plan would give the Government control of 51 percent of the country and would recognize a Bosnian Serb entity within Bosnia.
"We now have a balance of power and I think that will make the Bosnian Serbs think twice before breaking their commitment and going back to war," said Omar Sacirbey, a senior official at the Bosnian Foreign Ministry. "Everything we hold at the moment, we are confident we now can defend."
While militarily advantageous for the Government, the fall of Mrkonjic Grad and Sanski Most would only deepen the refugee crisis. International aid organizations estimated that up to 40,000 Bosnian Serb refugees were now on the move toward Banja Luka, an area to which more than 120,000 other Bosnian Serb refugees already have flocked in recent weeks.
Thousands of Bosnian Muslim refugees have been expelled from Banja Luka and surrounding areas over the last week to make way for the influx, with many refugees reporting that Bosnian Serb soldiers have started a new campaign of rapes and killings.
"It is creating an enormous number of problems," said John Sparrow, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, referring to the reports of new atrocities and the movements of refugees. "It is a very serious situation. We have had nothing like this since the second World War."

Austin American-Statesman (Texas)

October 08, 1995

Weary of war, soldiers hope peace lasts in Bosnia

BYLINE: KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: News; Pg. A5

LENGTH: 690 words


SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- After three years of war, Christian Babic got used to the sight of blood and the feeling of killing. It crept into his dreams and stuck to him during the day.
''Now I am much more cruel than I was before the war,'' he said. ''I would just shoot whatever I saw -- man, woman, it didn't matter. They were all the enemy to me.''
But Babic has grown tired of shooting Serbs. Like many of his fellow soldiers, he is sick of trenches and war. He no longer wants nightmares of his friends being blown apart or to see the reality in the field.
With a cease-fire set to take effect Tuesday, he may never have to fight again. The agreement, conditioned on the restoration of gas and electricity to Sarajevo, would set the wheels in motion for an end to Bosnia's 42-month-old conflict, the bloodiest in Europe since World War II.
Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic told reporters Saturday there was only a slim chance that gas and electricity supplies would be restored in time.
Izetbegovic said he did not believe the truce would begin on schedule ''because the conditions have not been fulfilled.''
The Bosnian government and Serbs reported heavy fighting Saturday around the town of Bosanska Krupa, about 125 miles northwest of Sarajevo. Such surges in fighting have preceded many previous cease-fire deadlines.
There are many soldiers such as Babic, men grown accustomed to killing, who now dream of a life that does not center on a gun.
With so much destruction around every turn, many of Bosnia's soldiers see this cease-fire as more than a means to return to running water and hot baths in a fast-approaching winter. For them, it is a new lease on life.
''The day of the cease-fire will become my birthday,'' said Selim Shabanovic, a 29-year-old Bosnian soldier on leave this week, as he sold records in Sarajevo's central square. ''I will celebrate it for an eternity, and we will all get drunk like good city people.''
Edin Memic, 31, added that the agreement got him thinking about the possibility of living to a ripe old age -- with all of his limbs intact.
''I will accept whatever stops me from being killed or wounded, and will give me back my life,'' he said. ''I hope this is the real peace.''
Others welcome the cease-fire because they say there is nothing left to fight for. These soldiers are bitter that their government seems poised to accept a peace deal that will recognize the Bosnian Serb entity that they have braved minefields and sniper-fire to defeat.
The idea of a truly unified country, they say, is lost. They have been asked to die for strips of land.
''The government sold us out and lied to us,'' said Nevan Lukedjaia. ''We did not fight for a partitioned Bosnia, and that is what we are about to get.''
Babic agreed. ''I don't want to fight for a piece of Bosnia, but for a unified country,'' he said, adding that he was in the process of getting falsified documents saying he is wounded. ''My mother and brother died for unification, and only for a unified Bosnia will I fight.''
Not all soldiers are so idealistic. The Bosnian army -- the largest, though most ill-equipped, in the region -- has always had a difficult time keeping its men fighting, U.N. officials say. Many of its soldiers have gone to battle grudgingly and concentrated on taking back their own hometowns but not pushing further.
Although the Bosnian army does not provide figures on desertions, soldiers say many of their friends have fled to other countries or gone into hiding to avoid the draft.
The Bosnian government had little choice but to accept the cease-fire agreement, which would freeze its recent territorial gains in northwestern Bosnia at a time when the Bosnian Serbs have again begun mounting some opposition. But many soldiers say the cease-fire is only temporary, a breather that will give their army enough time to regroup, rest and secure more weapons.
Asked if the cease-fire would mean an end to the war, Jovan Divjak, the deputy commander of the Bosnian army, looked up from a haircut in the city's center and replied, ''Certainly not!''

The New York Times

October 7, 1995, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

For Bosnia Troops, Peace or a Pause?

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 4; Column 4; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1113 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzego vina, Oct. 6

After three years of war, Christian Babic got used to the sight of blood and the feeling of killing. It crept into his dreams and stuck to him during the day.
"Now I am much more cruel than I was before the war," he said. "I would just shoot whatever I saw -- man, woman, it didn't matter. They were all the enemy to me."
"If I had seen my old girlfriend fetching water on the Serb side, I would have shot her too," he added. "I wanted to finish the job."
But Mr. Babic has grown tired of shooting Serbs. Like many of his fellow soldiers, he is sick of trenches and war. He no longer wants nightmares of his friends being blown apart or to see the reality in the field. He longs for a normal life, full of parties and civilian clothes, and an end to the cruelty he has learned.
There are many soldiers like Mr. Babic, men grown accustomed to killing, who now dream of a life that does not center on a gun.
But with a cease-fire set to go into effect on Tuesday, they may not have to fight again. The agreement, which is conditioned on the restoration of gas and electricity to Sarajevo, would set the wheels in motion for an end to Bosnia's 42-month-old conflict, the bloodiest in Europe since World War II.
With so much destruction around every turn, many of Bosnia's soldiers see this latest cease-fire as more than a means to return to hot baths in a fast-approaching winter. For them, it is a new lease on life.
"The day of the cease-fire will become my birthday," said Selim Shabanovic, a 29-year-old Bosnian soldier on leave this week, as he sold records in Sarajevo's central square. "I will celebrate it for an eternity, and we will all get drunk like good city people."
Edin Memic, 31, added that the agreement got him thinking about the possibility of living to a ripe old age -- with all of his limbs intact.
"I will accept whatever stops me from being killed or wounded, and will give me back my life," he said. "I hope this is the real peace."
Others welcome the cease-fire because they say there is nothing left to fight for. These soldiers are bitter that their Government seems poised to accept a peace deal that will recognize the Bosnian Serb entity that they have braved minefields and sniper-fire to defeat. The idea of a truly unified country, they say, is lost. They have been asked only to die for strips of land.
"The Government sold us out and lied to us," said Nevan Lukedjaia. "We did not fight for a partitioned Bosnia, and that is what we are about to get."
Mr. Babic agreed. "I don't want to fight for a piece of Bosnia, but for a unified country," he said, adding that he was in the process of getting falsified documents saying he is wounded. "My mother and brother died for unification, and only for a unified Bosnia will I fight."
Not all soldiers are so idealistic. The Bosnian Army -- the largest though worst equipped in the region -- has always had a difficult time keeping its men fighting, United Nations officials say. Many soldiers go to battle grudgingly and concentrate on taking back their own hometowns, not pushing further.
Although the Bosnian Army does not provide figures on desertions, soldiers say many friends have fled to other countries or gone into hiding to avoid the draft.
"The Bosnian Army is now probably having a harder time keeping its forces going than before because they have taken a great deal of territory," said a United Nations spokesman, Alexander Ivanko. "Many soldiers drop off once their homes have been liberated."
The Bosnian Government had little choice but to accept the cease-fire agreement, which would freeze its recent territorial gains in northwestern Bosnia at a time when the Bosnian Serbs have again begun mounting some opposition. But many soldiers say the cease-fire is only temporary, a breather that will give their army enough time to regroup, rest and secure more weapons.
Asked if the cease-fire would mean an end to the war, Jovan Divjak, the deputy commander of the Bosnian Army, looked up from a haircut in the city's center and replied: "Certainly not!"
His sentiments were echoed by the more hard-core fighters in Sarajevo, many of whom are Muslim mercenaries who fought in Croatia before joining the war here.
"At the most, this peace will last a year. Then we will take back what is ours," said Sejo Rozajac, 24, asserting that his Government would not tolerate a Serbian republic within Bosnia. "We have to continue the war. The Serb aggressors took half our country, and we cannot stop until we have it back."
Many people in Sarajevo worry that the Serbs are harboring similar thoughts. They have already lived through more than a dozen cease-fire agreements, the last of which was cobbled together by former President Jimmy Carter in December. The four-month pledge was to be the basis for peace talks. But these never took place and fighting resumed in March.
"I would be happy for anything that would cut down on the blood I needed to collect," said Dr. Mirsada Turajlic, 40, a physician who was conducting a blood drive at the entrance to the city's new Bennetton clothing shop.
"But I won't believe in this agreement until I see it working," she added. "So far, all we've seen is politicians talk and we've heard talk before. There is still shooting going on. I am not optimistic it will stop."

The New York Times

October 3, 1995, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Sarajevans Pray for End To Their Own Cold War

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 6; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 983 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oct. 2

Every few hours, with great regularity, Emilija Mandic, 85, raises her stocking-capped head from her bunk and prays to God for gas, water and electricity.
As a postscript to her prayers, she asks for the destruction of the Serbs.
"It will be difficult for us here this winter," she said from under a growing supply of blankets. "I pray for these things as well as for God's tanks and airplanes to take out our enemies."
At least one of her prayers appears to have been answered. After much haggling over the bill, Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin of Russia agreed today to open the valves that will send Russian gas thundering through the pipes to Sarajevo.
The Bosnian Prime Minister, Haris Silajdzic, told Reuters today from Moscow, where he is meeting with Russian officials: "Mr. Chernomyrdin has said that the Russian Government will write tomorrow to the U.N. Sanctions Committee saying that the Russian Government is ready to restore the gas flow. That will be a big contribution of the Russian Government toward the cease-fire in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the peace process."
All of Sarajevo is eagerly expecting a return of regular utility service before winter lays its cold hand on the city.
But even with the promise of gas, Sarajevans are skeptical. Controlling utilities is one way the Bosnian Serbs have kept their hold on the city, and few residents think their enemies will relinquish this weapon during winter. Electricity is still being negotiated.
"As long as they have the ability to cut us off, we will prepare for winter," said Ksenija Crvenkovic, 60, Miss Mandic's landlady. "They have always used this to hurt us, and I don't count on having gas or electricity through all the cold months to come."
Predicting that even if all utilities are restored, service will only last 10 days, Aziz Gasi, a local cafe owner, warned, "You'd better stock up on wood."
Throughout the markets and at the front lines, everyone is scavenging for anything that burns. Those who cannot find wood are collecting plastic bottles and old shoes.
"I have wood for 10 days now, and I am one of the lucky ones," said Ibro Sejfic, 50, a soldier who collects sticks when he is on the front. "While we burn that, we will find wood for the next 10. If we find a Chetnik soldier, we will burn him too," he said, using the name the Bosnians have called the Serbs since World War II.
Mr. Sejfic is collecting for an entire extended family -- 11 people in all, a good portion of them retirees and children unable to forage as well as he can.
"I don't have enough money to buy wood," he said, explaining that he made only $25 a month as a recruit and gets a pack of cigarettes for every day he is at the front line. Since he cannot afford to smoke, he sells these at 75 cents each.
Gas was supposed to be coming in last week, and subsistence levels of electricity were supposed to have begun today. But both plans hit a snag.
Russian members of the United Nations sanctions committee held up gas delivery for nearly a month. John Fawcett, the United Nations official in charge of utilities, said Russia appeared to want back payments toward the $100 million it is owed, most of that for gas diverted by Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs.
Electrical power reaches a given neighborhood about one day out of six, and then only for a couple of hours. Subsistence levels for the entire enclave cannot be brought in until power lines over contested territory are repaired.
That requires that all combatants sign off on an agreement not to shoot the repairmen. The agreement has not been signed.
The need for power has created a growing guild of amateur electricians who illegally hook up their apartments to Government buildings, businesses or residences of important foreign officials. Often so many illegal lines are hooked up to one source that the system blows all the fuses out.
But for the rest of Sarajevo, electricity is as brief as it is cherished. The neighborhood that gets its installment becomes an oasis in a land of darkness.
"Utilities are everything to a city," said William Eagleton, who is in charge of all United Nations restoration projects in Sarajevo. "You only have to look out the window to see the harm that comes from their absence. There is no urban life without electricity."
Miss Mandic's neighborhood usually gets power every Sunday, most often after midnight. When it comes, her street lights up with the sounds of the city. Radios blare, washing machines churn and vacuum cleaners charge the night with their hum.
From the windows waft the smells of bread baking and meat pies burning. While some residents scurry from room to room getting chores done, others relax with a Sarajevo beer and flip through the television channels, remembering when those things could be taken for granted.
People fashion their whole week around the arrival of electricity. They prepare food for days and ready their laundry, their bath water and their entire apartments for a cleaning regime. They get angry when the power does not show up.
"Last Sunday I prepared dinner for two days because electricity was supposed to come," said Muhira Muratovic, 33, the mother of 3-year-old twins. "I waited all afternoon and all night but got nothing. By then I had to put everything in the garbage. It's always when you are really counting on it that the electricity is late."
But when it does come on, they go all out. For Miss Mandic the signal is her cabbage boiling after several days at the ready in a pot on a Bunsen burner. When she hears that sound, Miss Mandic leaps from her bed and hobbles over to turn on every light in her room. Then come the television and the radio.
"I turn them both on so I can listen to the news and watch movies," she said. "I like the foreign films, but I'm not into the erotic stuff, not at my age. And sometimes, I'll make a strudel."

LOAD-DATE: October 3, 1995

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Emilija Mandic keeps the covers close, praying for heat and waiting for Sundays when electricity makes a brief visit to her Sarajevo apartment. (Kit R. Roane/The New York Times)

The New York Times

October 2, 1995, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Sarajevo Streets Are Humming Happily Again

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1047 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oct. 1

After nearly 500 high-speed trips, dodging traffic and the hulks of cars that didn't make it, Emma Daly met the one thing she never expected on the boulevard known as Sniper Alley: a cop with a radar gun.
"It's bloody unbelievable," said Ms. Daly, a British war correspondent, pulling out the money, the equivalent of 50 cents, to pay the fine. "But I guess this is progress, a sign of the times."
Bullets have always been more of a problem than car accidents on the main drag in Sarajevo, and there is some doubt that sniper attacks have reached a low enough ebb to warrant this latest public safety measure. But the police in Sarajevo say radar is here to stay.
"Things are fine now," said the officer, who would identify himself only by his first name, Goran, as he handed out wads of tickets to angry Sarajevans. "There is no reason to drive like hell. If you speed, you pay. People are just going to have to get used to a new way of life."
The new way of life has come with the first tenuous steps toward peace, and all around the Bosnian capital there are signs that the city is beginning to blossom again while destitution and fear are on the wane.
With the Bosnian Serbs' heavy guns gone from the hills around town and new commercial routes to the city open, buses zip along the boulevards and traffic clogs streets that were once empty.
Repairs have begun on shell holes, and work is being done on the trolley system and the pipes that it is hoped will soon pump gas into Sarajevo's homes.
Electricity is expected by the end of this month, United Nations officials say. It will not only light the lamps, but will also provide the power to generate clean water -- something that has had to be hoisted home by the liter from well-fortified public wells.
In the markets, bread, butter and bananas vie for space with an overabundance of chocolate and alcohol. Prices reach new lows every day, even for luxury items like Marlboro cigarettes. Five dollars a pack is now only a dim memory. Now cigarette hawkers toss the red-and-white boxes to all comers for as little as $1.50.
Smoke fills once-empty local discos where young people wearing bright fashions from the newly opened Benetton store dance to Michael Jackson and the Village People. War, still looming in the Bosnian Serb territory around Banja Luka, creeps in only in the form of dancers in crew cuts and army boots stomping to the beat.
"Things are normal now," Mehmed Kreponic, 30, said as he ordered a drink at Club BB, a disco spinning techno-pop and oldies in the city's center. "We are going out again and living like normal people everywhere."
Children are one of the most visible symbols of Sarajevo's slow return to health.
Long kept protected at home by worried parents, they now fill the streets, chatting with friends or running to class at the schools that have been reopened since NATO bombs forced the Serbian guns to break their tight circle around the city.
"NATO has improved my love life immensely," said Amel Efendic, 15, explaining that he had spotted the girl of his dreams, 14-year-old Amila, on the first day of class.
"I liked her hair and her blue eyes," he said, standing over a sunburst in the concrete created by a long-forgotten shell. "At first I was nervous, because I didn't know if she liked me too. But I've already met her parents, and last time, when we went to the cafe, we held hands."
"Things are progressing nicely on all fronts," he said with a grin.
But with fighting going on in other areas of Bosnia and any real peace deal months away, Sarajevans know that all it would take is one capricious order, and the smaller weapons that still ring the enclave could turn Sarajevo into a city of darkness and fear once again.
"We are still under the Serbs' control," said Emina Kirlic, 23, a dental student. "The Serbs can kill us, and these repaired shops can all be destroyed by one shell. All this could just be temporary."
Even if this peace is more than a temporary lull, Ms. Kirlic's life will still be a hard road. Most Sarajevans with money have spent their savings on survival, and the Government has little money for repairs.
Ill-fitting garden hoses connect some households to the gas lines, said Muhamed Zlatar, Sarajevo's deputy mayor for reconstruction. And the electrical grid is insufficient for the city's winter needs.
The World Bank has estimated that it will take billions of dollars to repair Bosnia's roads, bridges and public services. Fixing Sarajevo's houses alone will cost about $1.2 billion, the Bosnian Government has said.
Rebuilding will be a world affair. The United States has pledged a multibillion-dollar reconstruction fund for the country, and last month, J. Brian Atwood, Administrator of the Agency for International Development, toured Sarajevo's ruins with an eye toward calculating costs.
"All segments of Sarajevo are in a very difficult situation," Mr. Zlatar said. "Nearly all buildings have been damaged, and we have 270,000 people in this town with very little money. It will take a lot of money to put this place back together again, and so far we don't have it."
Sarajevo's heart will be even more difficult to repair. Nearly every family has lost a son or daughter to the war. And the children who survive have grown up playing with real guns and learning to hate.
They are already having trouble accommodating peace. Street gangs have come out during the brief lapse in shelling, terrorizing long-haired Sarajevan boys, who do not wear the crew cuts of those who serve in the military. And wounded soldiers have been known to take out their pain on those lucky enough to avoid the draft by tossing grenades at them.
The big city that arises from Sarajevo's ashes may have all the charm of a gang-infested American inner city. "Everybody now is armed with either a gun or a grenade or a switch-blade," Amel said, noting that recess at his school was still a time to take cover.
"You can buy a grenade for $15 or brass knuckles for $5," he said. "We had a guy showing off a gun in school yesterday. He said if we told on him, we'd be killed. It's gotten worse over the last couple of days. Before the war you could kid around with people. Now you know not to be rude or get angry at anyone."

Chicago Tribune

September 21, 1995 Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

BOSNIA SERBS MEET WEAPONS DEADLINE; WITHDRAWAL OF BIG GUNS AND TANKS NEAR SARAJEVO AVERTS RENEWED NATO STRIKES