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Christus Rex Information ServiceSARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (Mar 20, 1996 09:21 a.m. EST) -- Looters and thugs pounced immediately after the first four Serb districts of Sarajevo were handed over to Muslim-Croat control.
Things were different in Grbavica, which on Tuesday became the last Serb sector to change hands: International and local authorities figured out how to move into anarchic conditions and quickly establish law and order.
No major incidents have been reported since Grbavica came under the control of the Muslim-Croat federation that is to govern half of postwar Bosnia, U.N. and NATO spokesmen said today and Tuesday.
"I think there were some lessons learned from the other suburbs," said Lt. Col. Mark Rayner, a spokesman for the NATO-led peace force. "As far as we've been aware, it's been fairly incident-free."
The five Serb sectors were reintegrated into Sarajevo as a key provision of the Bosnian peace accord. Most residents, fearing reprisal when their wartime enemies took over, fled to other Serb-held lands.
Bosnian Serb leaders fueled those fears, and gangs of Serb thugs terrorized some residents into leaving, and plundered or destroyed anything of value rather than have it come under enemy control.
When Ilidza, the largest suburb, changed hands a week ago, Serb gangs who had looted and burned buildings left the area only to be replaced by Muslim and Croat thugs who terrorized the few Serbs brave enough to remain.
During the first days, U.N. police received 100 complaints from Serb residents in Ilidza of looting, harassment and intimidation.
But while a similar wave of arson and looting swept Grbavica in the days before it was handed over, the aftermath is much calmer.
"The atmosphere is very much different in Grbavica," Alexander Ivanko, spokesman for the U.N. police, said Tuesday. "There is no atmosphere of intimidation that you saw in Ilidza in the first 24 hours."
There are other important differences: NATO and the international police substantially increased their presence, and police from the Muslim-Croat federation seem to be learning their job, Ivanko said.
"You see foot patrols throughout the area which you didn't see in Ilidza in the first few hours," he said. "And it seems that everybody is really trying to prevent in Grbavica what we saw in Ilidza."
Authorities opened only one entrance to Grbavica -- compared with four in Ilidza. For at least part of the day, they checked to see whether people trying to enter had lived there previously or had relatives there.
At a ceremony Tuesday inaugurating a federation police station in Grbavica, Interior Minister Avdo Hebib said authorities "will undertake measures to provide security for all citizens, regardless of their ethnicity, who decided to stay here."
And over the weekend, President Alija Izetbegovic assured Serbs they will be treated fairly by the federation.
NATO and the U.N. police welcomed these statements as signs the government will try to halt further ethnic divisions.
"What the federation authorities have to do now is to try to ensure that as many Serbs as want to come back will be able to do so," Ivanko said.
The federation is a shaky marriage brokered under U.S. pressure as a counterweight to the Serb republic that is to govern half of Bosnia. Today, new frictions emerged between Muslims and Croats, who have not been able to overcome animosities from their own fighting in 1993-94.
All sides were to have removed troops and equipment from most of Sarajevo by Tuesday. But the overdue redeployment was suspended today after the Muslim-led government army and the Bosnian Croat militia wanted to station their troops in the same barracks west of Sarajevo, NATO said.
Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Walker, the commander of NATO-led ground troops in Bosnia, ordered the delay "to prevent any possible misunderstanding" between the two nominal allies.
In The Hague, Netherlands, today, a war crimes tribunal opened a hearing on a November 1991 massacre in Croatia that prosecutors pinpoint as the first case of ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslav conflict.
Three Yugoslav Army officers -- Mile Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin -- were charged in November with crimes against humanity in the slaughter of 261 Croat men taken out of a hospital in Vukovar, Croatia, and shot.
Serb-led Yugoslavia has refused to surrender the officers for trial, forcing prosecutors to go public with their evidence as a way of pressuring Belgrade authorities.
The three officers are accused of ordering the killing of the men, who had taken refuge at the hospital following a brutal three-month Serb siege of the town.
The massacre "was the very beginning of of what was later to be known as ethnic cleansing," Australian prosecutor Grant Niemann said, referring to the use of murder, rape and torture to force ethnic groups out of conquered territory.>
March 19, 1996
Web posted at: 10:20 p.m. EST (0320 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Ratcheting up tensions between the United States and China Tuesday, the Pentagon said the United States reserves the right to send ships through the Strait of Taiwan despite China's warnings to steer clear, and the House of Representatives approved a resolution stating that Washington should help defend Taiwan in the event of an attack.
"We reserve the right to sail in international waters," Defense spokesman Ken Bacon told reporters. "Whether or not we sail through the Strait of Taiwan has not been decided ... We've been through the Strait in the past. I assume we'll go through the Strait in the future. I can't tell you when. "
Bacon noted that the carrier Nimitz would arrive off Taiwan this weekend to join the USS Independence. While rejecting China's warning against sending U.S. warships through the Taiwan Strait, Bacon said the fleets were not intended to provoke Beijing.
"We've sent our fleets there to reassure countries in the region of our interest in free navigation, and our interest in peace in the western Pacific," Bacon said.
At a Capitol Hill ceremony, Perry said sending two carrier battle groups to the Western Pacific was meant also to remind China that America is the dominant power in the region.
"America has the best damned Navy in the world and no one should ever forget that," Perry said in an obvious warning to Beijing not to launch an attack on Taiwan, which holds its first direct presidential elections on Saturday.
The sentiment in the House of Representatives Tuesday was clear as members voted 369-14 for a non-binding resolution urging the United States to help defend Taiwan against any invasion, attack or blockade by China.
The Senate could take up a similar resolution as early as this week.
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