Bosnia Muslims and Croats Exchange Prisoners

Bosnian Muslims and Croats swapped hundreds of prisoners Tuesday, and thousands of Croatian civilians, fleeing fighting with their former Muslim allies in central Bosnia, sought brief refuge with Serbs.

Bosnian Croat forces handed over 728 Muslim prisoners from the Gabela camp in Herzegovina at dawn to the International Committee of the Red Cross to be taken to an exchange point at Goranci, 16 miles northwest of Mostar.

Muslim detainees said they could not believe they were free after being held for more than 100 days. “It was very ugly. Worse than hell,” prisoner Mesud Bjelic said.

About 1,000 Muslim prisoners remain in the Gabela camp to be freed later in the week, and the Red Cross expects all 5,500 detainees covered by the Croatian-Muslim prisoner swap accord to be released by the end of next week.

In Konjic, Muslims freed 309 Croatian detainees, a Croatian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

The exchange, the biggest between Bosnian Croats and Muslims, was agreed upon last week at a meeting between Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic and his Croatian counterpart, Mate Granic.

Both sides began rounding up men of fighting age in the Mostar region, halfway between Sarajevo and the Adriatic coast, in June after their alliance against Bosnian Serbs collapsed and they started fighting in central Bosnia.

A planned release of almost all remaining Serbian and Muslim prisoners in Bosnia, which had been due to start today, has been postponed at least until the weekend, the Red Cross said Tuesday.

Mediators Lord Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg, testing the waters for possible new peace talks among the three warring sides in Bosnia, were in Zagreb discussing with Croatian President Franjo Tudjman a Bosnian settlement and the situation in the Serb Krajina enclave.