Sarajevans Enjoy Sense of Relief With Eye on Reality : Bosnia: ‘I feel as if the war has ended,’ says a shopkeeper. But the future is far from secure.

Children line the once-treacherous Mt. Igman road that snakes into this capital. They wave and throw flowers at the British and French armored personnel carriers and the U.N. trucks that pass by in a mile-long convoy.

One woman in a head scarf raises her palms upward in prayer and sobs her gratitude. Old men nod approval.

This scene has the feel of a people welcoming an army that has come to liberate them, and there is an element of truth to that.

Ever since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.N. rapid-reaction force launched their current air and artillery campaign against Bosnian Serb positions, many people here have been transported from the depths of desperation to optimism that their 41-month-old war ordeal could soon be relieved.

NATO has promised to eliminate the threat that the Serbian forces pose to Sarajevo, to stop the random shelling that has claimed thousands of lives. But the danger now is that the expectations growing among the people of Sarajevo are unrealistically high.

“I feel as if the war has ended,” said Majda Dajdzic, who runs a small shop just yards from where a mortar mowed down dozens of Sarajevans on Aug. 28 and triggered the first sustained air strikes. “I don’t think another shell will ever fall again.”

Her partner in the store is bitter. “If they had acted a long time ago like they should have,” she said, “so many people would be alive.”

The NATO operation is more limited in scope than many Sarajevans would like to think, and it is having only nominal success in destroying the Bosnian Serb war machine. As a further reality check, a U.S.-sponsored peace plan scheduled for debate today in Geneva will ultimately create an ethnically divided Bosnia--something many Sarajevans have said they could never accept.

Still, there is a new sense of hope and safety, however temporary it may be. On Thursday, despite ever-present fears of Serbian retaliation, children roller-skated down a sidewalk near U.N. headquarters--a frequent target of artillery attacks--and large numbers of people ventured openly into the streets.

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For 41 months, Sarajevo has been a city surrounded by Serbian guns. On Thursday, a road into Sarajevo from Mt. Igman, which was opened by the United Nations this week over Serbian objections, was choked with traffic. Long lines of trucks bringing in food, firewood and other supplies traversed the airport--until recently a shooting gallery for the Serbs--in the first such unrestricted access to the capital in six months.

One truck brought in a load of cows.

In a city mostly dependent on humanitarian aid, market prices have come down thanks to the road; a gasoline station has opened and there is talk of restarting the city’s tram, which passes through the part of Sarajevo known as Snipers’ Alley.

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Shelling on Tuesday night reminded Sarajevans that the danger has not passed. But that incident, U.N. and government officials now say, was started by the Bosnian government army and not by the Serbs.

There are still very few homes that have electricity, and there is virtually no running water. As winter fast approaches, there is no gas for heating in a city that remains little more than a wasteland of ruins.

At the Alipasino Polje housing project, optimism is tempered with bitterness that it has taken this long for the West to act and with fear that the West won’t go far enough.

“What can I say? After [nearly] four years of suffering, it is good the world is finally reacting to what is going on here,” said Ferdo Dzaferovic, 48. “I only hope they go all the way.”

Dzaferovic’s wife was killed a week ago by snipers firing on an area where many Sarajevans tend survival gardens.

He and a group of men lounged on a patio in front of their apartment building, which took a direct hit from a rocket bomb on June 28 that ravaged three floors and killed five people. All but six of the 72 families in the building have been relocated because it is no longer structurally sound. The last six are waiting for a place to go.

After the rocket blast in June, the people of the Alipasino Polje high-rise cowered in a pitch-dark basement against further attack, and when reporters tried to talk to them, the residents angrily chased the journalists away.

On Thursday, as NATO planes roared overhead, the mood was relaxed. Bomb explosions at a Bosnian Serb army barracks about a mile away were so strong that the windows at the housing complex shook. But no one fled.

“Now we enjoy the shelling!” said Selma Subasic, who runs a mini-market in the building. “It’s on the other side.”

“It’s high time that something was done for Sarajevo,” said Salem Bajtal, 50, who at the start of the war was driven from his home in a Sarajevo suburb now controlled by Serbs. “When the Serbs hear the NATO planes, they run like mice. Well, for [nearly] four years, we felt like mice.”

Dzavid Zorinic, 38, an out-of-work factory employee, insisted that air strikes should be intensified “to finally put an end to this.”

“If they back down, there will be no end until one of the peoples is totally extinguished,” he said.

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“Everyone is talking about the opening of [the supply road], but they are thinking only in the short term. The real solution is to open all access to Sarajevo, to remove the heavy artillery and to let people from the occupied territories go home. They [the West] can do anything they like. The question is: What do they want?”

This is not the first time that the residents of Sarajevo have been tempted into optimism by encouraging signs.

In February, 1994, the first NATO ultimatum created a weapons-exclusion zone around the city and forced the Serbs to pull their heavy weaponry 12 1/2 miles away from the city. The Muslim-led government army was also required to deposit its smaller cache of armor in collection centers.

Shelling of Sarajevo dropped off dramatically at first but gradually resumed as the Serbs nibbled away at the weapons-exclusion zone.

Fighting had intensified by year’s end, when former U.S. President Jimmy Carter brokered a four-month cease-fire. Again, a relative peace settled over the city. Cafes opened, markets were well-stocked and the tram began running again. But the cease-fire collapsed, and fighting and shelling mounted steadily--until now.