Hope Marks Christmas in Sarajevo : Balkans: Shoppers, revelers and churchgoers savor peace in the Bosnian capital, where halt to war is in second week. But the celebration, uniting members of several faiths, is tentative.

The mixed faiths of the Bosnian capital marked their first peacetime Christmas in four years Monday, with tentative celebration of what many hope is truly the end of war.

Sarajevans filled the streets, browsed through new and bustling stores and packed church services in a city that suddenly seemed to come alive, despite its deep battle wounds.

“Everybody likes holidays, no matter the religion,” said Sotir Matovic, 17, as he emerged from midnight Christmas Mass at Sarajevo’s downtown cathedral. “It was always like that in Sarajevo. That has been the tradition until now. We hope next year will be the same.”

Matovic--”My mother’s a Muslim, my father’s a Catholic, I’m a Sarajevan”--said Christmas crowds were bigger this season than in the last few years, thanks to the halt in shooting and shelling under the U.S.-brokered peace accord that formally ended the Bosnian war on Dec. 14.

In the old Yugoslavia, Sarajevo--where Muslims, Serbs and Croats lived together in relative harmony--prided itself on its multiethnic character. Three and a half years of savage ethnic warfare have largely destroyed that ideal, with many Serbs, who are Orthodox Christians, and Croats, who are Roman Catholics, having abandoned the city.

But some residents struggle to preserve a piece of the traditional tolerance.

The cathedral Mass, for example, was standing room only, as Muslims crowded in alongside Christians before an altar that glistened with silver and gold trimmings. Carols like “Silent Night” were interspersed with greetings of “ Salaam aleykum !” -- “Peace be upon you!”

“The war is over. Let there be peace!” intoned an emotional Cardinal Vinko Puljic in his Christmas sermon. “Despite so many wounds and pain, there is joy. This moment is holy because we are experiencing God.”

Raza Smoljan attended the public Mass for the first time since 1991, having been driven to stay home during the war years as Sarajevo underwent a deadly siege. A Muslim married to a Serb-Croat, she ventured out, accompanied by her 14-year-old son, hesitantly and with lingering reservations.

“We hope the war is over and maybe we can head toward better times,” she said. In a typical Sarajevo story, Smoljan’s family observes Christmas with her husband’s parents and the spring Muslim holiday, Bajram, with her parents. New Year’s Eve, birthdays and May Day--a labor holiday--are celebrated in her own home.

Outside the church, several hundred youths spilled from the cathedral and milled about in an open plaza, where they set off fireworks and sang songs. The usual 10 p.m. wartime curfew was lifted for the holidays--that in itself a cause for joy.

Franjo Milosevic, a retired electrician and regular churchgoer, noted that Sarajevo’s Catholic minority each year attends Christmas Eve Mass joined by citizens of other faiths. But this year, the pews were more full than ever.

“Maybe people believe in God more than they used to,” said Milosevic, 57. “For those of us who survived, it’s only God who saved us.”

Puljic, the cardinal, issued a message for each of the parties responsible, in one way or another, for the war that left 250,000 people dead and up to 3 million displaced.

“To the politicians, do not fill this country with blood. There has already been too much blood,” he said. “Media, do not spread hatred. . . . Soldiers, protect, do not destroy. Make it that every single human being can feel worthy. Writers, write in a way so that you build and do not poison the people.

“In these years of this terrible war,” he added, “we have inherited so many wounds of those expelled, of families separated, and many of those people are not with us now. There was a time when live people envied the dead, because the dead got rid of their terrible suffering. Let us make for this country to be a country of love, where everybody can live. Let hatred stop.”

Church services across government-held Bosnia were used Monday to give thanks for the presence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeeping force, which will eventually number 60,000 and is assigned to enforce the Dec. 14 treaty. The Western troops have been fanning throughout the countryside to man zones separating the war’s enemies--the Serbs, Croats and Muslims.

The NATO Implementation Force, as it is called, has reached agreement with Serbs and the Muslim-led government on an initial withdrawal from now-quiet battle lines around Sarajevo. The pullback of military personnel and equipment must take place by 11 a.m. Wednesday under the terms of the peace accord.

In the northeastern city of Tuzla, headquarters for what will eventually be a 20,000-strong American force, GIs ate hot turkey dinners and apple pie Monday. Near Sarajevo, British forces sang Christmas carols while being served dinner by commanders Gen. Michael Jackson and Gen. Mike Walker.

At the British headquarters in the Zetra stadium area, which skirts soccer fields now converted into sprawling cemeteries full of war victims, the Christmas spirit was dampened by the reported suicide of a British private.

Also, a British Lynx helicopter came under machine-gun fire Sunday as it flew over the Croat-held town of Jajce in central Bosnia, NATO officials said. The helicopter was not hit, but the incident marked the fifth time that an alliance aircraft had come under attack since NATO took over the Bosnian peacekeeping mission Wednesday.

In Sarajevo, after midnight Mass, many residents used the curfew-free night to roam and linger for hours at coffee bars and restaurants, savoring a rare taste of freedom in a city that just weeks ago was darkened by power outages and weakened by defeat. Now, street lights shine, neon signs blink and new shops are full of attractive if expensive products.

In the middle of the night at one restaurant, a group of young Bosnian men drank many beers and sang along boisterously and with tears in their eyes to a song that pays tribute to a fallen Bosnian soldier. The song’s tune is traditional Serbian, the words very Muslim. They tell of how the slain soldier simply wants to know that Bosnia still exists as he goes to heaven.

“Clinton, friend of our people!” shouted one of the young men.

“And Leighton Smith! Our hero,” said another, referring to the U.S. Navy admiral who is the overall commander of the NATO force in Bosnia.

“There were many victims in this war,” said the most sober of the men. “We are the survivors.”