Shooting of 3rd Policeman Perils Bosnia Peace

In a significant setback for the Bosnian peace process, tensions between Muslims and Croats flared Saturday when the third police officer in two days was shot while patrolling the former battle lines dividing the southern Bosnian city of Mostar.

The Croatian police officer died less than 48 hours after two Muslim police officers were critically wounded. The Croat was believed to have been attacked from the Muslim side of Mostar, and the Muslims from the Croatian side.

The U.S.-brokered peace agreement ending 3 1/2 years of war here relies heavily on a shaky alliance between Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats, who have formed a federation that is supposed to govern half the country.

Hostilities during the last week in Mostar, the capital of the federation, show that the alliance, never very strong to begin with, is under serious threat of collapse, diplomats said.

Fearing a major escalation in violence, Mostar’s European administrator, Hans Koschnick of Germany, on Saturday considered a curfew and restrictions on travel between the Croatian and Muslim sectors of the city. Such action would go directly against the letter and spirit of the peace accord, which bases its success on the establishment of free movement for all people throughout this battered country.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization deployed troops and armored vehicles Saturday to back up European Union police patrols responding to the violence. Spanish NATO forces intervened in Saturday’s police shooting and took the victim to the hospital, a spokesman said. Automatic gunfire and grenade explosions reverberated through the city as darkness fell, reporters in Mostar said.

Mostar is one of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s most fabled cities and was graced with a famous, ancient stone bridge until the bridge was destroyed by Croatian shelling during fighting between Croats and Muslims in 1993. Today the city is divided, with the Neretva River forming the line between the devastated Muslim half and the recovering Croatian half.

The fighting between the two sides was halted in March 1994 when Washington pressured them into forming an alliance against their common enemy, the Bosnian Serbs. Yet many Bosnian Croats would rather be independent of the Muslim-led, Sarajevo-based authorities and would prefer to secede from Bosnia and join Croatia. They have little interest in seeing the federation function.

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Each side of Mostar has its own mayor, while the city as a whole is administered by the European Union. The western, Croatian half uses the flag and currency of neighboring Croatia and until recently restricted all movement by Muslims from the eastern side.

The first agreement to emerge from peace talks last fall in Dayton, Ohio, was a decision to strengthen the federation and provide greater freedom for Muslims to cross into the western half of the city. So far, that freedom has been limited to women and children.

If Koschnick, the European administrator, goes ahead with plans to declare a curfew in an attempt to calm the situation, freedom of movement will be curtailed just as it was scheduled to be expanded later this month under terms of the peace accord.

“It’s going to be a heartbreaking decision but may be necessary to protect citizens,” Howard Fox, spokesman for the European Union, said in a telephone interview from Mostar, 60 miles southwest of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

Tensions in Mostar began to rise on New Year’s Day, when Croatian police shot to death a Muslim male youth who, the police said, failed to stop at a checkpoint leading into the city’s Croatian sector. EU police said the young man was trying to travel to the Croatian side to see his old home and his girlfriend.

Three days later, fighters from the Croatian side machine-gunned a car carrying the two Muslim police officers. The men were seriously injured. On Saturday, the Bosnian Croat police officer, who was patrolling along the Neretva River around noon, was fatally shot twice in the stomach and once in the leg from the Muslim side, a NATO spokesman said.

“I have the bad feeling that such incidents are not provoked but are aimed to make coexistence difficult and to jeopardize the Dayton agreement,” Koschnick told reporters. “I was full of hope at the end of last year, but I’m shocked by the developments at the beginning of this year.”

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Under the peace accord, the Muslims and Croats of Mostar were to agree on borders for six districts within Greater Mostar. But in a sign of how far apart the nominal allies are, they have yet to reach any agreement despite long negotiations.

“That’s very bad news, because if they can’t agree, they can’t implement the Dayton agreement,” Fox said.

At the Dayton peace talks, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher labeled the federation an “essential building block” for peace. Its demise would spell disaster for the overall peace agreement.

Hoping to strengthen the alliance, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic met in Sarajevo on Friday. They announced several minor agreements, but Izetbegovic conceded that the federation had “stagnated.”

In other developments:

* For the second time in three days, NATO forces came under hostile fire Saturday. British armored vehicles on patrol in northern Bosnia were targeted by gunfire from a bunker, and they fired back in NATO’s most robust action since it began its peace mission, an alliance spokesman said.

The British suffered no casualties in the firefight after unleashing 62 rounds of small-arms fire at a bunker on the confrontation line near the northwestern town of Sanski Most, said Col. David Shaw from British headquarters in central Bosnia.

Shaw said the shots came from a position midway between Bosnian Serb and Muslim-led government forces, making it difficult to tell who was to blame.

* A French soldier from the NATO peace force stepped on a mine as he patrolled on foot near the Sarajevo district of Dobrinja. He was wounded and became the seventh casualty since NATO took over the peace mission in Bosnia from the United Nations on Dec. 20.

On Thursday, an Italian soldier was shot in the arm, making him the first member of the NATO-led force hurt by hostile fire. Four British soldiers and one American have been wounded by mines.

* Emerging into public view for the first time in three weeks, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic strolled through the streets of his mountain headquarters, Pale, and delivered a televised address for the Orthodox Christian Christmas.

“I am here and I will stay here,” Karadzic told a man roasting a lamb outside his house in preparation for today’s holiday.

He hailed peace in Bosnia but railed against the hand-over of Serb-held parts of Sarajevo and against his former patron, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who represented Bosnia’s Serbs at the peace talks.

* NATO’s peace force said it will investigate Bosnian government claims that four civilians remain in the custody of Bosnian Serbs after having been detained in the Serb-held Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza.

Under international pressure, the Serbs on Thursday released 16 Muslims who had been detained since Dec. 22. NATO said it will attempt to determine whether other Bosnians remain in detention but cautioned that it cannot be “dragged down into a police role.”

* NATO also began foot patrols in the Serb-held suburbs of Sarajevo to reassure people there who fear for their safety when the area reverts to the control of their Muslim foes.

* An unusual amount of gunfire was heard around Sarajevo on Saturday, but NATO chalked it up to the Orthodox Christian Christmas celebrated by the Serbs.