Meeting Brings Mortal Enemies Together

Gathered on the same American C-141 aircraft bound for a meeting with President Clinton on Saturday were mortal enemies, victims of the Bosnian war and its survivors.

Alija Izetbegovic, the Muslim president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, was accompanied by members of his government, including Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey. Not far from Izetbegovic sat the Serbian mayors of two Bosnian Serb bastions, Banja Luka in the north and Ilidza, a suburb of Sarajevo. It is most likely that these adversaries had not spoken to each other in nearly four years of war.

Tensions have soared in recent days, especially over the upcoming transition of Ilidza and other Serb-held suburbs to Muslim-Croat control, as called for in the U.S.-brokered peace accord.

“There was a real unpredictable quality. Would they talk to each other?” said a U.S. official who was present. “There was a little awkwardness on occasion, but they talked.”

U.S. officials who put the disparate group together and took them to Tuzla also invited the leaders of Bosnia’s three religions: Vinko Puljic, Sarajevo’s Roman Catholic cardinal; the Muslim leader, Reis Mustafa Efendija Ceric; and Metropolitan Nikolaj, the head of the Orthodox church, whose faith is practiced by Serbs. Also present was a member of the Jewish community, Jacob Finci.

At one point in the meeting with Clinton, the Rev. Franjo Komarica, bishop of Banja Luka, made a dramatic entrance after being transported to Tuzla by a couple of American GIs. A Croat in an area that witnessed the expulsion of tens of thousands of Muslims and Croats and the murders of an untold number, Komarica has spent most of the last four years under house arrest.

In addition to Ilidza’s Nedzeljko Prstojevic and Banja Luka’s Predrag Radic, the Muslim mayors of Sarajevo and Tuzla--Tarik Kupusovic and Selim Beslagic, respectively--also attended. Prstojevic has been a Serbian hard-liner but is being cultivated by U.S. and NATO officials seeking his cooperation in preventing a mass exodus of Bosnian Serbs from the Sarajevo suburbs.

*

The officials also arranged for Clinton to greet families representing each of the ethnic factions. A Muslim woman and her daughter, who fled the former U.N. “safe area” of Zepa when it fell to Bosnian Serb forces in July, met the president.

The woman’s husband remains missing--held, she said, in a prison camp in the neighboring republic of Serbia.

A Bosnian Serb engineer who has remained loyal to the Sarajevo government and his soldier son told of losing their house because of its front-line position. A Croatian widow and her small son were also part of the group.

“It was a remarkable moment,” the U.S. official said.

But as extraordinary as the gathering was, the same weather that delayed Clinton’s arrival by hours jinxed his meeting with the Bosnians, which was reduced to a few minutes.