Bosnia Peace Comes Under Attack on Several Fronts

A promising effort to encourage travel between Sarajevo and its largest Serbian suburb collapsed in bloodshed Wednesday when a sniper opened fire at a public bus running the route for the first time since fighting divided this city in 1992.

Two people were injured, one when a bullet ripped through both of his feet, in the afternoon attack in suburban Ilidza, striking yet another blow to a peace process that has stumbled from crisis to crisis over the past week.

The assault on the bus came as NATO officials, who have been tight-lipped about their worsening ties with the Bosnian Serbs, acknowledged for the first time how serious the break in relations has become--and how helpless they have been in repairing it.

The most dramatic confirmation of the problems came Wednesday in Washington, where it was announced that State Department officials have scheduled an urgent meeting with the presidents of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia on Friday in Rome.

The announcement followed several startling revelations in Sarajevo by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led peacekeeping force, known as IFOR, about events of the past few days.

There were also reports from both the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian government indicating that the controversial issue of detaining alleged war crimes suspects may not have been put to rest.

Lt. Col Mark Rayner, an IFOR spokesman, said high-level military contacts between the Bosnian Serbs and NATO peacekeepers have been nonexistent for six days. Rayner condemned the situation as a serious violation of the Dayton, Ohio, peace accord--and top NATO commanders in Bosnia were unable to remedy the problem Wednesday.

“The general message at the highest level is that communication will exist for emergencies only,” Rayner said. “It is not satisfactory . . . not just for NATO but the whole peace agreement.”

IFOR officials also disclosed that a rocket-propelled grenade blasted a NATO headquarters building in Ilidza on Monday night, just as NATO troops were transporting two Bosnian Serb military commanders to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

It was the arrest of the two Bosnian Serb officers last month by the Bosnian government that caused Bosnian Serb commander Gen. Ratko Mladic to break military contacts with NATO, setting off the current crisis.

No one was injured in the grenade attack, and its source has not been determined, but the device blew a foot-wide hole through the roof of the building.

IFOR officials would not say whether the blast was related to the extradition of the two officers, but one official said the timing “coincided rather nicely.”

NATO officials refuse to talk in detail about security issues, but they also confirmed Wednesday that the IFOR liaison office in Pale, the Bosnian Serbs’ self-styled capital, has been left unstaffed for several days, presumably because of safety concerns for the officers.

“IFOR is urging [Bosnian Serb] leaders to return to the table and resume the dialogue that must happen for the Dayton agreement to succeed,” Rayner said.

The sniper attack on the Sarajevo bus, while not directly related to the NATO mission, reinforced the growing perception in the Bosnian capital that NATO peacekeepers would rather stand on the sidelines than become actively engaged in securing peace.

IFOR officials refused requests by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which organized the resumption of the four-mile bus service, to provide military escorts for the buses, which had been operating for about six hours when two machine-gun blasts brought the service to a halt. A meeting will be held today to decide whether to restart service.

“As long as we can’t have real protection and security, I wouldn’t advise anybody to go,” said Sergije Markovic, 76, one of the wounded, who spoke from his hospital bed. “The leaders should think about that, the ones who let the buses go and let people be injured.”

The gunfire occurred near a highway overpass that has been the scene of persistent sniping since the peace accord was signed in December. A NATO vehicle was struck there Monday, and snipers have been killed or arrested there by NATO troops in recent weeks.

On the bitterly disputed issue of suspected war criminals, Bosnian Serb radio reported that three Bosnian government soldiers, captured last summer, would not be released in prisoner exchanges because they allegedly participated in war crimes, including the massacre of women and children.

The decision was seen as retaliation for the Bosnian government’s continued detention of three Bosnian Serb soldiers arrested last month with the two commanders extradited to The Hague.