Free Captives, Contact Group Tells Bosnians

Angered by a broken promise, Western nations and Russia threatened Saturday to cancel a conference to drum up aid for Bosnia-Herzegovina unless the country’s competing factions free the remaining prisoners taken during the bitter Balkan war.

Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister who is coordinating postwar aid, lectured the Bosnian and Serbian foreign ministers at a meeting here about their failure to complete a prisoner release that, under their peace agreement, should have been wrapped up in January.

Bildt complained that the factions are still trying to get something in return for their compliance.

“The time for trading is over,” a U.S. official quoted Bildt as telling them. “You can’t trade human life. This isn’t an exchange. You have to give these people up.”

The daylong meeting was called by foreign ministers of the Contact Group--the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany--to intensify pressure on their Balkan counterparts to live up to the peace agreement negotiated in November in Dayton, Ohio.

The president of Serbia and the vice president of Bosnia promised at a meeting in Geneva on Monday to free the last 219 prisoners by Saturday. Bildt said the Croatians have freed all their captives.

Just before midnight, the Bosnian government released 109 Serbian prisoners. But Bildt “does not see this partial release as compliance” with the agreement on prisoner releases, spokesman Colum Murphy said in Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital.

“This demand must be carried out immediately,” Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov said after the Contact Group meeting. “If this aspect of the Dayton accords is not fulfilled, the conference of economic donors set for mid-April cannot be convened.”

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The donors meeting, organized by the European Commission and the World Bank, is scheduled for April 12 in Brussels. Bildt said its cancellation would cost the Balkan factions not only reconstruction aid but also “a certain amount of political recognition--to be able to be there and talk about their future.”

Bildt said he was also empowered Saturday to recommend unspecified “selective measures” if the prisoners are not freed.

“The parties got the message,” said William D. Montgomery, a special advisor to the White House and State Department on the peace accords. “They made very strong commitments to comply this time. [But] I’m not going to stand here and say I’m 100% certain that this will happen, because we’ve seen in the past that it hasn’t always happened.”

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher told the Contact Group meeting that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led peace force has “succeeded beyond our expectations” in stopping the fighting and separating the ethnic armies.

But he added: “The primary responsibility for achieving peace in its fullest sense lies with the parties. The international community has given them an opportunity that they must seize.”

The Contact Group also called for action to ensure that free elections are held in Bosnia later this year and that refugees are allowed to return home to take part. Christopher called the elections “our next critical milestone.”

But he said Bosnia’s political future is clouded by the ineffectiveness of its 2-year-old Muslim-Croat federation. The federation theoretically controls 51% of Bosnian territory while the breakaway Bosnian Serbs control the other 49%. But the federation has not worked as a unified government, leaving its share of the country split between Muslims and the Croats.

“The federation parties simply have not done enough to give practical, substantial content to the federation,” Christopher said in his formal remarks to the meeting.

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However, he told reporters aboard his jetliner on the flight home that he has not given up hope that Bosnia can eventually rebuild a multiethnic society.

“I don’t feel disappointed” by the country’s ethnic division into three ministates, Christopher said. “This will always be difficult, or at least it will be difficult for a long time.”

He conceded that none of the factions views a multiethnic society as its “very first choice.” But he predicted that the leaders eventually will conclude that living together “is better than the alternative.”