February 20, 1996
Web posted at: 8:40 p.m. EST (0140 GMT)
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- Plans to reunify Mostar got off to a foreboding start Tuesday when shots were fired in the air as Muslims ventured into the Croat sector of the divided city.
The barriers and checkpoints that have divided the Muslim east of the city and the Croat west were due to come down on Tuesday under the agreements reached last weekend at a Rome summit organized to bolster a crumbling peace process.
Three hundred Muslims trudged through torrential rains Tuesday to cross the barriers that have cut them off from their Croat neighbors for three long years. But the promised freedom of movement was short-lived. From the word go, the reunification plans were off to a shaky start.
First, Croat officers who were supposed to be part of a unified police patrol failed to make the noon deadline, showing up three hours later. The patrol, comprising Bosnian Croat, Bosnian Muslim, and multinational police force officers, was to have taken up positions in the central zone of the divided city.
Along the old front line, the atmosphere was tense, with tempers flaring when Muslims put up their flag on the Croat side.
Later, a scuffle broke out between Croats and Muslims about half an hour after the first main Croat checkpoint opened, witnesses told Reuters.
Three Muslim youths in a car passed through the checkpoint only to find themselves blocked by two Croat vehicles. The Muslims' car hit a tree, and as the youths got out and scrambled back to the checkpoint, one was caught and beaten. One of the Croats pulled out a pistol and fired two shots in the air.
The crowd of Muslims at the checkpoint, dripping wet in the rain as they waited to cross, hastily dispersed. NATO troops closed in quickly to prevent the incident from blowing up into a major tragedy.
"We want to be united," said a Muslim resident, "but the Croats don't. They threw stones on us."
The Croat half of the city seemed unruffled, and its residents organized a band to make music -- not in celebration, but in condemnation of the reunification plan. An effigy of the EU administrator was erected for burning.
Under the terms of the reunification plan, the city is to have seven districts: three controlled by the Muslims, three by the Croats, and one in a central zone under the joint authority of Croats and Muslims.
The southern Bosnian city has been under European Union administration since 1994 after nearly a year of heavy fighting between Bosnian Croat and Muslim forces. But the historic city has never quite overcome animosities stemming from that brutal battle.
With the Croats resisting the plan so bitterly, freedom of movement in the city was stillborn, and that could damage Bosnia's Muslim-Croat Federation. The federation, which will control half of Bosnia, is a cornerstone of the American-brokered agreement which ended nearly four years of war in Bosnia.
Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic told the government news agency he was dissatisfied with what happened in Mostar on Tuesday.
"The process has started, but very slowly," he said.
But U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns Tuesday insisted the news from Mostar was a "first step in normalizing" life in that divided city. But, he said the United States expects more trouble down the road in Mostar and Bosnia in general.
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