January 5, 1996
Web posted at: 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT)
From Correspondent Bill Delaney
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- On a frigid winter morning in Sarajevo, Carl Bildt commutes to the office, past intersections where snipers ruled just a few months ago. The former Swedish prime minister's new job is to coax war-devastated Bosnia-Herzegovina back to life. He is chief coordinator of the sprawling, so far barely breathing, civilian aspects of the Dayton peace accord.
"We are coming in starting from absolutely nothing," Bildt explained. "We are going to have problems, setbacks, mistakes, failures. But I think we are going to stumble, gradually, toward a genuine peace here." (179K AIFF sound or 179K WAV sound)
NATO planned for years for a possible military deployment to Bosnia. But the vast and equally important non-military portion of the operation of is off to no more than a good crawl.
Bildt chaired one of his first staff meetings in a building with no heat, no electricity, no water. He has no international phone line and plenty to do. The Iranian ambassador to Bosnia, among the Bosnian government's strongest allies, dropped by after the morning staff meeting.
A few hours later, the other side of the political universe, Serb leaders from the Sarajevo suburb Ilidja -- where several Bosnians have been abducted in recent days -- stopped by Bildt's office.
Bildt handled each with equal aplomb. "I don't think you could do the work if you did not have fundamental sympathy for them all," he says. (More from Bildt 221K AIFF sound or 221K WAV sound)
In the year to come, Bildt will be Bosnia's super diplomat, reporting to the U.N., NATO and the European Commission, among others, and defusing crises when he can. Success he says, will be at best measured by small steps.
"A year from now, there will not be the ideal peace either," he said. "There will still be a lot of fear. The bitterness of this war is going to take a long time to heal. It's going to take a generation, perhaps several generations, in certain cases." (221K AIFF sound or 221K WAV sound)
So while Bosnia is bristling with NATO's big bang, the subtler business of rebuilding the country has barely begun.
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