November 26, 1995
Web posted at: 12:30 a.m. EST (0530 GMT)
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- Bosnian Croat forces appear to be carrying out a scorched earth policy in parts of central Bosnia that are to be returned to the Bosnian Serbs under the Dayton peace plan.
United Nations officials and journalists reported Saturday that military forces are systematically destroying homes in areas captured by the same forces earlier this year.
"There may have been a peace agreement signed in Dayton, but on the ground it hasn't changed people's attitude."
-- Richard Dannett, U.N. commander for western Bosnia
"There were no civilians doing the looting," Kate Adie, a BBC reporter who visited the area told Reuters. "They were going from house, street to street."
Muslim residents said Bosnian Croat forces had ordered them to abandon their homes.
The area in central Bosnia, including the town of Mrkonjic Grad, is to become part of the Bosnian Serb Republic as mapped out by peace negotiators in Dayton, Ohio, last week.
"There may have been a peace agreement signed in Dayton, but on the ground it hasn't changed people's attitude," Richard Dannett, U.N. commander for western Bosnia, told Reuters.
Some Bosnian Serbs were no more happy with the peace agreement than their Muslim neighbors, although they chose a more peaceful form of protest.
Thousands of Bosnian Serbs took to the streets in the Serb-held suburbs of the Bosnian capital Saturday, protesting the peace agreement that would put the city under the control of the Bosnian government.
"Our own team has betrayed us," said a student protesting in Ilidza, "and the man from Belgrade did only what he needed to get sanctions lifted."
The protesters claim that "the man from Belgrade" -- Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic -- traded their welfare for an easing of international restrictions against Serbia. They say they fear for their safety when the Muslim-majority Bosnian government takes over.
"The people of Serb Sarajevo simply have nowhere to go," said Ratko Adzic of the Illijas suburb," unless America offers us a new city in Ohio where we can all move."
On Thursday, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, under pressure from Milosevic, initialed the agreement reached outside Dayton, Ohio earlier this week, and said on television Friday that his side "accepts peace." But, he continued that "we never agreed to give up Sarajevo."
Karadzic promised to go to Paris next month when the peace deal is finalized and signed -- and to press for further concessions for the Bosnian Serbs.
But another Bosnian Serb leader, Nikola Koljevic, thought by some to be in line to succeed Karadzic, also spoke on television, urging the Bosnian Serbs to accept the "historic task" of ending the 43-month war.
Koljevic conceded, however, that the task was formidable. "Those who yesterday bombed our people now become peacemakers," he said. "The wounds are still fresh and our main problem will be to persuade our people to accept NATO on our soil."
The Bosnian Serbs were not the only parties to the peace agreement to protest its provisions Saturday -- 2,000 Croatians marched in Dubrovnik to protest a proposal to turn over a strip of coastal land to the Bosnian Serbs.
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