Word: bosnian
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...standard, this is not a peace or even the cease-fire Serbs and Muslims agreed to in Sarajevo on Feb. 10. Nevertheless, the combatants may have taken the first serious steps in a Bosnian peace process last week. Diplomats began talking hopefully about finding an end to the 23-month war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The complementary pressures of Washington and Moscow appeared to be nudging their respective clients toward accommodation. A tide seemed to be turning as zeal for warfare ebbed and attention flowed toward crafting a negotiated settlement...
Last week every faction was talking to someone. In Sarajevo the Bosnian government and Serb rebels agreed to open some roads to civilian traffic in and out of the city. In Belgrade Serbs and Croats announced that they would begin negotiating a formal settlement of the war they fought in Croatia in 1991, which left almost a quarter of Croatia in Serbian hands...
...Washington Bosnian and Croatian leaders signed two documents to establish a Bosnian federation and link it to Croatia. Real peace in Bosnia, said Secretary of State Warren Christopher, is "a ways down the road," but he hoped these pacts would "provide the basis for a larger political settlement, which must also include the Bosnian Serbs...
...with a quote from a 19th century Balkan poet, Ivan Jukic, who wrote, "Only those are heroes who know how to live with their brothers." Like Christopher, Clinton hoped "the Serbs will join in this effort for a wider peace. We invite them and urge them to do so." Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic shrugged, saying Croats and Muslims can "decide the way they want to live" as long as it is not a threat to the Serbs. Momcilo Krajisnik, head of the Bosnian Serb legislature, dismissed the federation as "an unnatural creation" that would not work...
While the U.S. has been prodding the Bosnian Croats and Muslims toward agreement, Moscow has been working on the Serbs. Russia's special envoy Vitali Churkin went to Belgrade to urge Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to look carefully at the Muslim-Croat federation. Churkin said he found Milosevic "flexible and constructive." That may be because the Serb leader is feeling the pinch of U.N.-enforced economic sanctions -- more than half the work force is effectively unemployed -- and fearful that Croatia, no longer preoccupied with Bosnia, might divert its armed forces to the Krajina front...