Word: croats
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...federation agreement is both complex and incomplete. It provides for a merger of the Croat and Muslim areas of Bosnia under a strong central government and for a system of cantons with their own legislatures and courts. Bosnia's President, Alija Izetbegovic, and Croatia's Franjo Tudjman thought enough of the plan to fly to Washington to sign the papers linking their two countries. But what the arrangement does not cover is almost as important: the Serbs and the 72% of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina they occupy...
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...
Even if he finds a deal he can accept, Milosevic will have to lean on Bosnian Serbs, especially militia leaders, who view the Muslim-Croat plan as nothing more than an alliance uniting the Serbs' enemies. Rather than join a federation tied to Croatia, the Bosnian Serbs are far more likely to hold out for a republic of their own with links to Serbia -- Greater Serbia in effect, if not in name...
...international focus is on keeping up the diplomatic pace. American envoy Charles Redman plans to sit down with Bosnian and Croat leaders to decide how much territory they will ask the Serbs to cede and what relationship the Serbs will have with their motherland. The Bosnian Serbs have been backing away from their previous willingness to hand over enough land to provide the Muslims and Croats with 50% of the country...
...Bosnian Croat separatists removed their heavy weapons from around the city of Mostar in order to meet a U.N. deadline. Shocked Muslim residents of the city's eastern quarter emerged to a neighborhood they scarcely recognized after nine months of shelling. Every single structure has been devastated -- including the once graceful arc of the 400-year-old Stari Most, or Old Bridge...