THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 22, 1995 TAG: 9511220506
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: DAYTON, OHIO LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Under U.S. prodding, Balkan leaders agreed Tuesday to end 3 1/2 years of savage fighting and carve Bosnia into two ethnic zones.
The dramatic agreement, which remained elusive to the last moment, came after 21 days of hard bargaining among the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
``The people of Bosnia finally have a chance to turn from the horror of war to the promise of peace,'' Clinton declared in a Rose Garden announcement of the accord - potentially a major foreign policy success for the administration.
The three Balkan presidents initialed the pact Tuesday afternoon in a ceremony at Wright-Patterson and shook hands stiffly. A formal agreement ending the ethnic bloodletting that has claimed a quarter-million lives is to be signed next month in Paris.
The agreement provides for Bosnia's division into two entities, a Muslim-Croat federation that will control 51 percent of the territory, and a Serb republic that will hold the remaining 49 percent. It calls for a central government with a democratically elected president and parliament, and bars indicted war criminals from holding military or elected office.
The Balkan presidents, while expressing reservations, characterized the accord as the best that could be achieved.
``In a civil war . . . there are no winners and there could be no winners,'' Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic said. ``All are losers. Only peace is a victory. . . . The solutions achieved here include painful concessions by all sides.''
``This may not be a just peace, but it is more just than a continuation of war,'' Bosnia's President Alija Izetbegovic said. ``In the world as it is, a better peace will not have been achieved.''
Croatian President Franjo Tudjman said he thought the accord ``would result in lasting peace and create conditions for the establishment of a new world order in this part of the world.''
``We've reached a day many believed would never come,'' said Secretary of State Warren Christopher, presiding over his crowning achievement as America's chief diplomat.
But in a sign of difficulties ahead, three Bosnian Serbs in the Serb delegation boycotted the initialing ceremony. One of them, Momcila Krajisnik, speaker of Bosnian Serb parliament, told his followers they should not and would not comply with its provisions.
In Sarajevo, this was the news that residents of the besieged Bosnian capital had been waiting for. While the terms of the agreement did not satisfy everyone, it at least promised an end to years of war.
Among the burnt-out cars and shell-holes of the city, residents wept and talked of a respite from destruction and death.
``This means a rebirth,'' said Almasa Mulic, 67, as she sat in her battered apartment on the front line. ``I have been crying ever since I found out. I am too happy for words. I wish everyone good luck and a long life.''
Mulic sat in her kitchen, inches from the balcony where her husband was killed by a shell in 1993, and only 20 yards from the Bosnian Serb gunners who took him from her. But she expressed little bitterness. ``I am ready to live with the Serbs again,'' she said. ``Why shouldn't I?
``We all just want peace and to be allowed out of the house to fetch our groceries without worrying about being shot,'' she added. ``This has to end.'' MEMO: The Associated Press and the New York Times News Service contributed to
this report. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS photo
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, left, Bosnian President Alija
Izetbegovic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Secretary of
State Warren Christopher initial a Balkan peace agreement at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, Tuesday.
by CNB