Bosnia Faults NATO for Abductions of Citizens

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina —  In a potential blow to Bosnia’s fledgling peace process, the Sarajevo government Tuesday held NATO responsible for the fate of 16 Bosnian citizens seized as they drove through Bosnian Serb territory on a highway newly opened to free transit by NATO’s peace force.

Bosnians were lured into a false sense of security when NATO insisted the roads were safe and then NATO failed to protect them, the government charged.

Officials of Bosnia’s Muslim-led government also accused commanders of NATO’s Implementation Force, or IFOR, of ignoring repeated complaints about the abductions.

IFOR spokesmen in daily briefings with reporters had consistently denied knowledge of the incidents. But late Tuesday, in response to persistent inquiries, they conceded that the government had raised the issue with IFOR commanders in letters and meetings starting Friday.

A Bosnian Serb official confirmed holding a group of Muslim men from Sarajevo, detained when they tried to cross a Serb-held suburb, but he said some of the men were in military uniform.

The detentions--including, the government said, a couple and their two children--raise profound questions about the IFOR mandate to enforce the peace plan, which has as one of its basic components the freedom of movement for all people.

“We believe we’re being short-changed,” Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey said in a news conference called to protest NATO inaction. “This is a serious violation of [the peace agreement] and an attempt to undermine the peace process, especially the re-integration of Sarajevo.

“What is IFOR here for if not to enforce the most basic aspect of the agreement?”

Spokesmen for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization say it is not their responsibility to enforce freedom of movement for citizens but rather to create the conditions under which citizens can feel free to move anywhere in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And they insist those conditions have been largely achieved.

But after the kidnapping reports, government officials said they have instructed Sarajevans to refrain from traveling in Serbian areas patrolled by NATO peace enforcers because it is not yet safe despite NATO’s assurances. That move effectively reverses what had been one of the most important gains of the peace treaty.

Throughout 3 1/2 years of war, Sarajevo was under siege from Serbian gunmen who surrounded the capital, shelled it relentlessly and blocked most land routes.

Under the peace agreement signed Dec. 14, the siege was to be broken through NATO enforcement, and some Sarajevan Muslims and Croats tentatively began to test the new political order by traveling on previously taboo roads through Serb-held suburbs.

But the experience has not been pleasant, according to government reports. The Serb-held suburbs will revert to Muslim-Croat government control under the peace agreement, and many Serbs are furious. In addition to the alleged abductions, commercial buses were stoned and numerous motorists were robbed and harassed by Serbian police or paramilitary irregulars, the government said.

The controversy over the missing Bosnians also exposes the gulf between military and civilian aspects of the peace accord. As previously reported in The Times, the civilian plan, to be administered by High Representative Carl Bildt, is lagging far behind the military. Furthermore, the two sides seem confused about where one’s responsibility begins and the other’s ends.

Clearly concerned about “mission creep”--that their role might be pushed beyond the original military goals--IFOR maintains that freedom of movement is a police matter to be handled by civilians.

But an official on Bildt’s team said Tuesday that IFOR still must assume responsibility for security.

“We have to clarify . . . where the limitations are, who is doing what,” the official said. “We definitely have a mandate in this field, but with regard to security, it remains to be seen how that is resolved.”

The matter has not been helped by the fact that while IFOR marched ahead on the military aspects of the accord, such as withdrawal of the warring armies from separation zones, Bildt was not even present in Sarajevo. No progress has been made on the civilian side, which deals with matters ranging from elections and refugee repatriation to human rights and reconstruction--crucial to a lasting peace in Bosnia.

Bildt’s office will also coordinate a 1,500-member international police force that presumably would handle incidents like the abductions. But the force is not scheduled to be deployed until next month. In the meantime, asking local authorities to enforce freedoms for their enemies is not likely to succeed, diplomats warn.

Hasan Muratovic, the government’s minister for relations with NATO and the United Nations, said Bosnian Serb authorities confirmed holding eight of the missing but said they are considered prisoners of war and will be used to negotiate a future prisoner exchange.

Most of the 16 were reportedly pulled from their vehicles as they crossed the suburb of Ilidza, a town controlled by Serbian hard-liners.

A Bosnian Serb official, Dragan Dragic, was quoted by the Bosnian Serb news agency as saying the captured Bosnians had strayed from what he called the approved route through Ilidza although no such route is specified by the accord.

In its statement late Tuesday, NATO acknowledged having received Muratovic’s original complaint Friday and said the issue was then pursued at two meetings of IFOR, Bosnian government and Bosnian Serb officials, including one attended by British Lt. Gen. Michael Walker, commander of NATO ground forces in Bosnia.

The statement said Walker was not provided with enough details to follow up but that he will meet today with the mayor of Ilidza.

Mirsad Zolata, a half-Muslim, half-Croat Sarajevan, said his family was pulled out of a line of cars traveling through Ilidza on Thursday. Serbian police beat him, his wife, Semsa, and his 8-year-old son, threatened to rape his wife and stole the family’s money, Zolata said.

They were held for about an hour and then released. As they were being beaten on the side of the road, several IFOR vehicles passed by but did not stop, he said.

The entire freedom of movement issue has been difficult from the start. War has turned Bosnia into a truncated country, where it often has been impossible to travel from one city to the next because it meant crossing enemy lines. Checkpoints blocked and terrified people. Putting Bosnia back together again will depend heavily on restoring the ability to traverse the country freely, diplomats say.

Yet, while senior IFOR commanders insist that Serbian checkpoints around Sarajevo no longer exist, Serbian police officers continued to block access to a centrally located Serb-held district, Grbavica.

Col. Vladimir Rybnikov, the head of the U.N.’s civilian police force, which remains in Bosnia despite the end of the U.N. mission, said he passed on the kidnapping reports to IFOR officials Friday. His investigators on Tuesday tried to visit jails in Serb-held Sarajevo suburbs to locate the alleged victims, but the Serbs refused them access.

Rybnikov said he found the reports credible. He also blamed IFOR for too quickly discontinuing the U.N.’s practice of providing escorts to civilians attempting to cross Serb-held areas of Sarajevo. IFOR has said that escorts “send the wrong message” and should not be necessary under a freedom-of-movement regime.