Serbs delay Sarajevo handover

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Serb protesters have prevented the planned handover of a disputed Sarajevo suburb to Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation.

Federation police were authorised to take over the Serb-controlled district of Dobrinja at midnight after an international ruling redrew the boundary line between Bosnia's Muslim-Croat and Serb areas.

Reuters reported that police presence on the outskirts of the suburb prompted protesters to take to the streets overnight shouting "Serbia, Serbia."

Police remained outside the area long after the midnight deadline, taunted by demonstrators with shouts of "come here Turk, what are you afraid of!" the news agency added.

A duty officer at the Interior Ministry's Sarajevo office said that "for now, the situation is as it is. There are these people (protesters) there … and the police have not entered Dobrinja."

He said the handover procedure had "most probably" been temporarily suspended but did not elaborate further.

A policeman also said a vehicle carrying Bosnian United Nations administrators was forced back into Serb territory as the crowd stoned it when it entered the federation.

The mainly Muslim federation was created alongside the Serb republic by the Dayton Agreement, which ended Bosnia's bitter 1992-95 ethnic war.

Bitter disputes

The handover decision ends a protracted boundary dispute between Bosnia's two ethnic entities that has had severe administrative consequences for hundreds of citizens.

Diplomats negotiating the Dayton peace deal divided the suburb in 1995, but drew the boundary line through the centre of apartment buildings.

This left the living rooms of some apartments in federation territory and the bedrooms in the Bosnian Serb mini-state, according to the Associated Press.

Bosnian Serb leaders took control of the entire apartment complex shortly after the peace accord in 1995. This prevented hundreds of non-Serb families returning to their homes and allowed Serbs to occupy them instead.

Wolfgang Petritsch, Bosnia's top international peace official, appointed former Irish Court Judge Diarmuid Sheridan to settle the years of dispute and periodic violence in the area.

"I have become convinced that the persons almost exclusively from the federation side were dispossessed of their homes and the only matter that my conscience allows me to do is to restore them accordingly," Sheridan told a news conference.

Sheridan ruled on Tuesday that most of the buildings bisected by the boundary line would be returned to the Muslim-Croat federation so the refugees can go home.

The Associated Press reports that this transferred about 650 blocks of flats to the Sarajevo authorities, leaving about 250 remaining in the Serb Republic.

Anger at the move was confirmed in a statement from the Bosnian Serb government, known as the Republika Srpska (RS), that said "this decision represents a continuation of unjust dealings with the legitimate interests of the RS, which have been ignored by representatives of the international community."

Dobrinja is located near Sarajevo airport where international aid flights arrived during the Serb siege of the capital. It saw some of the fiercest hostilities in the city and several clashes after the conflict.

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