Night Moves

"Paris won't change a single thing for us" states a man who found himself on the street at the moment when TV sets were turned on in many homes, broadcasting live coverage of the formal signing of the peace agreement. Wishing to explain why he wasn't watching it, he adds: "Only God knows what will become of us".

By a certain stroke of irony, Serbs in Bosnia feel more uncertain now, after the Dayton agreement was signed than during all the war years. It is probably so because practically no one, including the top officials, know the details of the Dayton agreement. Bosnian Serb officials only saw the maps drawn out in thick markers, which meant that they didn't know the real separation lines. Namely, if we translate the proportions on to the ground, we find around 600 meters of territory covered by markers. Or, precisely: the extremely important FAMOS car factory found itself under drawn line. During the war, the factory, despite being in the region of one of Sarajevo's most severe front lines, managed to carry on its production. Even Radovan Karadzic couldn't answer the question of the fate of FAMOS after the Dayton agreement, which severely shook his credibility as a leader.

In order to avoid such unpleasent questions, Karadzic chose to make his public appearances as rare as possible to the point where he did not attend a single protest meeting, nor did he use the opportunity to, be one of some 80.000 people who came out for the referendum on December 12.

However, numerous meetings, actions and statements broadcasted on Pale television, carried one message: "Stay here - since that is your right". The alternative of a life together wasn't even mentioned as a possibility.

"We can never live together with them. They slit my brother's throat and are now burning everything that belongs to us. My people have been living here in Sarajevo for three hundred years and I refuse to budge for them" - says an old man who brought his wife and granddaughter to the protest meeting.

A young girl heading her class group called out: "Sanctions and sanctions, that's all you in Serbia think about. No one even mentions us. Where can I go? May I come to your place when Alija (Izetbegovic) comes here!" "He'll never come here" - answers a young man carrying a sign with the message - "We'll die, if we have to".

The same image, varied and multiplied, of candle light and almost completely packed families is not the only reason why the world has come to realize that the implementation of the agreement will be more difficult than imagined. Simultaneously with international assurances that the local population's rights shall be guaranteed, troublesome statements have arrived from the Bosnian side. On Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Radio Television, the minister for relations with UNPROFOR, Hasan Muratovic, stated that "the Serbs should turn their backs on the authorities from Pale and stop taking their children to the meetings, because their children will thus acquire police records which will follow them for the rest of their lives". B-H President Alija Izetbegovic stated that safety shall be guaranteed to all those who did not participate in the fighting.

In such an atmosphere, despite the referendum results which show that 98.7 percent of the citizens of Sarajevo under the Serb control are against the decision from Dayton, there is quite a large number of those who have, for days now, been seeking new refuge in Serbia. "I live in Vogosca (a municipality which will revert in three monzhs to control of the Muslim-dominatewd governemnt - ed. note) and I got permision to leave", says Rada, a woman who took the bus to Pale from Sabac (Serbia), where she went to see whether there was room for her family there. She further explains that in the other municipalities those that wanted to leave did so usually at night, sneeking out in order not to avoid problems with police whose members in most cases are their neighbors.

"You know in Ilijas, the municipality president Ratko Adzic was terminated just because he turned blind eye on people running away with one bag". Even Adzic, who used to be Minister of Interior, was replaced. People close to the ruling circles of the Bosnian Serb Republic (RS) refuse to allow the "Krajina syndrome" - flight before defeat.

Blue Wager

For the members of the UN peace forces, the toppling of Radovan Karadzic has become a certainty. They were seen placing bets as who shall replace him in spare time. One high official of the "blue helmets" told us that nobody counts on Koljevic, not because he is a professor and poet, but because his heavy drinking. "Regardless of what you think about Milosevic, Tudjman and Izetbegovic, all three are strongmen. They have the necessary charisma. Karadzic will probably be replaced by Momcilo Krajisnik", the UNPROFOR official reveals.

Sharade

A VREME reporter met Bosnian army Brigadier Jovan Divjak on the streets of Sarajevo on December 14 at around noon and asked him why he wasn't watching the live coverage of the signing of the peace agreement in Paris.

"This is the death of Bosnia-Herzegovina," Divjak said, "giving the aggressor 49% and making him equal to the victim is just the funeral of the idea of a democratic, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural BiH and I won't watch the sharade."

That day four shells landed on Sarajevo. The first at the moment Slobodan Milosevic was speaking in Paris.