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Bosnian Serbs welcome Kostunica trip
Last updated: 22 Oct 2000 11:44 GMT (Reuters)

By Zeljko Debelnogic

TREBINJE, Bosnia (Reuters) -
Bosnian Serb leaders have given
Vojislav Kostunica a presidential
welcome at the start of a
controversial visit by Belgrade's
new leader to the Serb part of
the former Yugoslav republic.

Kostunica had written to the joint
post-war leadership of Bosnia,
which had protested that the visit violated diplomatic
protocol by not being organised through the capital
Sarajevo, to say it was a private trip that would not
be politicised.

The Yugoslav president made no statements as he
arrived by car for an Orthodox church service on a hill
overlooking the southern town of Trebinje, in honour
of the poet Jovan Ducic.

He was introduced later to a gathering outside the
church as Doctor Kostunica, but the republic's leaders
had made clear they viewed it as an official visit by
laying on an honour guard and greeting him
individually as 'president'.

The joint Bosnian leadership said on Friday Kostunica's
letter did not resolve doubts about the visit and on
Saturday Kostunica appeared to give in to pressure
from the international officials running Bosnia to visit
the capital Sarajevo as well.

Diplomats said he would hold brief talks with Bosnian
officials at Sarajevo airport on Sunday afternoon. It
would be the first visit by a Yugoslav president to
Sarajevo since Bosnia declared independence in 1992.

Mirza Hajric, foreign policy adviser to the Muslim
member of Bosnia's three-member presidency, called
Kostunica's visit to Sarajevo, which he said would be
unofficial, a "positive step".

"There's a Bosnian phrase -- 'Once bitten by a snake
you are afraid of a lizard'," he said. "On the other had
we need to give a chance to the new Belgrade
leadership."

MILOSEVIC LEGACY

Kostunica's predecessor Slobodan Milosevic is widely
blamed for stirring the devastating conflict in Bosnia
between 1992 and 1995, when a peace accord
divided it into two highly autonomous entities -- a
Serb republic and Muslim-Croat federation.

Milosevic continued to support Bosnian Serb
separatists after the war and refused to establish
diplomatic relations with Sarajevo unless it dropped a
suit against Belgrade it had lodged with an
international court over the conflict.

The Serb republic's deputy president Mirko Sarovic
told the gathering in Trebinje, which included regional
Muslim civilian and religious leaders flown in by the
United Nations, that Serbs should work for their
fatherland but learn peacetime skills.

"The greatest patriotism today is to work for the
fatherland and in the fatherland," Sarovic said.

"Serbs are a nation of distinguished military
characteristics which should today learn other virtues
as well."

Hajric said the Sarajevo talks would be an important
confidence-building move and that Bosnia would
propose the unconditional establishment of diplomatic
relations at a Balkans summit to be held in Croatia in
December.

Jacques Klein, head of the United Nations mission in
Bosnia, and one of several Western officials in Bosnia
who pushed for the last-minute visit, said it would
mark a break with the past.

"The fact that he is coming shows that he has
statesmanship character," Klein told Reuters. "The
Milosevic era is over."

Klein said he would fly by helicopter to Trebinje at
1300 GMT to collect Kostunica and Zivko Radisic, the
Serb member of the inter-ethnic presidency who also
attended the poet's reburial.

Kostunica would then hold a 40-minute meeting at
the airport with Radisic, acting Muslim presidency
member Halid Genjac and Bosnian Foreign Minister
Jadanko Prlic, a Croat. Croat presidency member Ante
Jelavic is also expected to participate.

"This is a historic moment... they will have a chance
for a serious discussion on future bilateral relations,"
Klein said.

One senior Bosnian official, who asked not to be
identified, said the stopover would not satisfy many
people in Sarajevo.

"One would expect him to take a walk downtown and
lay flowers in Ferhadija," the official said, referring to
the Sarajevo street where dozens of residents were
killed by shells and snipers during the brutal Bosnian
Serb siege of the city.