Bridge-building in city of hate

After bringing an uneasy peace to the Bosnian town of Mostar, Sir Martin Garrod faces his toughest task yet: to reconcile the Serbs and ethnic Albanians of Mitrovica in Kosovo. Paul Wood and Nerma Jelacic report

The bridge over the Ibar River has been dubbed 'Pont d'Austerlitz' by French peacekeeping troops after the stately bridge in Paris.

On one side, sitting in chairs outside the Dolce Vita bar and listening to Italian music, are the Serbs. At the other, young ethnic Albanians mill around - each group warily eyeing the other.

A cartoon in the Kosovan newspaper, Koha Ditore, reflects the ethnic Albanian feelings in the divided town of Mitrovica: a flak-jacketed Nato soldier snoozes in his chair on the Ibar bridge while a Kosovan in a traditional white felt hat screams at him, accusing the peacekeepers of cowardice in dealing with the armed Serbs who remain in town.

And this is the reality of Mitrovica. French marines escort Albanians to their homes in the Serb sector of town and the Serbs who want to travel to the Albanian side must ask for a similar armed escort.

It is small improvement on a month ago when the French peacekeepers first arrived. Then Mitrovica's Serbs and Albanians were squared off behind barricades on the main bridge over the Ibar.

They burned each other's flags and hurled stones and curses at each other. Serbs sang Second World War ultra-nationalist Chetnik songs, while Albanians were chanting 'UCK, UCK' - the acronym in Albanian for the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas.

Scuffles threatened to explode into full-blown fighting until the peacekeepers swept in, separated the mobs, and began guarding the bridge and patrolling neighbourhoods on both sides of the river around the clock.

And last week as world and Balkan leaders gathered in the Zetra Olympic stadium in Sarajevo to launch a stability pact for the Balkan region - covering reconstruction and economic, political and social issues, including the promise of preferential trade status - the bridge over the Ibar remained an unwelcome symbol of the problems still plaguing the former Yugoslavia.

The bridges of the former federal republic's divided cities - at Mitrovica in Kosovo and Mostar in Bosnia - stand as monumental reminders to the fault lines of the wars waged by the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic.

They are a reminder too, that stability can only come with consensus - and when it comes, it comes with almost painful slowness.

Bosnia, and Mostar in particular, are the unhelpful template for Kosovo and the wider Balkans.

While hundreds of millions have been spent on physical and political reconstruction in Bosnia, the wounds of the war are open and festering still.

If there is one man in the Balkans who knows the magnitude of the problem better than any other, it is Sir Martin Garrod.

The former commandant-general of the Royal Marines was the European Union's civilian administrator in Mostar; a city divided between the Croats settled on the west bank of the Neretva river, and their Muslim neighbours on the east bank, who were besieged by them during the Bosnian war.

Now Garrod has been given Kosovo's most difficult job - as the UN administrator of Mitrovica.

As European Union envoy and then regional international High Representative in Mostar from 1994 to 1998, Garrod doggedly restored some degree of cooperation between the Croats and Muslims after their 1993 war tore apart the city.

Slightly built but with a booming voice which echoes his military past, Garrod confronted the armed Croat ultra-nationalists who blocked his brief to reinstate law and order, return refugees to their homes and set up a joint government.

By 1998, the two Croat gangsters reigning in west Mostar had been jailed. Free movement between east and west was restored, and all sides had signed a pact to resettle refugees.

But despite Garrod's successes in Mostar, it is what remains to be done in this shell-wrecked city that raises the biggest questions - not only for the future of Mostar but also for Mitrovica and the rest of the Balkans.

Chris Riley, a UN spokesman in Mostar, concedes that there is still a lot of work to do. 'We saw forced population change during the war along ethnic lines,' he said. 'The city is still divided. Progress has been made, but that is only because the international community is involved.

'The danger is that the attention of the international community has shifted to Kosovo. Donor money has stopped coming in since the Kosovo crisis. We are running out of money to implement our policies.

'Schools are being rebuilt and some of them are mixed. But the schools on the east and west banks of the Neretva river are running two different syllabuses.'

But on the key issue - that of the return of refugees - the international community's efforts have failed in Mostar, as in the rest of Bosnia and the Bosnian Serb area, Republika Srpska.

In Mostar's administrative regions, from which 26,000 people fled during the Bosnian war, less than 1,500 have returned to homes in areas controlled by rival ethnic groups. Riley's comments are echoed by Stefo Lehmann of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

'The east and west sides of Mostar have slowly integrated to a larger degree than previously but the parallel political institutions have not integrated at all,' he said.

'The city is as divided as ever. It is probably the most divided city in the world. The two political sides cannot agree on anything. The international organisations have to make the decisions for them.'

As Garrod shepherds the Albanian and Serb leaders of Mitrovica through talks which he hopes will yield a cooperation accord between them, he acknowledges that he faces enormous problems.

'There are undoubtedly similarities between Mostar and Mitrovica,' he said. 'There is a divided city with a river running through it and bridges over the river, and of course the enormous problems of expulsions of civilians, housing being burned.

'There is an enormous amount of suspicion, distrust and indeed in many cases hatred. This has got to be overcome. But at least I have a feel for the differing views of a divided city, and for solutions that have or have not worked.'

But Garrod believes the atmosphere in the streets has improved markedly in the week since he convened Serb and Albanian leaders for their first meeting in four years.

He said they were on the verge of signing an accord stipulating peaceful co-existence, free movement, the right of evicted people to reclaim homes and protection of property in Mitrovica.

As in Mostar, Garrod said that the paramilitaries hiding amid the population posed the main threat to his mission. Four Serbs who were arrested by French troops in a bar a few days ago were sitting with loaded AK-47 rifles at their feet.

But Garrod has some advantages he didn't have in Mostar. There are no combat forces dug in on either side, neither gets help from an outside government seeking to divide and rule, and 300 armed international police have been earmarked to patrol Mitrovica to restore law and order.

'I may be rash, but I believe we may make faster progress in Kosovo than in Bosnia,' he said. But just as in Mostar, Garrod may have a long wait.