13 - 26 October 1996

13 October

• Ed van Thijn, the chief Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitor during the September elections, says he will not accept the same job for the local elections scheduled for 23-24 November because Bosnia is not ready. He says local elections should be postponed until spring because voter lists are not reliable and refugees will still be unable to vote where they wish.
• Bosnian Croats prevent 350 Bosnian Serbs from visiting their homes in Drvar and force them to return to Banja Luka. A UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman calls the incident particularly "tragic" because the association of Serbs from Drvar is one of the few voices in the Republika Srpska calling for the return of all refugees to their homes.
• Vojislav Seselj, leader of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party and an accused war criminal, calls for "the creation of a unified Serb state [and] the liberation of Serb Krajina, Serb Dubrovnik, Serb Bosnia, and Serb Macedonia." He says the creation of a "greater Serbia" will depend heavily on Russian support.

14 October

• AFP reports that Muslim authorities arrested 18 people in Bihac and Velika Kladusa on suspicion of war crimes. A judge ordered 13 of them released. Critics charge they were arrested because they support former Bihac kingpin and Muslim renegade Fikret Abdic.
• The first regular bus from Belgrade since 1992 arrives in Sarajevo.
• Former Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic and UN human-rights rapporteur Elisabeth Rehn independently call for the postponement of local elections until spring.
• Nasa Borba cites the Serbian member of the Bosnian presidency, Momcilo Krajisnik, as saying that by boycotting that joint institution he is defending Serbian interests.
• Aleksa Buha, Republika Srpska foreign minister and chairman of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), says that independence from the Croatian-Muslim federation and union with Serbia still top the SDS agenda. He demands that the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the UN set up diplomatic offices in Pale.

15 October

• The interior ministers of the federation and the Republika Srpska accept a plan put forward by international mediators to enable refugees to return to their homes in areas now controlled by another ethnic group. Refugees must be civilians, apply to the UNHCR, and accept the authority of the side now in control of their home area.
• Two Bosnian buses making the first Sarajevo-Belgrade run in four years arrive in Belgrade only after having been blocked for six hours by Serbian border police who reportedly asked passengers for tourist visas. Visa-free travel had been agreed upon between the two countries.
• Two Bosnian Serb children are shot and wounded while aboard a bus on the road between Ugljevik and Priboj, near the interentity border.
• NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warns Croatian Prime Minister Zlatko Matesa to fully back the implementation of the Croatian-Muslim federation in Bosnia and the normalization of the situation in Mostar. NATO officials say Solana issued a "very firm" warning to the Croatian government not to provoke the exodus of Serbs from eastern Slavonia.

16 October

• Greek Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos arrives in Sarajevo. He announces that Greece will open an embassy there and contribute $7 million in reconstruction aid. He also says that Athens will only meet with representatives of the republican government in the future, adding that contacts with Republika Srpska representatives "will no longer be necessary."
• The Council of Europe's Council of Ministers votes to admit Croatia. The admission is to take effect on 6 November.

17 October

• The OSCE's Provisional Election Commission decides on registration rules for the local elections. Refugees will be allowed to register to vote where they lived in 1991 or where they have lived since the end of 1995. They will no longer be permitted to sign up for a place where they simply say they intend to live. All three sides, but most notably the Bosnian Serbs, had tried to use this method to gain influence in strategically important towns.
• NATO peacekeepers place a republicwide ban on parades by the mainly Muslim Bosnian army following an unauthorized one in east Mostar.
• IFOR protests statements by the politically active General Atif Dudakovic, who said that "Dayton allowed for a reunited Bosnia, including Banja Luka and Bijelina, which will be ours in the next war" and that "children should have toy guns, not flowers."

18 October

• Republika Srpska President Biljana Plavsic says the Bosnian Serbs may boycott the local elections scheduled for November because the organizers have attached too many conditions to the ballot.
• Oslobodjenje reports that the Bosnian Serbs have begun bulldozing the site of the Ferhadija mosque in Banja Luka, which was blown up three years ago.
• IFOR troops discover a booby trap planted in a power station in the formerly Muslim village of Koraj, near the interentity border in northeastern Bosnia.

19 October

• The National Assembly of the Republika Srpska begins its inaugural session in Banja Luka. The 83-member parliament includes 17 Muslims and one Croat, as well as some Serbian opposition deputies, but 45 seats are held by the SDS. The non-Serbs briefly walk out to protest an oath of allegiance that involves expressions of loyalty to Orthodox Christianity, including kissing a Bible and a crucifix. Plavsic says: "This is the beginning of a new era of Serb statehood, [but] we are not completely independent. Our sovereignty is limited, and we have to respect what was signed."

20 October

• Reuters reports that the Bosnian Serbs are suspected of discouraging further attempts by Muslims to return to their homes on the Bosnian Serb side of the interentity border.

21 October

• Bosnian Serb authorities resettle 32 refugees who were living in Zvornik in a village near Jusici where Muslims have begun returning to their homes.
• Centrotrans in Sarajevo says it may cancel its new bus line to Belgrade unless federal Yugoslav authorities stop charging for visas and insurance.
• Ivan Gruic, head of the Croatian commission for prisoners and displaced persons, says Croatian authorities have so far exhumed more than 700 bodies, 80 percent of which were those of civilians, from mass graves in the formerly Serb-controlled Krajina and western Slavonia.

22 October

• During the second full meeting of the Bosnian presidency in the Sarajevo National Museum -- under the auspices of U.S. envoy John Kornblum -- Krajisnik signs a "solemn declaration" promising to uphold and defend the Bosnian constitution, which defines Bosnia-Herzegovina as a unitary state consisting of two "entities." By taking that oath, Krajisnik appears to have abandoned formal claims to independence for the Republika Srpska, which is, however, still a major policy goal of his party.
• The OSCE postpones the Bosnian local elections until next spring.
• The Pentagon says U.S. forces plan to pull out of Bosnia by mid-March despite the postponement of the local elections.

23 October

• Plavsic tells Kornblum that Pale will not agree to an extension of the OSCE mission into 1997 for organizing the local vote. Kornblum says he will try to persuade the Bosnian Serbs to change their mind, adding that he is also concerned about a "continuing record of less than full implementation of the [peace] process" by the Republika Srpska.
• Plavsic meets with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Nikolai Afansievskii and the head of the Russian mission to Bosnia, Yakov Gerasimov. Afansievskii says that "Russia has a positive stance toward the Republika Srpska's efforts to settle relations with the Bosnian federation peacefully," while Plavsic praises "our traditional friends, the Russians."
• Nasa Borba addresses widespread but unconfirmed reports that Plavsic has sacked Generals Ratko Mladic, Milan Gvero, and Momir Talic, together with some 80 other top military officers, in the latest chapter of the dispute between the Bosnian Serb civilian and military leaderships.
• The international community's high representative for Bosnia, Carl Bildt, tells NATO that the postponement of the local elections does not mean that IFOR needs to remain at full strength after its mandate ends on 20 December.

24 October

• A U.S. arms shipment for the Bosnian federation army arrives in the Croatian port of Ploce, AFP reports. In addition to tanks, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers, the $100 million "train and equip" program includes some 45,000 M16 assault rifles and ammunition, 800 M60 machine guns, and 840 anti-tank weapons. The U.S. aid is aimed at creating a military balance between the Muslim-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serbs.
• Krajisnik tells Robert Owen, international mediator for the disputed town of Brcko, that the wrong decision on Brcko could be catastrophic for the peace process.
• Dragan Kalinic, the Bosnian Serb assembly speaker, says all Muslim and Croatian deputies must take an oath of allegiance to the Republika Srpska before assuming office.
• Clint Williamson of the war-crimes tribunal confirms that bodies found in a mass grave in eastern Croatia were those of patients from a hospital in Vukovar killed by Serbs in 1991.

25 October

• Members of Bosnia's three-man presidency meet for the first time on Bosnian Serb territory, in the Serb-held Sarajevo suburb of Lukavica. As Reuters notes, "Bosnian Serb police saluted the Muslim chairman of the presidency, Alija Izetbegovic, and Croat member Kresimir Zubak as they arrived for the session. "
• An IFOR spokesman confirms that in the early hours of the previous day some 94 homes belonging to Bosnian Muslims but on Bosnian Serb-run territory were reduced to rubble by anti-tank mines. The spokesman, Simon Haselock, describes the development as "a tit for tat" move, saying that the destruction of some 30 Serbian homes in Drvar, an area under Bosnian Croat jurisdiction, precipitated the second incident.
• The top prosecutor at the war-crimes trial of Dusko Tadic asks judges to disregard the testimony of witness "L," who now claims he was forced to testify against Tadic by Bosnian authorities "under threat."

26 October

• The freighter carrying the bulk of the $100 million "train and equip" aid leaves Ploce without unloading its cargo. The Bosnian government denies that the development has anything to do with Sarajevo's failure to sack Deputy Defense Minister Hasan Cengic for his alleged links to Iran. A statement from Izetbegovic's office notes that Cengic's removal had been requested for his "insufficient cooperativeness in making and carrying out the federation's defense law."
• A pilot program for the return of refugees to the Croat-controlled town of Stolac was canceled, says a spokesman for the UNHCR. The Croatian mayor of Stolac reportedly recently told the UNHCR that Muslims would not be permitted to return to the town to repair their homes and property, but only to visit graves periodically.
• Kalinic declares that parties from the Muslim-Croat federation may be barred from competing in local elections in areas of Bosnia controlled by Serbs, Belgrade's Beta reports.
• The New York Times reports that Washington plans to contribute a minimum of 5,000 troops to a new international peacekeeping force in Bosnia. AFP reports that Pentagon officials say the report is "inaccurate."

Compiled by Stefan Krause and Stan Markotich

An ongoing chronology highlighting events and deadlines connected
with the Balkan peace effort and the implementation of the Dayton Accord

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