10 - 23 November 1996

Compiled by Stefan Krause

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

10 November

• President Bill Clinton says American troops could remain in Bosnia as part of a "smaller mission" replacing the Implementation Force (IFOR).

11 November

• NATO officials meet in Brussels to discuss proposals for a new military force to replace the NATO-led IFOR next year. They discuss four options. Option A calls for IFOR withdrawal without replacement; Option B calls for a simple dissuasion force without fighting troops; Option C provides for a multinational force of about 20,000 to 30,000 to remain for another year; and Option D suggests that a mission on the same scale as IFOR and with the same number of troops be launched. Option C is generally considered the most likely choice.
• Some 500 Muslims cross the interentity border toward Koraj in northern Bosnia to go to their village, Gajevi, which is now under Serbian control. The Muslims claim that the Serbs fired at them with pistols, rifles, and grenades, while the Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA reports that the Muslims attacked the village with grenades and light-infantry fire. A Dutch UN police monitor and a man said to be a Bosnian Serb are wounded. The Muslims say they have applied through UN channels to go home but have received no reply.
• Bosnian government experts have unearthed 244 corpses, mostly those of Muslim civilians, from one of Bosnia's biggest known mass graves near Kljuc. They expect to find about 50 more. The site was under Bosnian Serb control until government troops recaptured it late last year. Some 700 people in the area of Kljuc remain unaccounted for.

12 November

• The top Republika Srpska military leaders who were fired on 9 November -- including General Ratko Mladic, an indicted war criminal -- refuse to accept the civilian leadership's decision to fire them. Ousted General Zdravko Tolimir tells NATO representatives they must continue to go though him rather than through the new appointees when IFOR deals with the Bosnian Serb military. The sacked military leaders reportedly enjoy solid backing within the ranks.
• Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic sends federal Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minster Nikola Sainovic to Pale with the message that Mladic must step down. According to Nasa Borba, U.S. envoy John Kornblum met with Milosevic and told him Mladic must go.
• Mladic loyalists take over the Zep relay station, thus crippling the Republika Srpska television network.
• The Bosnian presidency in its seventh session again fails to agree on a government for Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Muslim presidency member and chairman, Alija Izetbegovic, and the Croat, Kresimir Zubak, want a government made up of five ministers and a premier, while Bosnian Serb presidency member Momcilo Krajisnik wants a premier and two ministers, in keeping with Pale's goal of limiting the powers of any central body.
• A Muslim refugee says Bosnian Serbs have shelled Gajevi.

13 November

• Local and international media report that at least one Muslim has died and several Muslims and Serbs have been wounded during the armed confrontation around Gajevi. Each side blames the other, and IFOR blames them both, saying the Muslims shot first and suggesting that the Sarajevo authorities may have deliberately staged a provocation. The conflict led to the most serious fighting since the Dayton agreement took effect.
• As a result of the clashes, IFOR, the UN police, and the office of High Representative Carl Bildt announce a temporary halt of the return of refugees to their homes in the zone of separation.
• The cashiered Bosnian Serb General Staff publishes a letter in the Belgrade paper Blic warning of a "fratricidal war." The letter demands that the Republika Srpska police stop harassing Mladic loyalists in the army. Mladic loyalists charge that former Bosnian Serb civilian leader and indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic is responsible for the "putsch" against Mladic.
• The 80 sacked top Bosnian Serb military leaders and their replacements claim the army is behind them.
• Bosnian Serb police shut down the independent Radio Krajina in Banja Luka and confiscate the station's transmitter. The station is close to Mladic and was run by a former Mladic spokesman who was among the officers sacked on 9 November.

14 November

• Representatives of the five-member international Contact Group and the Bosnian presidency meet in Paris. The three presidency members agree on a 13-point, two-year stabilization program that stresses the right of refugees to go home, the need for democratization, the central role of joint institutions, and the importance of cooperating with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher threatens sanctions against those who do not comply.
• A Bosnian Serb army spokesman tells Nasa Borba that Mladic and his people are effectively sealed off "in a ghetto" at the army's command center in Han Pijesak. He says harassment of Mladic loyalists has become "a daily occurrence." He reports that people there suspect IFOR's goal is to take Mladic to the Hague tribunal, but, he says, "We will not allow them to take our commander there, not at any price."
• Bosnian Serb television runs a commentary indirectly attacking Mladic and his loyalists for the first time. The broadcast stresses the importance of civilian control over the military and says Mladic has resisted the civilian authorities since 1993.
• U.S. IFOR troops confiscate six truckloads of arms from the Bosnian army's 254th Brigade in the Celic-Koraj area. Russian IFOR troops took a smaller quantity from the nearby Bosnian Serb police. The Bosnian army charges IFOR with staging provocations against it and against its commander, General Rasim Delic.
• After meeting with U.S. Vice President Al Gore, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana says the U.S. has signaled it will commit troops to a follow-on force in Bosnia. Solana says the U.S. contingent will number about 7,500.

15 November

• CNN reports that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman was secretly admitted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for cancer surgery. Croatian officials do not comment.

16 November

• Croatian authorities block the publication of the weekly Nacional because the latest issue is devoted to Tudjman's health. Zagreb authorities first deny the report, then claim Tudjman's problems are routine.

17 November

• Mladic and his ousted chief of staff, General Manojlo Milovanovic, say in an interview with Belgrade's Telegraf that the Republika Srpska is on the verge of civil war.
• The Clinton administration was wrong to say U.S. troops could be out of Bosnia in a year, Defense Secretary William Perry says.

18 November

• Republika Srpska President Biljana Plavsic meets with a General Staff delegation for the first time since Mladic's ouster. Plavsic is joined by General Pero Colic, Mladic's successor. Three of the five men in the staff delegation are Mladic loyalists. Plavsic's office issues a statement saying the outcome of the meeting is that Mladic will go.
• NATO ambassadors agree to set up a Stabilization Force (SFOR) to replace IFOR when its mandate runs out on 20 December. SFOR will have 31,000 members, just under half of what IFOR had at its peak. The ambassadors are unable to agree on the length of SFOR's mandate. The next step in establishing SFOR lies with the UN Security Council.
• Bosnian Defense Minister Vladimir Soljic, an ethnic Croat, resigns as part of an apparent face-saving maneuver to enable his Muslim deputy, Hasan Cengic, also to leave office. The United States insists that Cengic, whom they accuse of having close ties with Iran, resign before Washington resumes its military aid program.

19 November

• Republika Srpska Prime Minister Gojko Klickovic says Mladic has agreed to accept his dismissal. He says Mladic "will benefit from special treatment and will be able to get involved in the defense affairs of the Serb state."
• Mladic's staff denies Plavsic's statement from the previous day, saying it had only been agreed that Plavsic and Mladic will meet on 20 November.
• Following Soljic's and Cengic's resignations, James Pardew, the envoy supervising Washington's "train and equip" military aid program, says light and heavy weapons worth $100 million will be unloaded soon at the Croatian port of Ploce.

20 November

• Plavsic holds a four-hour meeting with Mladic at his headquarters in Han Pijesak. A statement from Mladic's office said there was no information on the content of the talks.
• Germany and Bosnia sign an agreement to repatriate more than 300,000 refugees from the conflict in former Yugoslavia. They say they hoped many would return soon of their own volition but note that those who refuse will be sent back against their will, starting with single adults and married couples without children. "It has always been clear that when the war ended the refugees would have to go home and take part in the reconstruction of their country," says German Interior Minister Manfred Kanther.
• The Bosnian Serb army begins destroying 13 tanks, 30 mortars, and two armored personnel carriers in Banja Luka as part of a monthlong program to meet arms-reduction quotas. The deadline for meeting all the limitations is the end of 1997.
• NATO troops confiscate illegal mines, rockets, and explosives from the Croats at Orasje in northern Bosnia.
• The unloading of the $100 million U.S. arms shipment to the Bosnian army begins in Ploce.
• In the village of Hajvaci near Mahala in northeastern Bosnia, 12 houses are destroyed by anti-tank mines. The formerly Muslim village is on Serb-held territory in an area where Muslim refugees have been trying to go home.

21 November

• Bildt says many aspects of the Dayton agreement that ended the war in Bosnia have been settled, but much remains to be done. Speaking in Sarajevo on the anniversary of the signing of the agreement, he singles out the return of refugees, economic renewal, human rights, freedom of the press, and democratization as areas in which much improvement is needed. Bildt said that further peaceful development depends on the establishment of joint political institutions of Muslims, Croats, and Serbs.
• The Bosnian mandate for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is extended until the end of 1997. Envoys from the 54 OSCE member states reportedly agree to consider a further extension of the mandate into 1998.

22 November

• Plavsic announces that the Bosnian Serb army command has moved from Mladic's base in Han Pijesak to Bijeljina in northeastern Bosnia.
• The Bosnian presidency once more fails to agree on the formation of a republican government.
• World Bank officials point out that the Republika Srpska so far has received only 2 percent of the $900 in reconstruction aid earmarked for Bosnia-Herzegovina. The main factor cited by the bank is lack of cooperation from local officials.
• The southern German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg announces the deportation of four Bosnians, becoming the second German state after Bavaria to send refugees from the Balkan war home against their will.

23 November

• UN spokesman Alexander Ivanko says the commander of an International Police Task Force station and his interpreter were wounded when a grenade was thrown into their car between Nevisinje and Mostar in Herzegovina.

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