BOSNIA's Muslims and Croats will need three to four years to cement peace, the president of their federation, Mr Kresimir Zubak, a Croat, said in an interview published yesterday.
Diplomats say the federation could disintegrate into a new war if Nato troops leave as scheduled at the end of 1996, as Muslims and Croats are paying only lip service to the deal, refusing to share power.
"There is not a single sphere of life or work where Croats and Muslims completely agree I estimate we will need three to four years to achieve stability (in the federation)," Mr Zubak told the Croatian newspaper Vecernji List.
He said the crux of the federation's woes was that Croats regarded the state as a union of two distinct, equal nations while the Muslims wanted to establish a unitary state where they, as the majority, would dominate.
"Yes, the Muslims were victims in the war," he said, alluding primarily to the prolonged separatist Serb siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. "But measures they have taken recently show that their commitment to a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural community has been only verbal," Mr Zubak was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
"Croats favour the federation and Muslims the (existing Muslim-led Bosnian) republic. We have not been able to define what should come under whose jurisdiction."
Western analysts say Bosnian Croat separatism, backed by the nationalist government of Croatia, has been as much, if not more, to blame for the federation's difficulties as growing Muslim nationalism and insularity caused by the war.
Nationalist Croats have resisted pressure to dismantle a breakaway entity in western Bosnia known as the "Croat Republic of Herceg-Bosna", a virtual annex of neighbouring Croatia, and submit to federal jurisdiction.
"We will gradually deprive the Republic of Herceg-Bosna of its competencies as a (separate) state and transfer them to federal bodies," said Mr Zubak, a relative moderate in the Bosnian Croat political leadership. (But) in the period to come Herceg-Bosna will remain one of the forms of political, economic, cultural and other (expressions) of the Croat people," he told the newspaper.
"It will have the power to promote the political and other aims of the Croat people. It will be organised in a way so as to realise those aims through federal institutions.
He did not elaborate. Western diplomats say federal institutions have not progressed past the paper stage and the real centres of power endure within the existing Bosnian republic government and "Herceg-Bosna".
Mr Zubak also said that not enough Croats were obtaining posts in federal bodies. "This is a big problem ... We intend to obtain proportional representation of Croats in all bodies.
The US Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, was expected in Geneva last night for today's summit meeting with leaders of Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia and Serbia. Russia is to boycott the meeting, which to press for compliance with the peace accords and which precedes a meeting of Contact Group foreign ministers and Balkan leaders in Moscow on Saturday.
Struggling with Bosnia's reconstruction needs, the World Bank told Sarajevo authorities to develop financial institutions by next month or risk missing out on billions of dollars in aid. Ms Christine Wallich, the head of Bosnia operations at the World Bank, said in Sarajevo that the World Bank wanted Bosnian authorities to act ahead of a critical donors' meeting in Brussels on April 12th-13th.
"It is important for the government to move soon in terms of developing the institutions at the state and federation levels to implement the (assistance) programmes," Ms Wallich said. "The big four that need to be put into place (are), customs, tax, payments and a federal banking agency, she added.
In Sarajevo, Serbs fleeing the last Serb-held area of the city set off a wave of burning and looting yesterday. They set fire to at least six apartments, a restaurant, a house and the main market in Grbavica, two days before the district is to revert to the control of the Muslim-Croat federation.
Grbavica, a jumble of tenement blocks and burnt-out high-rise buildings, reverts to Muslim-Croat control tomorrow, and as steady rain fell, a few last Serbs made sad preparations to leave the district, piling goods into vans and wagons for the trek east.
Meanwhile, a senior UN prosecutor yesterday offered to open a war-crimes tribunal office in Serb held areas of Bosnia, during a visit to Serb headquarters in Pale, the Serb-run SRNA news agency said. Mr Graham Blewitt made the proposal during a meeting with the Serb leader Mr Rajko Kasagic. Mr Kasagic did not reveal his response to the tribunal's proposals.