PRESIDENTS of a tense Sarajevo neighbourhood waited anxiously yesterday for a decision on the boundary between Serb and Muslim Croat territory in their area.
Officials discussed the boundary as rebel Serbs in an area of eastern Croatia being returned to Zagreb rule mobbed the US ambassador to the United Nations, Ms Madeleine Albright, and stoned her motorcade.
A dividing line agreed at the Dayton peace conference last November runs through portions of the former Olympic village of Dobrinja near Sarajevo airport, bisecting some apartment blocks and possibly even some of the apartments.
Four men were wounded when they triggered a mine along the former front line in the disputed area yesterday.
But it was not immediately clear if the incident had anything to do with rising tensions in the area.
UN police had said that a car exploded on the Serb side of the line in Dobrinja on Tuesday morning, killing its occupant.
The cause of the explosion was unknown, but it came amidst reports of gunfire in the area on the same day.
Both the unarmed UN police and Nato troops stepped up their presence in the disputed parts of Dobrinja in an effort to maintain calm.
"Because of rising tensions and the increased possibility of violence there (in Dobrinja) . . . we now have 48 monitors in the area, together with (Nato)," a UN police spokesman, Mr Alexander Ivanko, told reporters in Sarajevo.
He said the UN police commissioner had ordered Serb and federation police not to enter buildings on the boundary line in Dobrinja, or patrol within 100 metres of those buildings until the line was finalised.
Officials from Bosnia's Serb republic and its Muslim Croat federation met yesterday under Nato sponsorship to seek mutual agreement on the dividing line.
Dobrinja is only one of about 450 areas in Bosnia where the inter entity boundary line is disputed.
But Nato sources report it is the most intractable of the boundary issues and is holding up agreement on the rest of the package.
Muslims and Serbs in affected parts of Dobrinja have been waiting for weeks for final word on the line because for most it will determine where they can live.
Muslims driven from their homes in the disputed area at the beginning of the Bosnian war are keen to move back. But many Serb refugees who moved into the district recently insist they would rather fight than be displaced again.
That Dobrinja and the other boundary line disputes were being sorted out around a conference table rather than on the battlefield shows the success of the Dayton peace process in its first three months of implementation.
With five Sarajevo suburbs now handed over from Serb to
Muslim Croat control, the Bosnian capital has been reunified, an important first step towards reintegrating the entire country.
"You can look at Dobrinja as a sign of the fragility of the process or as a sign of its strength," said a western diplomat, who asked not to be named.
"The fact that there is a dispute is not surprising. The good news is that Nato and IPTF (the UN police) are managing to control the tension.
The peace process is working, clumsily at times, but still it's working."