A Step Toward Normalizing Eastern Slavonia
ZAGREB, May 4 (Reuters) — International motorway traffic between Croatia and Serbia in rump Yugoslavia is set to resume on Tuesday under a U.N. mandate to transfer a separatist Serb enclave gradually back to Croatian government rule. Croatian customs and immigration officials will also establish a post at the border crossing on the E-70 motorway at Lipovac, Philip Arnold, spokesman of the U.N. transitional authority (UNTAES) in Serb-held Eastern Slavonia, said.But Croatian police would not take physical control of the border before the mandate ends next year, he added. Until then all crossings would be controlled by joint Serb-Croat police units under the supervision of UNTAES, which has 5,000 enforcement troops in the area, once the region in the Danube River basin is demilitarized next month. Traffic would be confined to forlations, however, still seem to be some way off.
The E-70 motorway was sealed off in the 1991 war when the Serbs captured Eastern Slavonia. Only diplomats, U.N. and NATO peacekeeping force members as well as occasional foreign journalists have been able to use the motorway crossing since then.
"After the Tuesday opening, UNTAES will remain responsible for safety and security on the seven km stretch through the enclave. The Croats are not taking physical control of the border until the end of the mandate," Arnold said.
Jacques Klein, the American diplomat heading UNTAES, said on Thursday that the first joint Croat-Serb police would deploy on the borders of the last Serb enclave in Croatia next week. He said demilitarization of the area would start not later than June 1 and be completed by July 1.
U.N. sources say separatist Serb forces are already busily withdrawing heavy weapons and equipment to nearby Serbia. UNTAES took charge of Eastern Slavonia, a fertile plain studded with oil wells, early this year to avert a Croatian army attack that could have undone the new peace in Bosnia.
After demilitarization, Croats driven out of the region by Serb militants in 1991 are to be resettled in former homes and Croatian government institutions to be gradually restored. UNTAES' mandate is one year with an option to extend to two years if difficulties arise.
The nationalist Croats want to regain total control within a year while the Serbs, only reluctantly reconciled to Croatian authority after Serbia withdrew support for their revolt, hope to drag out the process as long as possible.
Roughly 150,000 Serbs inhabit the enclave now, a third or more of them refugees from former rebel zones reconquered by the Croatian army in mid-1995. Berserkistan is a world news service of Michael Linder Productions, Inc.
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