CROATIA BUILDS GOODWILL IN SERB VILLAGES
By Ian Traynor

June 19, 2004 – (The Guardian) One sunny afternoon last month Sofiya Skoric stood among the olive groves, fig trees and war debris of Biljane Donje, her native village, and with damp eyes surveyed a small miracle - four walls and a roof.

The Croatian prime minister, Ivo Sanader, was about to visit the village in the hills behind the Adriatic coast and welcome Mrs Skoric, a former Serbian refugee, as a Croatian citizen.

Her village sits on what was the bitterest frontline in the ethnic war between Serbs and Croats which sent her into exile. Eight years after the end of the war, during which its entirely Serb population of 1,200 fled, still resembles an abandoned battlefield.

But after the years in which her house was vandalised, mined and blown up, and its materials pilfered, the walls had gone up again in a matter of days because the prime minister was coming and had a message that would resonate way beyond Biljane Donje.

There is still no toilet, no water, no electricity. The house is uninhabitable. Mrs Skoric is still living with friends in a nearby town.

But its resurrection helped Mr Sanader to a political triumph.

In Brussels yesterday the leaders of the EU invited Croatia to enter negotiations to join the union: a big victory for a prime minister only six months in office, and one which sets an example to the rest of the war-ravaged western Balkans - Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania.

After years of having their EU ambitions blocked, not least by Britain, the Croats are being invited in because their government is surrendering war crimes suspects to the international tribunal in The Hague and, finally, letting ethnic Serbs return to their homes and property.

"We're not pretending there are not any problems," the Croatian foreign minister, Miomir Zuzul, said."But we are a government looking forward to EU and Nato membership and the sooner we leave behind the wounds of the past, the better it will be for everybody."

But the wounds are still open in Biljane Donje. In 1991, at the beginning of the Yugoslav wars, Serb paramilitaries used it as a base from which to attack the neighbouring Croatian village of Skabrnje, 34 women and elderly peasants were massacred. The village was completely razed, 450 houses and three Catholic churches torched.

Retribution came in 1995 when the Croats had the upper hand. Biljane Donje was levelled and the 1,200 Serbs fled to Serbia.

Apart from the four Skoric walls, Biljane Donje remains a ruin, while the Croatian village has been completely rebuilt.

But Mrs Skoric is a pioneer, determined to recover her family's ancestral home in a rural area where the rancour from the war is ever-present.

Until Mr Sanader visited last month, all attempts to rebuild her house had been sabotaged by local Croats.

The trouble persists. An 81-year-old Serb who went home to Croatia last week after 13 years as a refugee promptly turned round and went back to Serbia when his house was firebombed.

As recently as last year Human Rights Watch denounced Croatia for deliberately creating "insurmountable impediments" to the return of the hundreds of thousands of Serbs.

Nevertheless, the international community is now warily applauding the government's human rights activities.

"On the whole, the security situation is satisfactory and the government has done a lot to improve the climate regarding return," said Alessandro Fracassetti, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's spokesman in Zagreb.

Since coming to power last December, Mr Sanader has gone much further than his predecessor to secure Croatia's integration with mainstream Europe, his paramount political aim.

He has handed over eight war crimes suspects - two senior Croatian officers and six Bosnian Croat politicians and officers - reached a deal with Serbian minority leaders to legitimise the Serbs' political claim in Croatia, and called on Serbian refugees to return home.

"In terms of atmosphere, willingness, and climate, a lot has changed for the better," said Peter Semneby, the OSCE chief in Zagreb.

The surprise is that these policy changes have come from the Croatian Democratic Union - the same nationalist party which was led by the late president Franjo Tudjman and was responsible for grievous war crimes in the 90s.

Mr Sanader has purged the party of extremists, seeking to turn it into a mainstream European Christian democratic party, and is achieving human rights and war crimes' objectives which eluded his well-meaning but weak Social Democratic predecessor, Ivica Racan.

On the question of Serbian refugees, his policy reaps dividends and plaudits internationally while running little political risk at home, simply because so few Serbs are returning.

About 70,000 have, mainly elderly people, but more than 200,000 remain refugees outside Croatia.

"It's tragic that so much time has past, but it would have been much more difficult to make these gestures four or five years ago," Mr Semneby said.

"We're reaching a stage where only a small number will return."

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1242401,00.html