Enemies Pull Back In Bosnia First Deadline Of Treaty Passes Peacefully; Front Lines Cleared

Bosnia’s enemy armies withdrew from selected front-line positions around this capital Wednesday in the first concrete test of U.S.-brokered peace accords that formally ended 3 years of war.

As a midnight deadline established in the peace treaty approached and passed, NATO officials said Bosnian government and Bosnian Serb troops had apparently complied by evacuating trenches, bunkers and military emplacements in and near Sarajevo.

Wednesday’s pullback is an initial victory for NATO as it attempts to prove it can enforce the peace agreement. The withdrawal had also been seen as a test of whether the Bosnians will stick by their commitments.

In many cases, the warring forces had been withdrawing gradually for days from an estimated 40 sites selected and agreed to by all involved, NATO officials said. Future deadlines require the two sides to mark or destroy their mines, disband paramilitary groups and move armies behind 1-1/4-mile zones of separation.

Up on Mount Trebevic, one of the principal Bosnian Serb front-line fortifications overlooking Sarajevo, it appeared that most troops had pulled out several days ago, leaving behind a handful of soldiers watching over empty, snow-covered trenches.

“In four years they couldn’t take this from us, and now we have to leave just like that,” said a Serb soldier named Vojislav, 27. “I haven’t heard anything from our commanders for three days, but when the time comes, we will leave.”

Trenches made of logs were dug in along the mountain’s pine-studded ridge. Ammunition boxes were scattered about.French NATO troops are charged with patrolling and monitoring the emptied battle lines.

One vacated position was a patch of deserted apartment buildings on the edge of the Sarajevo airport near the battered area known as Dobrinje. A two-lane road had marked the front line - Serbs on one side, Bosnian government troops on the other, the two foes barely at 30 yards’ distance.

A French patrol - five men and a dog named Eliot - moved through the area Wednesday on the lookout for soldiers who might try to sneak back. The French also removed mines and detonated unexploded ordnance.

French Maj. Rodolph D’Almont, who supervised the patrol, said the Bosnian soldiers who manned the position left three days ago. “Everything leads us to believe that the peace is starting to settle in.”