Bosnia Vote Mostly Free Of Violence, But Fear Keeps Some Away From Polls

Guarded by American and other NATO-led troops, Bosnians voted Saturday in national elections largely free of violence. But fear kept thousands from polling places, and Muslims challenged results in Serb areas.

Voters were selecting a three-person presidency and a legislature, whose survival will determine whether Bosnia remains a single state or breaks up into ethnic components. Results were not expected until Monday or Tuesday.

Few doubt that Muslim, Serb and Croat parties in power throughout the Bosnian war will win. But foreigners and some Bosnians hope moderate opposition groups will gain enough of a foothold to make reconciliation a reality some day.

If all goes well in the aftermath of the first postwar nationwide elections, many of the American and other foreign troops sent to enforce the U.S.-brokered peace agreement hope to leave when the mandate for the NATO-led force ends in December.

“These elections have a lot to do with when we go home,” said Pfc. Jason Marquardt of Akron, Ohio as he guarded a polling place near the northeastern town of Kalesija. “If they go smoothly, we go home early. If they don’t, we’ll be here longer.”

Only scattered violence was reported. Stones were thrown at a Sarajevo polling station and at a bus carrying Muslim voters in the southwest city of Mostar.

Officials also reported a grenade attack on the home of a local election chairman in the central town of Bugojno.

Turnout appeared to be between 60 percent and 70 percent, said Robert Frowick, the American head of the Bosnian mission of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which organized the vote.

But U.N. officials said many Muslims and Croats refused to cross the boundary to vote in Serb areas, from which they had fled or were expelled during the war.

Under rules set down by international organizers, Bosnians could either vote at their current residences or where they were registered before the 3-1/2-year war. OSCE had estimated that up to 60,000 people would cross from the Muslim-Croat half of Bosnia to Serb territory.

Frowick said only an estimated 20,000 did so, with just 4,000 Serbs venturing to Muslim-Croat land to vote.

Only one Muslim cast a ballot in Srebrenica, which rebel Serbs overran last summer, and he said Serb policemen harassed him as he voted, U.N. spokesman Alexander Ivanko said.

Only two of 202 buses standing by to take Muslims to Vlasenica and Srebrenica in Serb-held eastern Bosnia were needed, said Jeff Fischer of OSCE.

That suggested that many Bosnians had at a personal level accepted the ethnic division of the country that the elections were designed to prevent.

“I think some people just got cold feet at the last moment and were afraid to go,” said Kris Janowski of the U.N. refugee agency in Sarajevo.

“If this is the result of fear, it’s sad,” said Mans Nyberg, Janowski’s colleague in the Serb stronghold of Banja Luka. “If it’s the result of apathy, then it doesn’t bode well for the future.”

Bosnia’s U.N. ambassador, Muhamed Sacirbey, said Muslims faced obstacles traveling across the former front lines, people were left off voter rolls and the local electoral commissions excluded non-Serbs. The Muslims’ ruling Party of Democratic Action cited those problems in demanding that the results in Serb areas be nullified.

Overall, however, “We saw a trouble-free election,” said Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. architect of the Dayton peace agreement that ended the war.

Holbrooke said he would go to Belgrade on Sunday to urge Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to use his considerable influence among the Bosnian Serbs to keep them from seceding.

Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader forced out because he has been indicted in war crimes, kept a low profile Saturday. An aide said Karadzic voted in his base of Pale, outside Sarajevo.

Last month’s cancellation of municipal elections because of evidence of fraud and other abuses may have discouraged cross-boundary traffic.

“When they delayed municipal elections, they removed the incentive for people to cross over,” said Lt. Col. Tony Cucolo, commander of Camp McGovern, a U.S. base outside the hotly disputed Serb-held town of Brcko.

Organizers will first count votes for the three-member presidency. Then they will try to arrange for the newly elected Muslim, Serb and Croat presidency members to meet as soon as possible, probably at the U.N. General Assembly in New York later this month.