Throughout the "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia from 1992-1995, Ibrahim Halilovic, the Islamic leader of Banja Luka, worked to support his community and to keep open ties with Catholics and Serb Orthodox, even as the Serb political and military authorities carried out an organized persecution of Muslims and a systematic annihilation of Islamic heritage, with a methodical campaign of dynamiting mosques and other Islamic sacral sites.

By the time of the Dayton accords in November of 1995, the Muslim population in the Banja Luka region had been reduced to fragment. There had been organized mass-killings of Muslims in the area and several infamous concentration camps had been set up at Omarska, Prijedor, Trnopolje, and Manjaca.

The articles below show the quiet courage, the unbreakable spirit of tolerance in the midst of an atmosphere of persecution and hatred, that Mufti Halilovic has shown throughout this tragic period.

The last article refers to the Mufti of Mostar, Seid Smajkic, who has endured a similarly brutal seige and persecution, this time at the hands of the extreme Croat religious nationalists based in West Mostar.

Reuters; January 30, 1996

SOME SERBS SECRETELY HELPED MOSLEMS - BOSNIAN MUFTI

By Dan De Luce

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia, Jan 30, 1996 -- A Bosnian Moslem religious leader said on Tuesday that an underground network of Serbs tried to help Moslem civilians who were terrorised by Serb ultra-nationalists during the war.

"There were Serbs who secretly helped the Moslems in attempting to ease the suffering caused by Serb extremists," said Ibrahim Halilovic, mufti for the northwest region around Serb-held Banja Luka. "We are very grateful for that," he said in an interview.

Halilovic, 49, has lived under virtual house arrest in Serb- held Banja Luka since 1992, presiding over a Moslem community that was the target of systematic expulsions and violence. He expressed gratitude to those Serbs who offered their homes and other help to Moslems and Croats, but said he could not discuss the underground network in detail so soon after the signing of the peace accord. "There were certain means but we can't say anything specific about that," he said. "These means will be revealed when peace finally settles in these parts -- when people will be allowed to talk."

The few Moslems remaining in the Banja Luka area live a fearful existence, trying to avoid any contact with Serb authorities. The peace accord signed in December has slightly eased the garrison town atmosphere, raising hopes that conditions may begin to improve. Separatist Serb forces, intent on forging an ethnically "pure" state, wiped out all Islamic monuments and mosques on territory under their control, blowing up ancient mosques that were once tourist attractions. All 16 mosques in Banja Luka were destroyed during the war and 207 Islamic structures in the region were demolished in an area deep within Serb territory, far from front lines.

The Moslems remaining in Banja Luka have no proper place to worship and a small room below the mufti's office now serves as a makeshift mosque. Serb forces destroyed a graceful mosque which once stood next to Halilovic's office in the town centre. The mufti said he hoped the Dayton peace accord, which grants refugees the right to return to their homes, would help restore ethnic and religious coexistence in Banja Luka. "Allowing people to come back is a crucial first step," Halilovic said.

Since the Dayton peace deal was agreed, Serb gunmen have halted attacks on Moslem funeral services, he said. "They used to throw grenades and fire above our heads. That has stopped since Dayton," he said.

Some 15 Moslems evicted from their homes in Banja Luka won court cases earlier this month which granted them the right to move back to their flats and houses seized by armed Serb men. The court decision came as a surprise to Halilovic, who said it remained unclear if the court cases represented a new policy by the Serb leadership. "If it ends with these cases then it is merely symbolic. If it becomes a practice then it is really a process." He said he was confident that the current hardline Serb authorities would be replaced by Serbs opposed to wartime nationalism.

Much depended on whether the international community ensured that all citizens of Banja Luka, including hundreds of thousands who were expelled, would be able to vote in post-war elections this year. "I believe that those who were expelled would not vote for those who kicked them out," he said.

After trouble began in Banja Luka, the mufti stopped wearing his religious robe and turban out of fear he would be attacked on the street. "It was very dangerous and it is still dangerous to appear like that in public," he added. "The day I can appear in my 'mufti' uniform again will be a crucial sign for human rights and liberties."

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The Independent (London); October 27, 1996, Sunday

ONE CANDLE IN THE HEART OF DARKNESS; The Mufti of Banja Luka lives on among those who killed his people. He tells Robert Fisk (left) why he is ready to forgive

By Robert Fisk

Ibrahim Halilovic drags heavily on his cigarette. "You don't mind me smoking, do you?" he asks. We are in his office, beside what every guidebook describes as the beauty of the Ferhat Pasha mosque, but all that remains of the 17th-century building, blown up by Serb militiamen in 1993, is a few hunks of painted masonry and two square feet of Arabic script on ancient stone, dumped in the hallway below his office. The Mufti of Banja Luka smiles bitterly. "Yes, we can smoke because we have been through hell."

Which is putting it mildly. Ibrahim Halilovic is in the very centre of the heart of darkness, the capital of northern Bosnia from which the "ethnic cleansers" set out in the summer of 1992 to burn and rape their way through the Muslim population. Though he always refuses to be photographed, the mufti bravely agrees to talk on the record, and does so in the voice of a survivor, carefully, slowly, softly, fear creeping into his sentences along with pride in his own courage.

"More than 90 per cent of the Muslims in my area were thrown out. Their property was usurped by people of Serb nationality. But the houses which were no longer good for living in, the Serbs demolished them, took away building materials, windows, sinks, chairs. They took as from a dead body. I have not a single mosque in my area left. All have been blown up. This means that the roots of the Bosnian Muslim people here have been pulled up. I had more than 200 imams preaching here. I now have only two active ones and three who have been pensioned off. . ."

The Imam of Prijedor, a man called Carakovo, was wrapped in a carpet from his mosque and set on fire with petrol. "They burned him to death in front of his wife and children and other believers," says the mufti. In Kozarac in 1992, they took the imam and skinned him alive and poured salt over him. "In the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 62 imams were killed. They did not belong to any uprising. They were absolutely innocent people."

Mr Halilovic was himself in mortal danger. "The police came to pick me up and said 'Why don't you go?' I refused. This happened on many occasions - in 1993, 1994 and last year. In August, men tried to kill me; eight shots were fired through the windows of my living-room. A bomb was planted in the cellar of my house in July 1994.

"The police kept asking me why I wouldn't leave. I said to them: 'My life is my guarantee that I will not leave - because this town belongs more to me than to you who came to this town yesterday.' One of the policemen said to me: 'We have knocked all your mosques down, so you will not be able to go on living here.' So I replied: 'I am a moving mosque.' They were so angry that they threw me out." The mufti is a valiant man. "I have no immunity here," he remarks suddenly. "But I have immunity with God."

The statistics of persecution in northern Bosnia will never be known with any exactitude, but the estimates are terrible enough. Around Banja Luka alone, the 1991 census listed 30,000 Muslims. Now there are only about 4,000. Mr Khalilovic believes that 55,000 Muslims were slaughtered in all north-western Bosnia. And still the "ethnic cleansing" continues, officially sanctioned now by local government officials. "Since the Dayton accord, very many unpleasant things have been happening," Mr Halilovic says. "We thought Dayton would reverse things - that Muslims would be coming back. There are many Muslims who were thrown out of their homes in northern Bosnia and came here. They are struggling to get their homes back through the courts in Banja Luka, but the process is very slow. It depends what local political wind prevails here and which winds come from Pale the Bosnian Serb "capital" . Muslims still feel uncertain. They are frightened, hungry, they have the minimum means of living; there is less and less humanitarian aid arriving. They have no work, nothing to heat their homes with."

Yet the mufti still believes that Dayton is better than war, and proudly shows his new visiting card, printed in Islamic green by a local Serbian printing company. It is in Latin script rather than the Cyrillic alphabet used by the Serbs, respectfully refers to him as a Hadzdzi - one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca - and bears the country's title of the "Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina" rather than the rump Serb republic. He insists that the leaders of all three churches in northern Bosnia - Muslim, Serb Orthodox and Croat Roman Catholics - should mix again and that their people should be reintegrated, that the West must ensure the Dayton provisions are carried out to the letter.

He seems dazed by the ability of even a few Muslims to hang on amid the fire and hatred of the past four years in northern Bosnia. "They planned to throw every one of us out, but we had so much spiritual strength to resist those pressures that we remained. But we have given our lives for it. We perform the minimum of Islamic rituals now, but there is still some Islamic life here. I thank God that Muslims remain - because they actually spoiled the plans of those monstrous people who wanted to completely destroy us. I pray to God that this surface peace becomes a real, lasting and just peace. Bosnia and Herzegovina must be integrated again."

There is no way of knowing if the precarious new security of the surviving Muslims will continue.The mufti says: "Thousands of God's buildings were destroyed in this war, but the dearest of God's places is peace. We were in darkness for a long time. We welcome the light of a single candle now."

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Reuters; May 16, 1993,

BOSNIAN MOSLEMS MOURN SERB DEMOLITION OF HISTORIC MOSQUES

By Mark Heinrich

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia, May 16, 1993 (Reuters) -- The day after Serb extremists blew up two historic 16th-century mosques in northern Bosnia, Serbs shouted that the ruins would make a great car park, said Moslems who were mourning at the site.

Serbs unrestrained by an overnight curfew and a police station next door flattened Ferhad Pasha mosque and nearby Arnaudija mosque 10 days ago with hundreds of tonnes of TNT, according to local Moslems and U.N. humanitarian officials. Banja Luka's Ferhad Pasha mosque, an outstanding example of Islamic art in Europe, was the spiritual hub of north Bosnian Moslems for 414 years. It survived a World War Two air raid and a 1969 earthquake -- but finally met its match in May, 1993.

''None of us tried to rush to the scene right after the explosions because we would have been arrested or shot on sight,'' mufti Ibrahim Halilovic said. ''But we heard singing and cursing and the firing of guns in the air, celebrating a happy ending. ''After daybreak, thousands of Moslems gathered at the site, sobbing. Plenty of Serbs came too. They laughed and joked. Some shouted that this would make a wonderful parking lot.''

After the destruction, Banja Luka's Serb nationalist authorities started carting away the rubble to a garbage dump, ignoring pleas from Moslem community leaders that it be left alone in the faint hope that the mosques might be rebuilt. ''These mosques were protected UNESCO monuments. And when they threw the pieces of our mosques in the dump, it was like they were throwing in Moslems too,'' said Halilovic, leader of Banja Luka's endangered Moslem community. He spoke as Serbs throughout the 70 per cent of Bosnia they control after a year of civil war staged a referendum to reject a U.N. peace plan and endorse a ''Greater Serbia'' incorporating Serb-held lands in Bosnia and Croatia.

U.N. officials called the attacks on the mosques the latest episode in a campaign of intimidation, expropriation, assault and murder that has halved the large Moslem minority in Bosnia's second largest city in the past year. Known euphemistically as ''ethnic cleansing,'' the Serbs' systematic drive to erase non-Serb communities has put tens of thousands of Moslems and Croats to flight from Bosnia.

Much of the drive has been steered from Banja Luka, a citadel of hardline Serb nationalism in the former Yugoslav republic. The destruction of mosques has been widely blamed on paramilitaries loyal to Serbian radical chieftain Vojislav Seselj. About 800 mosques have been levelled in dozens of towns, some originally with Moslem majorities, Halilovic said.

The demolition of Ferhad Pasha and Arnaudija was the most stunning blow in a year of reverses for Banja Luka's ancient Moslem community, which numbered about 50,000 -- alongside over 100,000 Serbs -- before the civil war. Police launched an investigation into the attacks, but dropped it without taking evidence from or even consulting with Moslem representatives. City police chief Stojan Zupljanin said at the time the mosques had been blown up by Moslems trying to influence Western opinion in favour of outside military intervention in Bosnia.

International Red Cross sources say half of Banja Luka's Moslems have been evicted by arson, beatings, shootings, dismissals from jobs, and various forms of legal chicanery. ''We are European Moslems who have always believed in multi-ethnic tolerance,'' said Moslem community leader Mustafa Ceric. ''As we are being destroyed, Europe is being reduced. Europe must help us. There is no time left to act.''

Local Moslems said they had rejected invitations to vote in the referendum from Serb authorities, who claim minorities enjoy equal rights in their self-proclaimed ''Republika Srpska.''

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Associated Press; May 22, 1993

BANJA LUKA HEART OF BOSNIAN SERB DEFIANCE OF WORLD COMMUNITY

By Maud S. Beelman, Associated Press Writer

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina, May 22, 1993 (AP) - Bosnian Serb defiance of the peace plan to end Europe's worst conflict in 50 years beats strongest in this tranquil-looking river valley, the heart of the Serb rebellion.

"You can kill everything and everyone but not the spirit of the people, and we have the strongest spirit," said Mileva Vukovic, a high school teacher. "Somebody dares to tell us what democracy is!" she said, lingering over coffee at an outdoor cafe. "America is learning about democracy; we are living it."

Banja Luka's Serbs consider last weekend's referendum in which they and other Bosnian Serbs rejected a peace plan to be the surest sign that democracy reigns in Serbian Bosnia. Official results showed 96 percent of Bosnian Serbs voted against the plan, under which they would have to cede much of the 70 percent of Bosnian territory they have captured in 13 months of warfare against Bosnia's Muslims and Croats. The plan was devised by Lord Owen of the European Community and Cyrus Vance of the United Nations.

Banja Luka, de facto headquarters of the Bosnian Serb military and home to some of the most militant Serb nationalists, is set amid lush, green farmland in northern Bosnia. There are no signs of war in Banja Luka, which now has perhaps 150,000 people, down from a pre-war population of about 200,000. But there are numerous signs of hatred.

Not far from where Mrs. Vukovic sat are the remains of what was one of the largest mosques in Bosnia. The 414-year-old Ferhadija mosque was focal point of the area's 45,000 Slavic Muslims before the war. The historic monument was blown up May 7 along with a smaller 409-year-old mosque just a few blocks away.

City authorities claim Muslims did it to draw sympathy and increase international pressure on the Serbs. But the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees condemned Bosnian Serbs for the attack and has accused them of "ethnically cleansing" the town of all non-Serbs. "Both mosques survived five wars and in none of those wars were they destroyed," said Ibrahim Halilovic, mufti for the estimated 20,000 remaining Muslims. "But they couldn't survive this." In all, five of the area's 16 mosques have been bombed or burned, the most recent one on Monday, Halilovic said. As he spoke, a handful of men chanted their afternoon prayers in a small downstairs room of the Islamic Community Center, kneeling on a mosaic of colorful carpets rescued from other damaged or destroyed mosques. "To destroy these mosques means to kill the Muslims," Halilovic said.

Interviews with a half-dozen Serbs gave little hope they could again live with Muslims or Croats, who before the war each comprised about 15 percent of Banja Luka's population. "This war was caused not by the wish of Serbs to live in an independent country, but by Islamization," said Miodrag Sekulic, a musician-turned-soldier. He was citing the oft-repeated conspiracy theory that the mostly Muslim government seeks to create an Islamic state. Before the war, Sekulic said, one of his best friends was Muslim. Now he says, "The Muslims should go where they belong ... Turkey, Asia."

Fighting broke out 13 months ago when Muslims and Croats voted to secede from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. Since then, 138,000 people have died or are missing. The only thing that will stop the war, Serbs say, is recognition of the self-declared Bosnian "Serb Republic." In the meantime, the fight will continue, regardless of world opinion or action.

"People who have quarreled like we have could never live again together, and that's what the (international peace) plan offers, a life together," said Col. Milutin Vukelic, one of Banja Luka's top military leaders. "We have been threatened for ages," he said of the possibility of Western military intervention, "and if we listened to those threats we wouldn't have survived."

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Reuters; October 1, 1993,

SERBS SAID TERRORISING MOSLEMS, CROATS IN NORTH BOSNIA

By Robert Evans

GENEVA, Oct 1, 1993 (Reuters) -- Bosnian Serbs have launched a campaign against Moslems and Croats in the Banja Luka region, including rape, torture and beatings, apparantly aimed at driving them out of the area, a U.N. agency said on Friday.

Ron Redmond, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters a wave of incidents over the past two weeks appeared aimed at forcing minority peoples out of the Serb nationalist stronghold in the north-west of the former Yugoslav republic. At the same time, he said, the agency was facing continued obstruction by the Serbs, despite promises by their military chief General Ratko Mladic, that was preventing relief convoys reaching isolated Moslem pockets in north central Bosnia. Among incidents in Banja Luka, he said, was the rape of two 65-year-old women and the attack on the home of an elderly couple in which an 80-year-old woman was left stripped naked after being attacked and beaten by armed men.

UNHCR field staff had also reported the torturing of an old man with burning cigarettes, a brutal attack on a Moslem religious leader and the arrest of the region's top Moslem cleric and two local leaders of the main Moslem political party. ''Normally this sort of systematic terrorism is carried out by carloads of armed thugs, often in uniform, who travel to Moslem areas usually at night but not always, break into people's homes and terrorise them,'' Redmond said. He told a news briefing that Banja Luka, the only major industrial city controlled by the Bosnian Serbs, had frequently been the scene of such incidents directed against Moslems and Croats during the 18-month civil war.

''Sometimes it is worse than others. Right now when it seems that attention is focused elsewhere in this war, then these thugs come out of the woodwork. ''It could be that they are now trying to complete the process of ethnic cleansing that was begun more than a year ago,'' Redmond declared. He said 100,000 Moslems and Croats had fled the region since then but some 40,000 were left.

The spokesman said local authorities of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb republic told UNHCR representatives who protested over the incidents that they were powerless because the attacks were the work of outside extremists acting on their own. During the summer the two remaining mosques in Banja Luka, which had a large Moslem population before Serbs rebelled in April last year against the declaration of independence by the Moslem-led government, were blown up.

Redmond said the religious leader arrested last month and then released after UNHCR intervention was Mufti Ibrahim Halilovic, spiritual head of the Moslems in the [Banja Luka] region. Muharem Krzic, chairman of the local branch of the Moslem Party of Democratic Action (SDA) headed by Bosnia's President Alija Izetbegovic, was also detained for 11 days and his deputy was arrested this week, the spokesman said.

The spokesman said radio contacts the UNHCR had maintained with the Maglaj and Tesanj pockets north of Sarajevo where Moslems are under attack from Serbs and Croats indicated conditions there were terrible. The agency's Banja Luka office to the west had been trying to mount convoys to the pockets for several weeks after getting clearance from Mladic ''but the Bosnian Serbs continue to put obstructions before us,'' Redmond declared. He said the hospitals in the two centres were out of anaesthetics and were practically out of drugs and medicines. Air drops by American, French and British aircraft were helping ''but it is definitely not enough,'' he said.

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The Times (London); September 10, 1993, Friday

BANJA LUKA LOSES LAST MOSQUE

/From Tim Judah in Belgrade/

Thousands of Muslims are expected to flee from Serb-controlled northern Bosnia in the next few weeks in a renewed exodus which has just begun.

The news came as officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross said that the last three mosques in the northern Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka were burned down on Wednesday and in the early hours of yesterday morning. Michel Ninnig, the head of the ICRC in Banja Luka said: ''We saw one burning last night and the other one which was destroyed we saw this morning on our way to the office.'' A third mosque had also been burnt down overnight.

The destruction of the buildings means that all of the 16 mosques that served the 50,000-strong Muslim community in Banja Luka before the civil war have been burnt down or blown up, 13 of them since April. Larry Hollingworth, the local head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said: ''This is the end of an era. There is no question that this has frightened the community so much they all want to go, so it could be the end of their history here. ''If we lined up empty buses here and now, thousands would leap on. People are now intimidated to such a degree that they all want to leave except for the Mufti. It's very, very sad.''

Yesterday Captain Milos Solaja, from Banja Luka's military press centre, denied the reports. ''It's untrue, it's wrong information,'' he said.

Western aid officials said that in areas outside Banja Luka which had escaped the wave of Serb ''ethnic cleansing'' of the spring and summer of 1992 the situation of the remaining Muslim population had deteriorated markedly in the past two months. Fearing attacks by Serb gunmen, entire villages are reported to have slept out in the open but, in the past few days, many have suddenly received the documents they need to leave. ''It's very strange,'' said one official, ''they suddenly got Croatian transit visas and a lot of convoys are leaving. Six hundred left the Gradiska region on Wednesday and thousands will leave in the next few weeks and months. We do not know where they are going.''

One hundred and forty thousand Muslims and Croats remain in parts of northern Bosnia and many have received the Serb papers they need to leave. However, they have been blocked because Croatia has refused to give them transit documents, fearing that they will become trapped in Croatia. The Belgrade news agency Tanjug reported yesterday that the Slovene authorities were taking new measures to stem the tide of Bosnian refugees attempting to cross the frontier between Slovenia and Croatia illegally.

One Banja Luka Muslim said: ''Besides having to accept the painful fact that all these valuable cultural monuments do not exist anymore, it is even more painful to see children of Serb nationality rejoicing at the sites on fire.''

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The Guardian (London); December 24, 1993

MUSLIMS TRY TO FLEE THE DEATH OF CIVILISATION; Yigal Chazan picks through the rubble of Banja Luka's once proud heritage and finds its war-weary and terrorised human remnants desperate to escape

By Yigal Chazan

Drowned out by the deafening clatter of bulldozers and falling masonry, Mufti Ibrahim Hallilovic leads a huddle of elderly worshippers in midday prayers.

Outside the Islamic community centre in Banja Luka, Serb workmen clear away the pulverised remains of the 16th century Ferhadija mosque and plough up an adjoining cemetery, its headstones a jumbled heap of splintered rock. Seven months after dynamiting and setting alight all 16 of the town's mosques, Bosnian Serb extremists returned last week for another pyrotechnic orgy, wiping away all traces of the town's rich Muslim legacy.

Miraculously, the community centre, yards from the Ferhadija ruins, survives - but only just. This final spiritual refuge periodically shudders as the men from the ministry of urbanisation level the ground for a car park. "You are witnessing the death of civilisation," intones the mufti solemnly as he peers out over the rubble.

Nearby, hundreds of weary Muslims and Croats queue forlornly outside the offices of international aid agencies, where they beg officials to ferry them to a saner world. They bring with them horrific tales of evictions, beatings and murders. But only a handful will gain a ticket to freedom. Most are destined to endure further misery. They will return to suburbs that echo to the sound of gunfire and explosions; to brutal police raids and round-ups; and to Serb neighbours who shun and humiliate them.

As the noose tightens around the terrified remnants of Banja Luka's minorities, escape routes are fast disappearing. In the past 18 months slightly more than half the town's pre-war non-Serb population of 50,000 have found sanctuary abroad. But the few European countries that once offered them homes are closing their doors, and Croatia routinely denies them transit visas. Central Bosnia is increasingly the only option, but most of the refugees prefer to be disenfranchised and terrorised in Banja Luka than face hunger and war in Travnik and Zenica.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has registered more than 3,000 destitute and persecuted non-Serbs in the region who are desperate to leave. But they fall short of the stringent entry visa requirements and quotas set by countries still providing sanctuary, or do not have the funds to smuggle themselves out.

"I'm trapped here, every day is hell," said Suada, pleading her case with UNHCR officials. She lives with her husband and son in a squalid flat in Vrbanja, a district of Banja Luka practically "cleansed" of Muslims. Suada moved there over a year ago after being released from a detention camp. Her family has been hounded by Serb extremists ever since. "People come into the house all the time threatening to kill us if we don't leave," she said. "At night we lock the door, and turn off the lights and the radio so that no one thinks we're home. I put my son to bed before the shooting starts outside. Our flat has been hit four times. But we've got off lightly - some of my friends have had grenades thrown into their front rooms."

A Serb refugee last week laid claim to her house, and planted a Serbian flag at the entrance. He has given Suada a month to get out. "I want my nightmare to end. There must be a place where they won't look at me as a Muslim, but as a human being."

Mevlida and her son, Elvir, have managed to secure their passage to freedom. Sitting outside the International Committee of the Red Cross office, they wait patiently for a bus to take them to Zagreb. "It's not important where I go after that - it's just a relief to get out of here," said Mevlida, who abandoned her home in Liskovac, north of Banja Luka, after a wave of savage murders. "We were so scared that we slept in the cornfields for weeks. It will be the same here soon. They're kicking people out of their flats, they'll start killing them next." Turning her head towards those queueing in the vain hope of escaping, Mevlida sighs. "It's not fair that some of us can go and others not."

International relief officials say the plight of non-Serbs denied asylum parallels that of German Jews who struggled to find countries willing to take them at the height of Nazi persecution in the thirties. The ICRC and UNHCR are only able to evacuate limited numbers, giving priority to those they consider to be in mortal danger. "We have to make a kind of selection - which can often mean the difference between life and death," said a senior aid worker, who railed against western countries for not accepting more refugees. "It's a huge responsibility. Some of us have nightmares."

"They give us material assistance, but what use is that when the very existence of the Muslim population is threatened? They should either commit themselves to protecting them or transfer them to safety."

In an office adorned with wall hangings depicting Banja Luka's now vanished Muslim heritage, the mufti agonises over the fate of his people, but implores them to stay. "It doesn't matter whether we become second or third class citizens, it's more honourable to suffer here than live in exile."

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Agence France-Presse; February 10, 1997

MOSTAR'S MUFTI HIT BY BULLET IN CEMENTARY SHOOTING

SARAJEVO, Feb 10, 1997 (AFP) -- The senior Moslem cleric in the divided southern Bosnian city of city of Mostar, Seid Smajkic, was wounded by a bullet when Croats opened fire on Moslems visiting a cemetery on Monday.

Speaking on Bosnian television, Smajkic, the city's mufti, said that he was hit on the head when Croat protesters attacked the Moslems in the cemetery, and as he lay on the ground a bullet grazed his hip. The mufti said he was later discharged from hospital.

One person was killed and 22 others were wounded when rival Croats and Moslems clashed at the cemetery, sparking the intervention of Spanish troops from the SFOR peacekeeping force. The violence prompted an appeal for calm from Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and a dawn to dusk curfew was imposed.