PALE, BOSNIA -- Sitting in the self-styled capital of his self- proclaimed republic, Pantelija Milanovic, a silver-haired Bosnian Serb, is unfazed by Western threats of tighter economic sanctions and air attacks. Only the prospect of living with Bosnia's Muslims -- "Turks," he calls them -- makes him flinch. "It is the job of Serbs to make sure camels do not drink from the Rhine," he says as he sips a cup of Turkish coffee.
When war erupted in Bosnia two years ago, this village a few mountainous bends from Sarajevo became the center of the Bosnian Serb universe. Today, its rusty engine plant doubles as the assembly hall for a Serb parliament. Its cows and sheep compete for grazing space with tinted-windowed Mercedeses. And its intrepid leaders flaunt their immunity to Western might by cutting off truck traffic and firing on nearby United Nations personnel. Few places in Republika Srpska, the 70 percent of Bosnia held by Serbs, offer more vivid testimony to the sad fact that -- despite every outside effort to breed tolerance and coexistence in the former Yugoslavia -- Bosnian Serbs neither want nor intend to live again with Muslims. Mere mention of the partition plan unveiled by the British, French, Russian, German and U.S. "contact group" can generate harangues from farmer, housewife and Orthodox priest alike. They gesticulate about the "ridiculous, unworkable" Geneva map, which calls for the handing over of large swaths of rich land and, ostensibly, the preservation of a multiethnic Bosnia.
Indians and Jews. A blend of new military gains and old historic claims makes the Serbs feel entitled to statehood. "Serbs ate with golden spoons before Europe even knew what spoons were," says Momir Tosic, a local politician. "We had our state 1,000 years before Columbus even discovered America." He and others want full independence or union with Serbia, and they fear anything less. Posters in Pale remind them of what they see as the ongoing Islamization of Europe. One contains three frames, the first showing the blue European Union flag; the second, the same flag with green paint -- signifying Islam -- dribbling down a side; and the final one, an all-green square. "This is not a paint commercial," the poster warns. "This is the future." Adds Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic: "We saw what America did to its Indians and what Germany did to its Jews. The contact group wants to do something like that with us."
The contact group drew up its "take-it-or-leave-it map" in hopes of bringing peace. But it will take far more than threats to penetrate here. "Under no circumstances will we ever accept the continuation of Bosnia-Herzegovina," declares Pale's Tosic. "We are staying in our areas no matter what the price."
