Toronto — Sarajevans, expatriate Bosnian Muslims in Canada and at least one Balkans expert reacted skeptically to an apology issued by the President of the rump Yugoslavia for the "evil" his people had caused during Bosnia's war of independence.
Yesterday, Serbia and Montenegro President Svetozar Marovic met Bosnian leaders during his first official visit to Sarajevo, where he declared contrition for the 1992-95 war between Belgrade-backed Serbs and Bosnia's Muslims and Croats.
Most of the estimated 200,000 people who died in the conflict were Muslims.
"I want to use this opportunity to apologize for any evil or disaster that anyone from Serbia and Montenegro caused to anyone in Bosnia-Herzegovina," Mr. Marovic said.
"The time of forgiveness is before us. We have to have enough courage to create common ground to help each other heal our wounds," he said.
"There was injustice, evil, suffering and murder. There were things ..... one can't imagine people doing," he added, saying that states should not be blamed for evil acts by individuals.
Bosnian President Dragan Covic, a Croat, said the apology was an "encouragement for the future of the two countries and for the region as a whole," and other leaders said it would help to heal the wounds remaining from the conflict.
But ordinary Sarajevans interviewed by Reuters news agency were less enthusiastic, saying the apology came too late and offered no comfort for the suffering of the city's people, who endured a 361/2-year siege by Serb forces that claimed 10,000 lives.
In Toronto, Tajib Pasanbegovic, a Muslim religious leader who helped organize relief efforts in 1992, said yesterday that "we are not very much impressed."
Mr. Pasanbegovic, a leader of the 1,000-strong Bosnia-Canada Association, acknowledged that the apology is at least a break from the attitude displayed by Mr. Marovic's predecessors.
(Vojislav Kostunica, who followed strongman Slobodan Milosevic as Yugoslav president, visited Sarajevo three times during his tenure but refused to apologize.)
Yet Mr. Pasanbegovic said he believes the apology is meant to steer blame solely on a few individuals such as Mr. Milosevic.
"It's quite late. The major objective here is to make the Bosnian government simply forgive and forget," Mr. Pasanbegovic said.
"And that is not possible. I don't know any nation that would forgive, just like that, 250,000 people killed.
"Only insane people could forgive that."
He also said he believes the Serbian government made the apology with the hope that Bosnia would withdraw a lawsuit filed against Belgrade at the International Court of Justice, demanding compensation for aggression and genocide.
Edith Klein, a University of Toronto research fellow specializing in the Balkans, said the apology has no real official status anyway, since Bosnia is not really functioning as an independent state while it must rely on United Nations protection.
The apology represents no watershed or turning point, she said.
"What did it cost him to make it?" she said, referring to Mr. Marovic. "Probably not very much."
Prof. Klein said that an apology lacking depth and authority may have the effect of diffusing the enormity of what took place during the war.
In any case, she said, it may be too soon for an apology to have any real effect or meaning.
"Apologies for the Holocaust came years afterwards and feelings are still raw about that," she noted.
It has been eight years since North Atlantic Treaty Organization powers stopped the fighting in Bosnia and imposed the Dayton peace accord, and three years since the two countries — previously parts of Yugoslavia — established diplomatic relations.
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