THE Bosnian Muslim Croat federation took control of a third Sarajevo township from Serbs peacefully yesterday after a confrontation between Nato and Croat police who seized a police station.
Crowds of civilians followed federation police into Hadzici, in the Bosnian capital's south western suburbs, where the town hall and several apartment blocks "blazed in the wake of fleeing Serbs.
The last 50 Serbs huddled around open fires in the main street until 2 a.m. (local time) when buses arrived to take them to Bosnian Serb territory.
Hadzici is the third Serb suburb of Sarajevo to be handed to the federation under a Bosnia peace agreement which ended 3 1/2 years of war in the former Yugoslav republic.
The remaining two suburbs are due to revert to Muslim Croat control by March 20th.
Serbs, fearing reprisals for their wartime siege of Sarajevo, fled the suburbs after looting them rather than live under the rule of former foes.
Federation authorities gained control an hour late after a potentially nasty showdown between a group of Bosnian Croat police, who occupied Hadzici police station late on Tuesday, and Nato peacekeepers.
With French Nato troops standing in readiness, the UN police chief, Assistant Garda Commissioner Peter Fitzgerald, threatened the 18 Croats with force unless they left.
"You are not authorised here ... If you refuse to leave voluntarily, I will call on [Nato] and have you removed, by force if necessary," he told the Croat commander.
They drove off shortly before 8 a.m. under a UN police escort.
The incident, showing the strains that poison relations between Bosnian Muslims and Croats, followed Croat complaints about the ethnic make up of the federation police force deployed in Hadzici.
It contains 50 Muslims, 15 Serbs and only five Croats, but reflects the pre war ethnic balance in Hadzici.
Muslims and Croats were forced into the federation by US mediators who ended bloody fighting between them for control of central Bosnia during the war. They remain distrustful allies.
The Bosnian Prime Minister, Mr Hasan Muratovic, said the government expected the Hadzici action and blamed police from the nearby Bosnian Croat town of Kiseljak which became rich on wartime black marketeering.